Counters or minis?

[Jack Daniel]

I win the award!

After looking at that site, I can honestly say that I have the largest collection of unpainted minis ever. It's true - I've got two huge fishing-tackle boxes filled with nothing but plain pewter miniatures.

And the wierd part is, I hardly ever use them because they're so hard to transport. I've discovered that there's not a combat I can't run without one or two good sets of chess pieces and a battlemat. Minis? Counters? Don't matter.

 

[Amrynn Moonshadow]

anyone buy that starter 3e adventure set? it came with some pre-phb PC's, and tons of counters and a fold out dungeon . . .

personally, if i had the time, i'd love to use minis . . . but as it stands the best i can do is use counters and paper dungeons.

however, on the old eric noah boards there was the topic of using Lego sets . . . which may be cool. a 2x2 box (which a character is glued onto) represents a 5x5 foot box, and you go from there. (plus there is the whole castle sets, and dragons and ghosts and tons of weapons to choose from). seems like a fun alternative, but a tad pricey (all the doors for example). but would make DMing even more fun if we got to play with lego and call it "prep" work . . .

 

[omedon]

If you want free counters you can find some of skeletons, ghouls, goblins, and trolls up on the Skeleton Key Games website. You may recognize the picture of the ghoul from the EN World halloween adventure contest.

I am surprised nobody in the gaming community has made any counter for free download yet. I suspect if the counters they produced were any good a company would probably just snatch them up anyways. Kind of like Claudio and Fiery Dragon.

Maybe there could be a hosted site on EN World that would take submissions for counters. That way it wouldn't be a lot of work for one person and their could be many different versions of the same creatures. This would be nice because if you did not like one artists portrayal of a creature you could simply download another version. It would also be handy for NPC monsters or distinguishing the leaders of the monsters from the henchmen, or maybe you just want to have a band of five dwarves, or goblins that don't look identical.

EN World could possibly even take a collection of the best counters publish them and sell them through Natural 20 Press to gain some profit to support the site. I think the counters should be for free download but those who didn't want to print out their own or don't have internet access could purchase them in their local game store this way.

Please let me know what you think about this idea.

 

[Jarval]

My group uses a little bit of everything--some minis (most of them unpainted), some counters, and then dice/bits of paper/food/whatever else is lying around to do our battles.

Sounds like me. I have a great fondness for minis, but I tend not to use many of them. Counters have the great advantage of being light, and very easy to make!

 

[Jarval]

Good idea!

omedon, thats a great idea. I'd love to see some other peoples work.

 

[Eye Tyrant]

All the free counters Ive found are so big... I like the size of the ones that come with Dungeon... Guess I should just copy them likethe dang thing suggests...

 

[Foundry of Decay]

I personally use miniatures, but only because between the collection that I and my friend have, it numbers in the region of 5,000 miniatures.

We've actually started to toss some of the really old, really knobbly minis away.. We've reached that saturation point where any new miniatures of old miniatures automatically causes the old miniature to head to the graveyard.

I've also decided to leave miniatures at his house to keep from having to tow huge amounts of them back and forth..

One thing I like about the counters idea, though, is the fact they are pretty much infinite in the way of customization. If I wanted a specific looking villain, I'd simply draw him/her, scale 'em, plunk 'em on a foldy template and print them out.. Instant villain.

 

[Eye Tyrant]

I use minis too, have about 80 or so, about 2/3 of which I've painted... But they are mainly PC types... need more monsters!!

 

[Wicht]

I use both, and I've recently found that after painting a couple of dozen minis that I can paint most of a mini in an afternoon. When I started I never would have believed that.

Yeah I found that too - even if I just paint a mini in the few off minutes I have in the day between doing other things at my desk, I can have one done a day. And some go faster than that - my best record so far is 5 skeletal horsemen in 2 hours and they look good too

I do have to admit, if I don't have the mini I will use a counter, but as for carting minis - storing them is more of a problem as all my games tend to be played at my house.

 

[madriel]

My group uses a little bit of everything--some minis (most of them unpainted), some counters, and then dice/bits of paper/food/whatever else is lying around to do our battles.

I remember the time my DM used a dried apricot to represent a giant spider. After we defeated it someone picked it up and "decapitated" it with a mad cackle. You can imagine the jokes about killing and eating our foes.