Models?

[ltmedic]

Hey everyone!

First off i would like to say that i'm not trying to sell anything or advertise anything as i don't have anything :p

Anyway, i was wondering what people do and use when playing D&D in person and not online. More specifically models,characters and scenery?
I don't know about anyone else but when playing D&D especially battles, just drawing the bounds on a mat doesn't quite make it as enjoyable as having actual terrain like what Warhammer 40k has!

Is there anything that puts people off models?
The one thing that gets me is when combat happens in buildings or caves, that there are models that you can get that are specific to the campaign but that's it and not flexible and a fairly one use, repetitive model having to plan around the model if making your own encounter/campaign.
Also some of the models are crazy expensive like £15 for 4 characters! But that's just me as i don't have much money to spend on models.

[N810]

I use Reaper for most of my character models.
they have a large selection of monsters as well.
https://www.reapermini.com/FigureFinder
and a excellent search app to actually find the mini you are looking for.

[JAL_1138]

If you mean terrain and maps, there's some available out there, but I' not familiar with it. Encounters can be breezed through, skipped altogether, and such. Preparing a detailed map with fancy drawings or 3D terrain is often simply more trouble than it's worth--why put together a castle if the players might not go into it? Unless you're doing a fairly linear adventure, you can't often say with certainty where the players will be going. They often have half-a-dozen options, or more. They might not stay on the same plane of existence, if they're high enough level. And even if you know they're going to visit, say, five different locations this session, you may not know the order. And you run into questions of space—you can't preassemble everything because one encounter map might take up the whole table, and the other four aren't much smaller, so it becomes impractical. For 2D maps, the same issues can apply. And there's costs associated with buying/making 3D terrain or printing out 2D maps. With And the other issue is that having the map already drawn out/built in detail can result in spoilers and metagaming--the party can see the whole thing, unless you go to a lot of hassle to cover the bits they haven't been to yet or wait to set it up 'till then (which takes additional time with 3D terrain). And there's transportation issues, if you have to haul it all to a game store or a friend's house, for example.

It's just MUCH quicker, more convenient, versatile, and especially cheap to use a grid mat and markers.

As for character and creature minis, between WotC/Wiz Kids, Reaper, and a slew of other sources, there's plenty of minis out there and a lot of DMs use them extensively. I'm fond of Pathfinder Pawns, for a decent middle ground of cheapness and production quality.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I would love to be able to have real terrain and minis, but seeing as I am neither rich nor an artist no possess a 3D printer... <shrug> I make do with a cheap dry-erase grid, loose change, and-- my personal favorite innovation-- a bunch of 1-inch bathroom tiles I got from a secondhand construction store. (They were dirt-cheap, they're big enough to pick up easily and heavy enough not to slide around, and I can write on one side with dry-erase marker and have my players design their own tokens on the other side with sharpie).

[lunaticfringe]

Dry erase is great. Lose change, if you play in a home with kids Lego Minifigs work wonders. We are mostly Theater of the mind so its really just for an idea of the battle field.

A couple of dirt cheap folding checker boards works for a quick grid. I think drive thru has cheap paper minis & terrain. Color them with a paint program (optional they come pre colored to), Print them out, fold them up, play.

[EccentricCircle]

I use Lego figures for characters and NPCs. They are nearly infinitely customisable, fully posable, and only slightly larger than typical D&D and Warhammer minis.

I don't use much 3D terrain for the reasons others have suggested, but also because it blocks line of sight. This is fine for wargaming where the players move freely around the table, but when you have eight players crammed around a kitchen table playing D&D it means that someone won't be able to see whats going on properly.

I like the Dungeon Tiles that Wizards made for 4th ed days. Lots of variety to customise map layouts, you can deploy them easily on the fly so long as they are sorted well. They made a few 3D pieces, but are mostly for floor plans.

[Griffith!]

I made a ship out of cardboard for a pirate campaign, but otherwise I keep things generally pretty abstract. I use grids sometimes, but I don't really like that style of play. I'm more narrativist than simulationist in my approach.

[Mendicant]

I make 1" tokens. I'll make a sheet of them, punch them out with a 1" punch, and then glue them to either steel washers or these little wooden alphabet tokens I picked up at a teacher supply store. For bigger monsters I use squares on cardboard, but I'm experimenting with better materials. Tokens are much, much cheaper and very easy to make, and let me use my library of downloaded art.

For battlemats, it depends on how much time I have. If I've got a lot of time, I'll use watercolors and color sticks to draw the mat. With less time, I have a massive pad of cheap paper that I use to roughly draw the encounter area, usually with sharpies. On the fly, it's wet erase on a gridded battlemat. Neither of the first two methods is going to give you quite the same feel as a model, but I kinda prefer them. They're less restrictive, and I think they hit the sweet spot of spurring a player's imagination without competing with it.

Edit: Good quality watercolor *crayons*. I am not a painter.

[Me1000]

Used that before and it worked wonders for me. So would recommend it any day

[Twizzly513]

I have a pretty nice homemade setup that I am proud of. It consists of:
A sheet of Plexiglas with a 1 inch grid drawn on in permanent marker
Butcher paper
A lot of 1x1x2 inch corks
Dry erase markers

I put the butcher paper under the Plexiglas for better visibility of the lines, other paper obviously will work just as well. I bought a bag of about a hundred of the 1x1x2 inch corks at a yard sale. I painted them different colors, and also painted two sets the same colored and marked them 1-10 for larger number groups. Then I just draw some walls and significant features with the markers. Lasting area of effects get drawn on as well. Just yesterday one character was reduced to a blood stain on the dungeon floor by a rolling boulder and I even scribbled some red in that spot in honor of his character. I also glued together corks to make larger tokens for monsters.

[CharonsHelper]

I'll jump in and say that I prefer a wet erase grid to dry erase. The dry erase gets messed up too easily during play.

Also - the cheapest place to get a wet erase mat is on www.bannersonthecheap.com. (at least I got one there) They actually have grids already in their database - and their banners with a grid are much cheaper (albeit not as high quality) as an official gaming mat.

Now - my grid is specifically a space station for a demo so I haven't used markers on it - but they're supposed to work well with wet erase markers. *shrug*

[2D8HP]

Always used "Theatre of the mind", sketches, or erasable "battlemats" (hex on one side, grid on the other).

Some model train-ish "trees", and "buildings" would be cool I imagine, but I've never used them myself.

[Mendicant]

I have a pretty nice homemade setup that I am proud of. It consists of:
A sheet of Plexiglas with a 1 inch grid drawn on in permanent marker
Butcher paper
A lot of 1x1x2 inch corks
Dry erase markers

I put the butcher paper under the Plexiglas for better visibility of the lines, other paper obviously will work just as well.

Yeah, I have a sheet of acetate I drew a grid on for the same purpose, but I've found that with good 1" tokens or markers I rarely if ever actually need the grid. Most distances can be eyeballed without sacrificing anything.