Alternatives to minis

[Guinea Anubis]

The group I game with is going to be lossing the minis we use for are games. SO I am trying to look in to a cheep alternative to minis and wanted to see if you all had any recommendations.

[Bayar]

Use some printed disks with pictures of monsters on them ? Use coins to depict creatures ? Use anything readily available like skittles, bottle caps... as minis ?

You could use your cat to represent the Tarrasque XD.

[Sploosh]

You could try Lego.

[Choco]

Lego works well! Though my group currently uses a map drawn on graph paper, which is then taped to some foam board, with different color/size push pins, thumb tacks, and map flags representing the combatants.

[Kurald Galain]

Use dice, and watch the hilarity as people pick up the d20 in order to make an attack roll against the hill giant it was supposed to represent on the table.

[ken-do-nim]

Once you see how fast it can be to use a whiteboard, you may never go back to minis. I'm at the point where I only break them out for special occasions.

Edit: To be more clear, you write the first letter of the character on the whiteboard to represent his position. Does work better when every character's name starts with a different one! Erase the letter when the character moves and redraw in the new position.

[Ormagoden]

There are TONS of little pictures you can resize to 1 inch x 1 inch and print out on the internet. That is really your best bet.

Mini resse's cups are perfect for goons like goblins or kobolds (killing blows get the candy!)

[Hazkali]

There are lots of places on the internet that sell counters, pawns, card-token stands and the like, I've bought from here (http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Accessories_and_Dice.html) before but there'll be others about. This place (http://www.litkoaero.com/) does some fancy stuff, but at the higher end of the price range.

Alternatively, scour eBay for cheap bargains on used Warhammer or other fantasy miniatures. If you don't mind minis in a range of states of unpaintedness, there's usually someone who's dabbled and is now offloading.

[dsmiles]

If you have a printer and some heavy cardstock, you could print your own cardstock "minis." I used to do this for the old Marvel Superheroes game.

[Bagelz]

a cheap chess set (have each character pick out a piece they like and use pawns for monsters)
dollar store - plastic army men

or spare dice, I have a set of blank d6 (i think i got from a teacher store) that i can draw on with markers.

[TheStillWind]

I use pennies and graph paper with grids the size of the pennies drawn in with sharpie. I have 20 sheets of the graph paper laminated or put in plastic sleeves. Then I use dry erase markers to draw battle maps on the grid and write Letters and numbers on the pennies, L for Leopold the rogue, G2 for goblin number 2, etc. 40 pages of map surface (front and back) is usually more than I need.

I tried the dry erase method but I like this better because I have limitless map space and rarely do I have too redraw things. Also I can simulate darkness and uncertainty by adding and removing pieces of the map as my players move.

[Person_Man]

A few bucks on a used copy of Heroscape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroscape) gets you a ton of different miniatures AND stackable terrain. I was able to pick up 2 used copies of the game off of ebay for $20. (Luckily, I think someone's mom was selling it. It was listed as "Board Games" and sold with several other used games. If she had listed it as miniatures or terrain, it would have sold for somewhat more). I highly suggest it.

[Zeta Kai]

Rich Burlew didn't care to use minis, so he drew stick figures in Illustrator & then printed them up. It seemed to have worked for him pretty well, & look where he ended up.

[Tyrmatt]

Rich Burlew didn't care to use minis, so he drew stick figures in Illustrator & then printed them up. It seemed to have worked for him pretty well, & look where he ended up.

Seconded. I use coins in a pinch and either popup sticks or flat tokens usually.

[Lycan 01]

I use notebook paper and pencils, and just draw out a map of whats going on.

Recently, though, I used a dry erase board somebody lent me. I'm starting a new DnD group next week. I think I'm gonna offer 1000 XP to whoever buys me a new dry erase board. :smallbiggrin: *isn't sure if he's actually joking or not*

Seriously, a dry erase board is amazing. Just sketch an outline of the room, and write in initials or little pictures to represent players and monsters. When people move, just redraw their initial in the spot relative to where they moved.


I personally don't like miniatures. I tried them for the star was RPG, and they dulled the experience. It makes the game feel more mechanical and messes up the suspension of disbelief... :smallannoyed:

[Duos Greanleef]

Mini resse's cups are perfect for goons like goblins or kobolds (killing blows get the candy!)

I'm in love with this idea. Easily the best replacement to actual minis. :smalltongue:

I however, am addicted to WotC Minis. I used to spend most of my free time at a comics/games store where I grew to trust the owner of the shop. I felt no problems at all giving him $15 to fuel my addiction and feed his children.

[LibraryOgre]

Hzurr (my DM) printed up a bunch of OotS avatars, customized some of them a little, then printed them. He then taped them to small plastic stands. We've bought colored paper clips to attach to the monsters for marks/bloodied/conditions, and hook them onto our own character sheets as reminders (a blue one means something you save to end; green means ends at someone's turn; red means bloodied).

It works very well.

[Vizzerdrix]

You could try Lego.

I second this. Also, a friend of mine made little paper and foam board "minis" that looked damn good in the OOtS art style.

also: Sploosh: what is that weapon your orc has?

[chiasaur11]

I agree with the Lego advocates.

It's LEGO. And all LEGO is awesome.

[Rhiannon87]

Legos! Especially if you happen to have a lot of them on hand. My group has minis, but my younger brother's group doesn't, and I actually kind of wish we were using legos... you can customize the appearance of the PCs, monsters and shrubbery are actually 3-D objects as opposed to random squiggles on the battle mat. ("What's that?" "A tree." "Looks like a blob." "Okay, here, now it says 'tree'." "That's supposed to say tree?" "ARGH.") There's a fair amount of animals that you can use to represent monsters, and worst case scenario, for a really big or really long creature, just build up a stack of Legos big enough to fill the required space.

[Ormagoden]

I completly forgot to mention stuff like This! (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?filters=0_0_2270_0_0)

Buy them once and print out as many as you want or draw your own!

[Gamerlord]

I never did myself, but the great one Rich Burlew himself printed out stick figures he made and held them up on those black plastic whatchamalcallits.

Source: Dugeon crawlin fools.

[ken-do-nim]

Anything is better than one of my initial D&D experiences... (yes it is story time).

We had the lead minis, which were great, but we didn't have a whiteboard. Instead, we had them on a chessboard. The DM had an upright chalkboard, and drew the room on the chalkboard, and made an X marks the spot for where the party was. We were then supposed to navigate our lead mini on the chessboard, mentally mapping the room information on the chalkboard onto the blank chessboard. One day we were in a room pockmarked with lava pits. A player took his mini and moved it a few spaces over on the chessboard. The DM grinned evilly and pointing to the chalkboard said, "Look, you moved right into one of the lava pits. Your character falls in and burns." He then proceeded to roll at least 20d4 damage. I've never seen so many d4s in my life.

[Draco Dracul]

Hire cosplayers, you get a larger scale at a lower cost.

[JeenLeen]

My group uses the pieces from the game RISK. Each player uses a soldier with a colour they like, enemies are one color, and neutral NPCs/allies/summons another color. Cavalry and Tanks represent bosses, spellcasters, or other different enemy types. Easy to have them move on graph paper or, later, a dry erase laminated battle grid.

We later moved to uses actual minis a player already owned, but the RISK pieces worked as a cheap option and still had some iconic meaning (colour = affliation; piece type = power).

As for where, I imagine online is cheaper than hobby shops for buying stuff.

[AslanCross]

There's someone who made paper cutout standees of OOTS-style characters. They can be taped or glued to penny bases so they can stand properly and not get blown away.

[Dimers]

I like LEGOs for heroes and important human-shaped NPCs, since I can give them appropriate equipment and clothing. Of course, I happen to own that stuff already ... wouldn't recommend buying it just for minifigs.

You might already be aware of the issue, but it doesn't hurt to say: if you get a lot of identical figurines for monster hordes, make sure you mark each one to be different from the others. Otherwise, bookkeeping can be a real pain. "And now this goblin moves here and--" "Hey, wait, I killed that one last round!" I use dice for hordes, turning a different face up for each monster. I also use dice for summoned creatures, marking how many rounds remain using the face of the die. For example, the red d6s are giant ants 1-6, and the blue d8 is the summoned creature, counting down from 7 and changing the face every round.

[Mr. Mud]

I use minis, usually, but when I don't I go with the whiteboard method mentioned above.

Also, TokenTool (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=tokentool) makes nice tokens, that are easily printable.

[SimperingToad]

Using extra dice works well. Get enough six-siders in enough colors, and it's easy to keep track of who hit what. Character A hits the red 3, character B hits the blue 2, etc.

[MCerberus]

Chess pieces can be your friend.

[Thajocoth]

We use Sorry, Clue, Monopoly and Pac-Man board game pieces. (Pac-Man is good for large & huge sizes)

[Ormur]

I use chess pieces from a handcrafted Russian set I got as a present once. The rooks look like they have wizard's hats so they represent casters, the BBEG and the most powerful melee PC's get the Queen or King pieces according to gender, bishops are clerics or second melee PC's and the knights represent rogues or other specialists. The mooks are of course pawns.

[Seatbelt]

When the minis dried up and went away, I've just started ripping up pieces of paper in about the right size square, writing the first letter of the kind of monster, and sub1/sub2/etc for each additional monster. Makes book keeping easier for me, and the players remember which monsters have been hurt because they know Joe attacked Zombie 1 last round.

[Draz74]

Also, TokenTool (http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=tokentool) makes nice tokens, that are easily printable.

Or, at that point, you can go all the way and just start using a virtual battlemap. :smallbiggrin:

(I'm a recent convert.)

[Xzeno]

OK, get multi-colored pencil-tip erasers. Draw faces on them with a gel pen. Write the name of the character on the base of the eraser. Do so for the entire party. This is the best system ever. My friends and I have hundreds of such erasers.

LEGO can also work, but they don't fit on the battle map well.

[Guinea Anubis]

I just wanted to say thanks for all the ideas guys, I printed out some paper markes from the old dungeon magazines I have around I think I am going to cut them out and mount them on 1" washers.