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4 easy ways to get started with miniatures for D&D
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ส.ค. 2024
- I uploaded this to try to dispel the myths that hold people back getting started using minis in D&D. I see a lot of comments like: 'I wish we could use minis at my table'. In this video, I'm aiming to show how little you really need to get started using miniatures.
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For a grid, i like to use the back of wrapping paper. A lot of wrapping paper has a 1 inch grid on the back, and it’s super affordable. You can also draw on it to mark obstacles and stuff, and then throw in out when you’re done because it’s cheep. It can be found at most dollar stores. Thanks for the video!
Thanks for commenting :)
I noticed this too. Pick up a few rolls from the dollar store and you have grids for several combats at a very inexpensive cost.
You can laminate it for cheap at an office store
You know what works _really_ well for tokens? Bottle caps.
If you're like me, you've been collecting bottle caps for years. Even if you haven't you can start to, or else source them reasonably well through other means. Bottle caps are roughly 1 inch in diameter, meaning they can be used on a regular DnD grid. And most bottle caps have logos or other bits of graphic design that differentiate them from other drinks. Which make them ideal for designating different kinds of characters in a combat.
I've got a baggy full of a couple dozen caps in my RPG stuff carrying box, so I can always assemble a battle when needed.
Honestly, I love the idea of using the tv as a map. As someone who plays with only one minature and no money, it looks so good 😊
The TV is a great little solution - especially when first starting out :)
Just started playing so 99% of my monsters I fight are warhammer, as I’ve played that for quite a while and have a lot
Yeah, they make good stand ins :)
I'm going back and sort of binge watching these videos to get a sense of where to really start with terrain. I've always done well painted minis, and a battle mat. I'm excited to level up the experience and this bit of advice is so good!
I started playing back in about 1987, and let me tell you I have fought my share of pipe cleaners and paper towels.
Toys make good stand ins for a lot of monsters. Plastic army men (50 for a buck at dollar tree) with the weapons cut off and a bit of paint make very nice hill giants/orcs/bugbears. Action figures can range from that all the way to storm giants.
Giant bugs, at too easy to find.
Dinosaur toys or alligator toys can be dragons.
A puddle of hot glue is an all but instant slime or ooze.
Speaking of hot glue, the glue sticks can be carved with a razor knife and glued to a penny to make invisible creatures/players.
Cotton balls? Spray paint them green, glue to cardboard. Instant bushes that look pretty descent.
Want a grid? A piece of poster board, a yard stick ruler and a pen. Done.
I would advise a player to get a nice miniature for themselves. But for the DM improvisation is king. If you have an ogre or a cave troll on the shelf, the players know they might face one. But if you pull out a John Cena action figure you painted black, well... .
Thanks for contributing man, lots of awesome ideas for getting started there :)
I think the important thing people remember as well is these stand ins don't have to be permanent if they'd prefer to play with real minis in the long run, but it let's you get started!
MSTarot Thanks
So The John CENA can be an ogre but what bout our characters
Speaking of using a john cena figure, I'm currently converting a wwe figure into a storm giant with some clay, cardboard, and hot glue so far its looking good.
Damn, that was some motivating ideas!
I only have 5 miniatures and I have been extremely excited to start a campaign but felt very much at a disadvantage not having what I felt was necessary to pursue said coarse. But I feel much better about using, even my legos, to get started. Thank you and Stay Awesome Brudda
You know what works _really_ well for grids? Parchment paper.
Dirt cheap. Buy it at any grocery store. Has your one-inch grids. Can be cut to length desired. You can draw all over it. And it's really portable, either grabbing a whole tube or folding a drawn battle map up.
私は子供の頃より長い間ゲームを遊んで来ました。
友人達と共に創意と工夫で楽しめる事を知りました。
古いコインだけでもイマジネーションがあれば驚きと興奮が味わえます。
I just started collecting minis and it is even more expensive since I live in middle of nowhere in Europe and most things online do not ship to me or it is around 50-100$. What I found most 'cost effective' is buying dnd board games. You get 42 minis and honestly you get enough different sizes of monsters that can be used for everything. :D before that we had one mini and used figurins for games like mysterium, ludo and other board games. We all had 16 figurines from ludo and you get them in 4 different colours so tracking who is npc, who enemy etc was really easy. :D
There's always a way :) if you find getting real minis a problem, Paper minis might be a good alternative? Extremely cost effective!
Yeah, I know, but my printer gets them veeeery muddy and weird and to print them somewhere would be around 3$ per mini... Noup. Haha
Ah... That's understandable then!
Board games can be a great way to bulk buy minis 🙂. Just remember to check the equation of price/# of minis to ensure you're getting a good deal... Eg gloomhaven is NOT a good bargain because it only has minis for the heroes. CMON is a good company to watch for this kind of stuff as their whole business model is mini heavy board games, so if you can get a CMON product at a good price you're usually getting a good price per mini too
Earlier in 2021 I bought what turned out to be an incomplete copy of village attacks... Not even mad though because I got a ton of villager & hero minis.
Another good option I have found is starter sets for certain wargames, chiefly runewars and mantic game's kings of war.
I am glad I found your channel. I was considering buying a 3d Printer and doing a big set of Open Forge stuff, but seeing the quality that you do with minimal stuff is making me seriously reconsider. Thank you and keep up the good work.
Awesome man! Glad I could help. I personally plan on using 3d printing for minis and 'bits' I can add to terrain I craft that would be difficult to make :) it is had its place I think.
In general I find crafting terrain better as it's way easier to customise without 3d sculpting skills... besides which you have to paint it either way 😅
The traditional proxies for miniatures are M&Ms, Skittles, or Gummibären -- if you kill it you get to eat it. (For larger-based figures, try Oreos or the like.)
Just remember that the only differences between a painted mini and an M&M are that the mini can be easier to identify and it's prettier, and the M&M tastes better.
What a great quality for a such a new channel. It is nice to you hear you, very soft voice. I agree, that you don't need bunch of fancy things to start play DND. We started with few stuff and got more as we went.
Thank you!
2D Paper Cutout's, Yard Sales, Crag's List, eBay if you have limited funds, the Dollar Store plastic Dino's & Dragons, "some one's UNLOVED & Unpainted Minis," etc are even a 2d & 3rd Step! Wiz Kid's & Hero Clicks are per-painted can be carefully cut off their Bases & "remounted" on correct D&D bases (see TH-cams if it's your first time). When you finally get to where you have a collection & they are now part of your "UNLOVED minis" , pass them on to a newbie player so they can continue to bring Joy to someone else! Kind of a "D&D Toy Story!"
YOU are limited by your Imagination! After-all, it's an imaginary game, set in an imaginary world! HAVE FUN doing it, that's half the Adventure! My son got started with "Hero Quest" in the 90's and I date back to the first addition of "Chainmail" by Guidon Games in 1971...
All good points :)
Great advice! Too many people i think get turned off by seeing these elaborate setups with all the bells & whistles. Heck when I started, all you needed was a pencil, some paper and an awesome imagination..
Recently "discovered" this channel … I might've seen one or two of your other videos before and thought it was kind of cool but also not really what I wanted to do at the time … but loving the fact that you are kind of focused on keeping budgets and people who don't have huge amounts of stuff, money, or even space and maybe want to build stuff that looks amazing on the table, but is very versatile.
Some channels I watch make amazing stuff and provide great inspiration for building techniques … but ultimately everything they build is a one-off for a single adventure. Great for them, if they've got space for all these creations or a large budget to make them all, but I haven't got those kinds of resources. Especially I don't have the space for a lot of storage. (It also doesn't help that I don't drive, so anything I'm taking to the game's got to be travel friendly and be able to be knocked around as I carry it with me on bus and train.)
Anyway, subscribed! 🙂
That's the goal! I try to keep it flexible so you can build to your own tastes :)
The tv as a map just blew my mind away. This entire video is so underrated, and so inspiring. You have made my day!
Glad I could help!
My first dnd session ever we used a bit if paper glued to a quarter.
The terrain was made up of bits of school supplies, bottle caps, and other balled up bits of paper. Our battle mat was 4 sheets of notebook paper taped together with a hand drawn, uneven grid.
We upgraded as we went. Some players bought minis. The dm replaced numbered tokens with images found online at the library and printed for a nickel on their printer. Eventually we got even more minis. Later we even learned to paint them.
Looking forward to more, this really inspired me to break more into my crafts stash to make my own simple terrain instead of wishing I had the stuff.
That's really great to hear, good luck!
I'll be uploading some easy to follow terrain tutorials in a week or two if you'd like some ideas :)
Wow love your wall with the maps too !
I was halfway through the video when I noticed the Za Lord's Guard t-shirt. That is awesome, man. If I wasn't subbed & bell'd already, I'd be doing it now.
In the 70’s, I described the area and my players drew it out on grid paper. Once you did this a few times, it’s pretty easy to do. I do enjoy the battle maps though and drawing them.
Im the same. In the 80s/90s, we had graph paper to map dungeons, but never used minis. Once we had the dimensions of a room we just had to work out what we were doing in our 'shared' heads and let the DM decide if there was an issue.
Great video, miniatures definitely help bring a sense of scale to the game and let's be honest they look pretty awesome too.
Definitely, I think miniatures are something that adds so much to the experience :)
As you began speaking about maps I thought to myself “he isn’t going to lay a tv on the table is he?” And then you did, and I spat my drink
Haha! Works perfectly 😁
Great tips. Alternately, a game map pdf can be resized to scale and printed out. Other tokens for game pieces can be printed out photos and glued to cardboard until you get a 3d mini.
That's definitely something else you could do - I should have included that!
Looking forward to the growth of your channel!
Thanks man!
Excellent material. Spot on for starting out. Great advice, even for old-timer's, like me. Cheers!
Some TV's can be damaged by lying horizontal for extended periods, and laying objects on it can scratch the screen. Not to mention the possibility that someone at the table might accidentally drop something heavy on it or spill a drink or whatever. So make sure you don't use a TV or monitor you can't afford to mess up.
You are producing excellent material and I'm happily subscribed - btw on the subject of your t-shirt Hells bells that a good reference!
Haha! I'm glad someone got the reference :) and thanks, hope you enjoy the channel!
I love terrain because it really sets the scene (although books and empty cans can do a lot for a table), but I've always found that miniatures get a little lost anyway when you're looking at things from play-distance (a yard or two). So I rarely use detailed minis for my tables. My absolute favorite solution: chess pieces! Thrift shops near me always have a set or two lying around, usually very cheap, and I keep them in my DM kit at all times. Good variety of shapes, multiple colors, and most people recognize their names (so I can say "the pawns are archers, and that castle is an ax-wielding executioner!")
Great tips, thank you!
When I first started playing, I had an Art Teacher, Mr. Adolph, who was very generous with his time and printer. I asked him if he would print me a few character sheets, and he went above and beyond, printing probably a dozen or so sheets on standard paper, and tiles/doors/creatures, etc, on Cardstock. He literally handed me a manila folder filled with these and never said another word about it. I'm pretty sure he was probably a player, too, cause he went above and beyond what I asked. While not particularly relevant here, maybe ask around to some of your teachers, you never know where you'll find a friend. Also most public libraries probably have printers you can use, for a fee. My local library charged 10 cents a page last I checked, which is probably pretty affordable for most people.
Hey man, got here from Reddit. I used to play D&D back in the 90's, when I was a teenager. Now it is time for me to be a Master for my children. I will follow your channel closely and try your ideas. You have an awesome channel. Thank you for the tips!
Thanks, and good luck!
We just used grided paper and whatever we had. This rubber is a ogre. That die is a goblin with a bow. Those chess pices are goblins with clubs. And this line is the tunnel wall. GO!
Ofcource that dont look as epic as fully painted and 3D pices and standies we all love to drool at. ;)
Oh definitely, but they fill the gaps while you work on stuff.
Speaking of filling gaps, blobs of putty or blu tac work quite well as impromptu tokens too, especially with some different colour drawing pins in them to differentiate them :)
I love the shirt reference, and thank you for the video. I’m probably going to get a few more miniatures before my next game but keep the tokens
This was really encouraging as I am about to start running a game for the first time in years: thanks!
We use d6 in a pinch if we need to, fits into a square easily, and you can use the numbers to represent enemy number, size of enemy, or numbers if you need one dice to represent more than one monster, such as a swarm. Chances are most people have some kind of dice available.
That's a good quick idea!
This is the perfect video for my buddy.
On the topic of grids and distances: another way than the tape measure or grid is to use relative distances and zones.
This is an idea that comes from the OSR space, you measure relative distances between characters as close/near/far... And usually let PCs move near+attack, or full round move far. Zones are a similar idea where map is broken up into narratively significant areas (eg top and bottom of the staircase, edge and center of the summoning circle), and then you figure out near/far distances between the zones.
It was designed to speed up combat by eliminating a lot of the number fiddling... But since it makes geography relative it can also be leveraged to make map setup more flexible.
Doing maps like that, your most essential piece of terrain can be any off the shelf whiteboard.
Love the intro dude!
Thanks!
I'd a large mini collection but my group still used what we'd call "Mini Cheddars" which was my MDF bases that I'd have in all the appropriate sizes.
Thanks man. Thats really helpful.
Thanks for the video friend-this inspired me to get into miniatures!!
Awesome! Welcome to the hobby :)
Just got started making my own terrain/minis and this video calmed me a lot because I was stressing myself out with miniature imposter syndrome I guess!
Subbed and belled and probably gonna start watching way more of you!
Hey, glad I could help :) welcome to the archive!
Love your Za Lord Guard tee! So you are a Harry Dresden fan, too?!?!? My husband sent me your videos and I think we are going to build some modular terrain pieces together! 👍🏻
I am indeed, and awesome! Hope you enjoy :)
Instead of a tape measure, I use string with little marks at each inch.
12" of string covers a full dash for a standard 30ft movement character.
If you need more than that, run the string as far as it will go, then pin the end down where it lies and rotate the starting point of the the string around to the other side and continue on. Super quick, easy, and flexible for moving around corners and odd shapes.
Wargaming models. They sell for very cheap and if you have the time you can build them however you want. A song of ice and fire and perry miniatures historicals are personal favorites. For more down to earth you can use historical minis from massive battle games. 30 minis for 30 dollars is great.
Yep, absolutely agree. Starting without minis is OK, and even more, you could take paper printable versions of minis like Pathfinder provides. It's probably even better than having a bunch of numbered tiles on the field. And slowly but steadily purchase/3d print minis for the future. And never forget to paint them, ofcs, cause nothing looks as dull as a collection of unpainted plastic.
When my group first started, we used a chess board lol; then as we progressed I found someone on etsy selling little laser cut tokens with all the classes and then monster tokens, and that's how we played most of the starting campaign :) then I got my first mini to represent one of the big boss monsters (a young green dragon) and I remember than being epic :) then I got a 3D printer and printed off a bunch of simple miniatures.... and now with Covid boredom I've accumulated a large collection of wizkids nolzur miniatures, warhammer, 3D printed and pre-painted miniatures :)
I'd also like to know what 3d printer you got! Would like to get one of my own
The tv idea was awesome! Also one question- where did you get those bushes you kept showing? Thanks!
They're lichen, you can get them from model shops, generally ones focused on railway modelling :) I think its called reindeer lichen? Though I could be misremembering!
@@RPArchiveOfficial Thank you!
No problem :)
This is absolutely brilliant! Thank you.
Glad it helped!
I have HUNDREDS of minis......This is still a very good video.
Thanks :)
When I first started we used coins with scotch tape to write a number on. Also I have heard people using gummy bears are minis
this is and awesome guide, thanks c:
At 1:58 was that a war hammer 40k ruler because it looked really cool!
Yep :) I think it was limited edition? Back in the day when I collected 😄
@@RPArchiveOfficial cool
A TV + Roll20 or some other VTT would actually be great.
If using the foam circles/tokens as miniatures paint the friendly ones a different colour, trust me it’s s time saver
My DM has an erasable grid that he draws a map on and we use different types of dice for player characters, monsters, and NPCs in place of figures and it works well :)
Do you have some channel were u play with this minis and terrains??? i would love to watch!
Jungle blocks are amazing when making out walls
My first ever map was made on printer paper with those bracelets beads as minis (green one was our druid red was barbarian ect.)
We started off our group with no players who had ever played before, including the dm. He had minis for a few kobolds and a bugbear. For players we used cardboard poker chips that had some pictures glued on them. The pictures were a laughable fantasy version of the south park characters. They were hilarious, and even after we each got some minis for the group, we still liked using the disks for tracking movement in some cases
Sounds like an awesome way to start 😁
What minis are these? They look great.
Depends which ones you mean :) the ogres are atlantis miniatures, the giant and bugbears are wizkids, the wolves are gw fenrisian wolves
Is that a custom servo-skull tape measure or are those things you can buy cuz ive never seen that before but man is it cool
It's a very old GW release, it may have been limited edition? I can't remember 😂
This is great ! May I ask where did you find those bushes and small stone walls ? Do you have a good link ?
Local model shop, try train modelling places :)
The major limiting factor for my table and miniatures are table space, and yhe lack of anything we can use for a battlemat.
But what if I want to spend a whole month following RP Archive tutorials! How can you be a Dungeon Master and not overprepare! It’s outrageous, it’s unfair! ;)
Haha! Over planning is optional. Doesn't mean it's not fun 😅
Omg I COULD use cotton for bushes!
How did you make the bigger tokens?
Proxxon circle cutter jig :) but a knife would do...
my friends and I used risk and monopoly pieces to start out
What miniatures do you use in your campaign
A mix of whatever looks best really, gw, wizkids, tons of other smaller sculptors/companies. Anything specific you saw in the video?
Nice I use the ones at Walmart and if I have some leftover money I buy some nolzurs marvelous miniatures
@@RPArchiveOfficial What miniatures do you use for the bandits and bowmen in your videos? I really love their look!
Frostgrave barbarians :)
@@RPArchiveOfficial Thank you! Never really looked into Frostgrave before, but the kitbashing possibilities look great! Just ordered a set of the barbarians, the variety of different weapons is perfect for D&D
Hi
When my players started out, my wife made the party a battle mat out of a large piece of cardboard and just drew the grid on it. Great way to get started until we got a proper mat
check out an app called maptool. It's free software that's made for tv fog of war stuff.
easy cheap way: game in 25mm/1:72, you can get 50 minis for 10 bucks.
I’m literally making my minis out of Disney fairy minis lol I’m just hacking them to pieces and stuff in them to other things like I’m literally making on a centaur lol
Haha nice! 😁
Where did you get the tokens from?
I made them from xps foam using the hot wire cutter :)
1981 Minifigs Castle Diorama - Uber Rare: th-cam.com/video/3T4cs68hg7M/w-d-xo.html
You need at least 2 minis to enjoy using minis, except when you have double vision ...then you can get away with using one.
Why are you whispering?
I tend to record late at night to avoid traffic noise from the main road, I think subconsciously I maybe keep my voice down :)
WOW WHAT!!! YOU REPLIED!!!!! WOWOWOW!!!!!!! (Also that answer makes sense 😂)
Haha, I always reply where I can :) comment on one of my other videos sometime and see ;)
OH MY GOSH THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!!! I will!
Hi sis df5$ugh
Im leaving after 45 seconds into the video because you talk so quiet
Would have liked to see something to the effect of adding a magnet to the tokens, then cutting out pictures and gluing them to cardboard also with a magnet. Easy to start a collect of common mobs that aren't really important enough to have a full model.
Hi
Hi
Hey :)
Your my favourite youtuber
I’m new to dnd so can I have some tips to make easy builds
@@RPArchiveOfficial your my favourite TH-camr
@@RPArchiveOfficial can