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#1 callista Jul 18, 2005 15:45:15

Okay, so you're a DM, and you can't afford much more than the core books. It's a normal situation, one I'm familiar with: I'm a college student, and the textbook costs aren't going down. So, until I get that nice job with the good income and can fill a bookcase or so with D&D books and accessories, I'm improvising. I've seen a few topics started by people in similar situations, mostly students, and here's the good news: You don't have to give up your hobby, or resort to makeshift paper playing pieces and diagrams. A little creativity goes a long way. One poor-DM problem I've seen is not having the money to buy enough miniatures, especially for numerous monsters. Here are a number of viable things you can do to substitute for miniatures. Craft Store: Your first resource is the crafts store. Seriously--I'm not kidding. Crafts stores are not all lace and knitting needles! Go to a craft store, and get those little flat-bottomed glass beads that they use to fill the bottoms of fish tanks and such. (You may also be able to find these at a pet store.) The 1/2 inch diameter ones are good, but get some bigger ones for bigger monsters. Buy multicolored bagfuls... the swirly sort, with, say, green and yellow glass mixed in one piece, are especially nice-looking. Your total investment will be something around $5. Permanent markers on the bottoms of transparent pieces can be used to tell "Orc 1, Orc 2, Orc 3" apart (just number from 1 to 9, mirror-imaged so they look right when you turn them face up again), and different colors to tell different monsters apart. Some craft stores have small wooden pieces in various shapes which you can use as playing pieces. They range from spheres (not a good idea) to cubes (better) and even odder shapes. You'll have to find a way to tell them apart, of course. Different shapes and colors, or painted wooden pieces, are good, as are numbers painted onto them. If you have a wood-burning kit, you can make them look especially nice. In fact, walk through the entire craft store. There are a lot of small, handy things that can easily double as monster miniatures. Rhinestones are good, as are buttons. If you can't find the thing you're looking for, likely there'll be something just as good which can substitute. Hardware Store: If you can't find glass beads, try getting nuts and other small bits of hardware from a hardware store. I've seen wing-nuts used as bats. Color them somehow, so you can tell groups apart--I used nail polish, but that's expensive, so try paint instead (make sure it's the sort that will stick to metal)--to tell them apart. Actually, permanent markers, enamel, spray paint, any paint that will stay on metal, et cetera, will work fine as well. I haven't figured out a good way to number these yet, though. Game Tokens: Got any board games? Many board-game pieces are the right size to double as D&D playing pieces. All sorts of cannibalized game pieces are great, but any pieces with letters or numbers are especially useful, if you have them, since the marks on them can be used to identify the monsters. Put them face-up in the lid of the game box, so you can pick them out quickly as you put monsters on the board. In a Pinch: Use coins or dice. Everyone will have some of these, and the nice thing about dice, especially d6's, is that you can turn up the correct number face to the number you've assigned the corresponding monster. Fun Idea: Use pieces of candy, preferably the kind that come in foil wrappers, like foil-wrapped peanut butter cups. If you kill the monster, you eat the candy. Happy gaming! Callista