TheAlkaizer
Game Designer
I haven't seen this type of content here before, but I feel like this could be useful to someone else in a similar situation.
Many years ago when I was a poor student, an artsy friend of mine made me tokens with beer bottle caps, some paint and hot glue. They worked great and I used them for years. But lately I felt like they became the cheapest part of my toolkit for tabletops and I wanted to get new ones.
The Need
I knew that some people did miniatures, but they really seemed like a monetary sinkhole to me. I also knew that some people did pawns or printed pictures of monsters on some thick paper and would make their own pawns, but this only added more work for me. I like to spend most of my prep time on ideas and opportunities for my players and not as much on material things.
So, I wanted new tokens. They were simple, abstract, cheap and could be used for everything. One of my main concerns was that in the past two years I've dived out of D&D and started trying out different systems. I wanted token that were system-agnostic. They shouldn't feel fantasy, or sci-fi or anything of the sort. They had to be abstract and versatile.
I looked online to see if there maybe some cool ones could be bought but I found nothing really fitting what I wanted. They were often really explicit in what they represented; an axe for a barbarian, a bow for a ranger, etc. The problem is that it would become hard to use these tokens under other circumstances. What if there's an official Gunslinger class or something a bit different that comes out? I don't have a token for that. Most token packs that I found also didn't do the different sizes really well. I wanted to have token for medium, large, huge and gargantuan creatures.
It seemed like I would have to make my own.
The Thought Process
My first idea was to have some wood discs cutout and to simply use sharpies or color markets to draw over them. So the first thing I did was to scour the internet for someone that could do these discs, at the right dimensions and for a reasonable price. After a bit of investigation, I found WargameBaseWorld and ordered several of their MDF bases at the 25mm, 50mm, 70mm and 80mm sizes. The shipping took a little over a month as it shipped from asia.
I was very happy when I received them. However, I realized that they were quite thin and didn't have much weight to them. They would be hard to pick up off the gaming surface and would probably slide all over the place whenever someone would bump the table. I thought about buying some washers and rubber rings at a hardware store to give them some weight and grip, but I couldn't find some for all my sizes. I toyed with several other ideas over the course of several months.
Then, the game of Starfinder that I had been preparing for months was finally arriving and I still didn't have tokens. So I said, naughty word it, I'll just print some stuff, glue it on my disks and we'll call it quit. The act of starting to work on it, even though I had no intentions of going further than that, gave me the necessary motivations and creativity to actually finish my project.
My Solution
To make it short, here's what I ended up buying and doing.
The Result
I'm very happy with the result. The varnish and the resin make the color on the printed images really come up. The tokens have a good weight to them, they don't slide off the gaming surface but can be pushed around without friction because of the felt.
They're generic, so they can work in any setting or game. They don't require preparation before any session, I just pick up my tokens of the right size and put them on the board. The numbers ensure that my players know which enemy is which. The player tokens are also generic; it's an abstract patter and a color. After one session my players tend to remember what is each other player's color. I still have to trim some felt around them and fix a few little details, but that project is over for now.
They're not perfect. I did a few mistakes, but they're more than good enough for my needs. However, if I had to change a few things:
1) I would find a way to have my printed images pre-sliced somewhere instead of doing it with scissors. I'm not great at cutting things and I did chip some of the images.
2) I would print my images on thinner paper. Thicker seemed better but you can really see the thickness of it when you look at it closely.
3) I would probably use a different brush for my varnish as the one I used left brushstrokes. It's no big deal, but I would definitely try and correct this mistake if I had to redo all of it.
So a quick list of the materials I used would be:
It yielded 12 monster tokens of 25mm, 5 monster tokens of 50mm, 4 monster tokens of 70mm, 3 monster tokens of 80mm, 12 player tokens of 25mm. And I have probably still a third of the resin left and plenty of felt, fixative, etc.
I hope this helps or inspire someone!
Many years ago when I was a poor student, an artsy friend of mine made me tokens with beer bottle caps, some paint and hot glue. They worked great and I used them for years. But lately I felt like they became the cheapest part of my toolkit for tabletops and I wanted to get new ones.
The Need
I knew that some people did miniatures, but they really seemed like a monetary sinkhole to me. I also knew that some people did pawns or printed pictures of monsters on some thick paper and would make their own pawns, but this only added more work for me. I like to spend most of my prep time on ideas and opportunities for my players and not as much on material things.
So, I wanted new tokens. They were simple, abstract, cheap and could be used for everything. One of my main concerns was that in the past two years I've dived out of D&D and started trying out different systems. I wanted token that were system-agnostic. They shouldn't feel fantasy, or sci-fi or anything of the sort. They had to be abstract and versatile.
I looked online to see if there maybe some cool ones could be bought but I found nothing really fitting what I wanted. They were often really explicit in what they represented; an axe for a barbarian, a bow for a ranger, etc. The problem is that it would become hard to use these tokens under other circumstances. What if there's an official Gunslinger class or something a bit different that comes out? I don't have a token for that. Most token packs that I found also didn't do the different sizes really well. I wanted to have token for medium, large, huge and gargantuan creatures.
It seemed like I would have to make my own.
The Thought Process
My first idea was to have some wood discs cutout and to simply use sharpies or color markets to draw over them. So the first thing I did was to scour the internet for someone that could do these discs, at the right dimensions and for a reasonable price. After a bit of investigation, I found WargameBaseWorld and ordered several of their MDF bases at the 25mm, 50mm, 70mm and 80mm sizes. The shipping took a little over a month as it shipped from asia.
I was very happy when I received them. However, I realized that they were quite thin and didn't have much weight to them. They would be hard to pick up off the gaming surface and would probably slide all over the place whenever someone would bump the table. I thought about buying some washers and rubber rings at a hardware store to give them some weight and grip, but I couldn't find some for all my sizes. I toyed with several other ideas over the course of several months.
Then, the game of Starfinder that I had been preparing for months was finally arriving and I still didn't have tokens. So I said, naughty word it, I'll just print some stuff, glue it on my disks and we'll call it quit. The act of starting to work on it, even though I had no intentions of going further than that, gave me the necessary motivations and creativity to actually finish my project.
My Solution
To make it short, here's what I ended up buying and doing.
- I bought some black felt, a mat for slicing and an x-acto knife at my local art store. I simply put my disc on the felt and sliced adequately sized rings of felt for all my disks. While I was there, I also bought some spray glue, some clear varnish/sealant and a really cool art supply called art resin.
- I used Photoshop to create some images that I would print to cover my tokens. I bought a pack of thoughts of abstract and colorful textures off an artist named Sirius-sdz on DeviantArt. With Photoshop, I created images of exactly 25mm, 50mm, 70mm and 80mm using Sirius' textures, I arranged my images on a 8.5x11 inches document and sent it off to a local printing shop. I used scissors to cut along the border of my images.
Note: If you do this, make sure your documents are in high DPI and use the CMYK color profile instead of a regular RGB one. - I used the varnish/sealant on both side of my printed images to make sure that my paper would not drink up either the spray fixative or the resin later on. I did two coats on top, one on the bottom.
- I used black acrylic in a pen (much more convenient) to paint the sides of my MDF disc for my monsters, and a silver one for my players. I wanted to hide the color of the MDF and make discerning between monsters and players at a lower angle possible.
- Then I assembled the felt under my MDF discs and the picture on top using the spray fixative.
- Finally, I followed the instructions that came with the resin and did a test run on a few tokens. It's a simple for very rigid process to make sure it cures and becomes glass-like. You have to mix the resin in the right proportions with the hardener and then pour it over your surface. I was really worried of it dropping off the sides and not covering my surface. I had never worked with that medium before. But to my surprise, it had the consistency of honey and using a simple wooden stick I was able to stretch it to the edge of my tokens and it would fill the gap and the surface tension of it would not allow it to drip off the sides. Twenty four hours later, I was very satisfied with the result of my test run so I decided to do the same with the rest of my tokens.
The Result
I'm very happy with the result. The varnish and the resin make the color on the printed images really come up. The tokens have a good weight to them, they don't slide off the gaming surface but can be pushed around without friction because of the felt.
They're generic, so they can work in any setting or game. They don't require preparation before any session, I just pick up my tokens of the right size and put them on the board. The numbers ensure that my players know which enemy is which. The player tokens are also generic; it's an abstract patter and a color. After one session my players tend to remember what is each other player's color. I still have to trim some felt around them and fix a few little details, but that project is over for now.
They're not perfect. I did a few mistakes, but they're more than good enough for my needs. However, if I had to change a few things:
1) I would find a way to have my printed images pre-sliced somewhere instead of doing it with scissors. I'm not great at cutting things and I did chip some of the images.
2) I would print my images on thinner paper. Thicker seemed better but you can really see the thickness of it when you look at it closely.
3) I would probably use a different brush for my varnish as the one I used left brushstrokes. It's no big deal, but I would definitely try and correct this mistake if I had to redo all of it.
So a quick list of the materials I used would be:
- Photoshop
- Printed paper (Staples)
- Precision Knife
- Black Acrylic Paint in a Pen
- Cutting Mat
- Spray Fixative
- Clear Varnish
- A brush
- The Art Resin Kit
- Sheets of black felt
- MDF discs ordered off the internet
It yielded 12 monster tokens of 25mm, 5 monster tokens of 50mm, 4 monster tokens of 70mm, 3 monster tokens of 80mm, 12 player tokens of 25mm. And I have probably still a third of the resin left and plenty of felt, fixative, etc.
I hope this helps or inspire someone!
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