Tricks to make your RPG experience better!

[Mircoles]

Well, for quick and easy tokens, there's always an ink jet printer and poker chips. Some scissors and glue and you've got 1 inch tokens as fast as you like.

I glue them to 1x1 inch foamboard, which I cut out with an exacto.

 

[Jib]

My old GM did this for our group, and I did something similar for mine.

He created tokens out of deer antler for each player, representing their primary PC. The token was a flat disk, with wood-burned etching. Everyone in the old group still has theirs in their dice bag.

What they're good for, is EVERYONE now has a marker for initiative or as a mini. This is good for the players who never got into minis. Even if you don't use a battlemat, who hasn't had a question about positioning, and using things on the table, layed out the scene?

For my group, I made them out of wood. Same concept, different material. They worked well as a x-mas present, which is what my DM had given them for.

That is a good idea and a great gift!

 

[Mixmaster]

Whatever you do at Kinko's make sure you print in B&W instead of color. It costs on average 5x the cost of printing it in B&W. And if it is a detailed map, the details carry through as greyscale.

I like Jib's idea of going to Kinko's to turn normal sized maps into big ones, since I've downloaded a ton of maps from Wizards' Map-a-Week archive and other sites. I wonder how much it costs.

It seems like it would take me longer to describe a room to a mapper, even a not-too-detailed one like this, than it would to draw it myself. With my big battlemat, I draw big sections of the dungeon at once while the players take a bathroom break. Breaks are important for pacing too, I think.

 

[Jib]

Yeah Kinkos ain't always cheap. A big ole' map on the Oce can be under $10 USD which is not too bad. Color is very costly!