Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jaspercrey 01-30-06, 08:06 PM	I love the battlegrid. I hate WoTC Miniatures. Don't get me wrong. They are very cool looking and probabaly do an admirable job. I just find them too impractical and too expensive. I find maps for 1' scale are huge and cumbersome and take up way too much table space. I also not fond of how WoTC distributes their minis - I don't like the card collecting method. We use painted wooden crafter spools as our minis. http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/dungeonsunlimited/pics.html It works for us. I'm curious, does anyone else you alternatives to minis?
Vaalingrade Ashland 01-30-06, 08:14 PM	My players just trust my descriptions and go from there. In games where someone else DMs, we sometimes use dice or glass counters.
kraegor 01-30-06, 08:18 PM	Pogs. You remember those things a few years ago that where very hip and cool to toss around? You can still find them places, and a lot of them have cool pictures/graphics on them, and they are pretty much 1" diameter. Now if you don't have any good pogs, then there is a program downloadable thru the internet that lets you take a JPEG/GIF/BMP and cut out a 1" graphic in a circle, and creates a small border around it where you can write down stuff (type) on the border such as "Mailee, 4th level wizard, 5' reach" and then print them up on paper, and you can cut it out and glue it on one. The other option is taking something like Poker Chips that are the size of the circles and doing the same thing. Now what a friend of mine did was he went to Home Depot, and bought 1" washers and used those, just painted different colors/designs for the pcs. Tons of options if you want.
Rood_Inverse 01-30-06, 08:20 PM	You're lucky Ashland. I grew up on 2e and am fine with description and the RAW. But with the 3.5 RAW, my players insist on a battlemat and counters/miniatures/erasable markers/whatever, because the rules have been "so streamlined and are so much better." They just couldn't live if they couldn't exploit 5-foot steps and AoOs... *sigh*
Herald@Large 01-30-06, 08:28 PM	Chessmen. A sack of those green plastic army men. Monopoly tokens. Legos. Christmas candy (when a monster dies, whoever kills it gets to eat it! :P ) Bottle caps. Uncooked pasta in different shapes and colors. Big wooden or plastic beads. Small squares of cardboard with numbers or color spots on them. Small sea shells. Nuts in the shell, painted (filberts/hazelnuts for characters, walnuts or pecans or Brazil nuts for monsters, a coconut for the BBEG! :D ) Junk jewelry. And on and on and on.
Wishim Clubfoot 01-30-06, 08:39 PM	That is by far the best and probly the most cost effective way to run your battles requiring a battlemat... I like to map out my big battles but have been pretty tied down due to the lack of miniatures I have... I don't buy them anymore but when I was into Warhammer I bought a few but the time it takes to make miniatures look cool in comparison to make a whole collection of spools is just unparalelled... I am definately going to have to use that idea for my games from here on in... Thanks a million for the idea... What we have mostly used in the past is a chessboard and chess pieces, but it limits you to a very small battlefield... grid paper all the way :P
Ilmryn 01-30-06, 09:05 PM	:mad: my friends had these cool minis and I found an old d&d bootleg board game with a cool forest board and a dungeon board and it had some monsters and it had funiture!(it was soo cool becaue when i had to dm my descriptions had some of the pieces in the box and it helped them visualize the room)but they lost them when their dad moved. :weep:
rogar2465 01-30-06, 09:14 PM	I have a small collection of minis, even though they're not nesessary, I like one of each type if I can for visual effect- for #2 and up I use Dice for mediums( white 2-6,red 1-6,blue 1-6..so on) then for large, huge, and gargantuan,I use 1/4" plywood in 2,3,&4" diameter circles.(numbered with marker for clarity). Iv'e discovered that since I started using this method, I'm more resistant to spending money on E-Bay for minis, and if I don't have a particular one, thats why there's pictures in the books. By the way, I was suprised when 3.0 came out with sutch a focus on grid battles. I had tried minis years ago in 2nd Ed. and found they slowed down the game and 2nd Ed was more fun without them. At this point I can't think of any way to play 3.5 without minis.( I wonder if WoTC planned it that way?) :confused: Rogar
rogar2465 01-30-06, 09:19 PM	Oh yea, I use the grid from the DMG or mini starter pack and have kinkos laminate it, Then use OverHead Projecter Pens to draw on it. :D It only cost 8 $ or so Rogar
boredgremlin 01-30-06, 09:33 PM	I use a battlemat but instead of overpriced mini's i use change and dice. Change is especially usefull because they have different heads on each side. so you can actually have 8 different beastie types just with normal change, add in a few dollar coins or 50 cent pieces and you get more. Lol since my players in one game insisted on having different things i had em bring in and donate to the collection any wierd coin they wanted. Now i have chuckie cheese tokens, canadian, mexican and english coins, some parking tokens, and bus tokens. The whole collection cost like 10$ and i think i can cover about 50 different creature types per battle, all still easily recognized as being different.
celtredleg 01-30-06, 09:33 PM	styrofoam board and push pins.
Twitchkidd 01-30-06, 10:20 PM	I carved my own.
TheChilliGod 01-30-06, 10:54 PM	Sometimes we use dice. D12's are a favorite for this. Sometimes we use counters. You know, from Tiddlywinks. Sometimes we use a computer-based grid. Sometimes we use clay counters I made myself in primary school. Sometimes, we use minis. But you don't want minis. Sometimes, we just draw our positions on a piece of grid paper. The rest of the time, we use these shiny glass counters that we can buy easily at the gaming store. I think they were called Chinese Wishing Stones at one point.
Chimera245 01-30-06, 10:56 PM	I use Lego People This might not work as well for people who have not been collecting Legos continuously for the last twenty-something years, as they will have a smaller variety of people parts, but they are the perfect size. If you have problems with them being knocked down easily, just stick them on a 2x3 stud plate and it's perfect. The only downsides are that there are very few good lego monsters, and the few that do exist might not be to scale on a grid. (but if you have the time, you can always just build your own...) If you decide to do away with the 1 inch equals 5 feet, and say x amount of Lego studs equals 5 feet, then the lego baseplates are the perfect dungeons, especially if the DM has the time between sessions to build the battlefields. You can have actual 3-D combats, instead of a flat map, with some kind of notation to say that "this area is higher than that area". Not to mention that more detailed and realistic battlefields never hurt the game. (If you have the time and energy to build them, of course...)
robot0_0 01-30-06, 11:20 PM	Most of my players have puter statuets that they use and I use a mix of majong peaces and little anime figures I got while in japan.
ObsidianIchor 01-31-06, 12:22 AM	My group uses various REAL miniatures. Not the WotC ones...I really don't like the way they're set up to buy them and I don't like the miniature designs. I enjoy painting the miniatures so I get appropriate ones for our characters and paint them. I personally enjoy Reaper miniatures and Warhammer miniatures. Reaper tends to work better for the individual characters, while Warhammer works well for the masses and the occasional character. I also enjoy converting the miniatures to better represent the characters. My warhammer army was Dark Elves, so that worked out very well for a campaign involving Drow a little while back.
YRM 01-31-06, 12:28 AM	Alternatives to the DDM plastic minis? Sometimes I use the large collection of pewter Chainmail and Reaper Minis that I had before switching more to the plastics. Now I just use both. If you don't like D&D maps, try building your dungeons, buildings and environments out of foam, flock, HirstArt castlemolds, paint, etc. (see links in sig)
Bryarr 01-31-06, 01:10 AM	I worked for a WotC retail store up until they closed the chain down about 2 years ago. I got about 4-5 cases worth of assorted mage knight figures for about 50 bucks during the liquidation. The plan was to re-base them to 1 inch bases. 2 years later, and my new bride got on my back to finish the project up. I have 2 battlehive II cases coming in the mail this week. Then, I'll be organized! Not that you could easily reproduce my situation. But everyone was sharing, so I thought I would, too. Bry
The_Levitator 01-31-06, 03:16 AM	Boy, I think I am REALLY spoiling my players! I use DM Genie on my laptop and it has a mapping section built right into the campaign manager that auto adds the party and the encounter. I use Dundjinni to create my maps, and my laptop is connected to my HD projector and 8' widescreen screen. That way, they get a real time overview of the battle, and I can also use the big screen for other visual aids like NPC and creature pictures, maps, items, etc. I like it because it takes literally 30 seconds to set up the battle, and there's no mess to clean up. What's really cool is that the markers are color-coded so you can change the color to indicate dying and dead creatures. My players all have custom icons that they use so they can easily see where they are on the encounter map.
Darko 01-31-06, 07:51 AM	I'm still using tokens from the D&D basic set, but am currently making clay miniatures. I'll use the clay minies to make a mold and then I'll cast plaster minis. I already cast a couple of half-orcs and they look great and are easy to paint. This will take quite some time so I've decided to make paper "minis". I make these by drawing the monster on a piece of hard paper and cutting them out, making sure to leave half an inch of extra paper at the feet. Then I cut this extra paper like this: | | | | | | | | |_|_| and fold the "legs so that they can be fit on a cardboard base that has two lines cut into it like this: __________ | | | | | | | | | | |________| It looks three-dimensional, is easy to make, and the mini can be separated from the base for easier storage & transport.
Hawk Kriegsman 01-31-06, 08:01 AM	Hello All, I use miniatures for the PCs. I use gaming stones for all most all NPCs. The ones I use are made by Chessex and there are about a dozen or so different colors. I do have a few minis that I use for larger creatures. Thanx! Hawk
oxybe 01-31-06, 08:40 AM	until i got the D&D mini started and a few extra pieces (IE a bunch of orcs to represent the BBEG's flunkies), we used legos. lots and lots of legos. like an entire dungeon floor plan of legoes, 4 pegs = 1 ft square. i sometimes miss using mr.pirate-ninja-wizard with his sword weilding monkey familiar as a PC, but i still have him lying around if the need arises. as other people said, using counters, paper cutouts, ect... was a staple for a while (and still is... my biggest mini is large, so anything 3x3 squares or bigger is represented by a piece of paper with the monster's name and an arrow to point where he's facing, so my players often cringe when they see me reach out for scrap paper and a cutout template, instead of just going for the mini jar)
YRM 01-31-06, 11:20 PM	Boy, I think I am REALLY spoiling my players! I use DM Genie on my laptop and it has a mapping section built right into the campaign manager that auto adds the party and the encounter. I use Dundjinni to create my maps, and my laptop is connected to my HD projector and 8' widescreen screen. That way, they get a real time overview of the battle, and I can also use the big screen for other visual aids like NPC and creature pictures, maps, items, etc. I like it because it takes literally 30 seconds to set up the battle, and there's no mess to clean up. What's really cool is that the markers are color-coded so you can change the color to indicate dying and dead creatures. My players all have custom icons that they use so they can easily see where they are on the encounter map. A friend of mine in Indiana who recently started DMing again did this. He spent about $800 on the projector setup and I traded him a bunch of common and uncommon plastic minis. BTW, to someone who wants to get cheap minis, buying the commons and uncommons from recent sets on ebay is cheaper than almost any other way to represent figures. I think I'd seen "lots" of Goblin Shaman... something like 20 for $3.99 Can't beat 20 cents for a goblin (even if it isn't the best sculpt in the world) Instead of buying a book or two, $30 or $60 will get you at least 30 or 60 minis with a reasonable range of figures (probably even a few large uncommons). If you're really careful, $60 could get you 100 figures. There are some sites on eBay that charge flat fees for shipping instead of adding .50 or $1 to each auction. (Auggies store I believe does this) Buy 60 figures, pay a flat $3.50 for shipping.