Roleplay Life

My biggest complaint about Dungeons & Dragons is the dependence on maps and minis. With 4ed, it doesn’t look like that’s going away anytime soon. Painting miniatures is not one of my strong suits, so my only other option is start buying a whole lot of D&D Miniatures boosters , or make my own tokens.

There are plenty of articles out there on how to make your own game counters, but almost none on making d20 style tokens. Using a couple of ideas from various paper craft sites, and a couple of articles on making counters, I was able to come up with a fast and easy way to make tokens. Here’s how I did it …

Material List

There’s a couple of things you’ll need for this project. In total, they’re not that expensive, and you may already have some of the materials already.

• Magazine backing boards - You can pick these up at a comic book shop.
• 8 1/2″ X 11 Printer adhesive labels - These are available at any office supply store.
• Cutting mat - that or a surface you don’t mind scratching up.
• Cutting straight edge - a metal ruler may work fine. Avoid wood rulers, for obvious reasons.
• Sharp craft/modeling knife - the ubiquitous X-acto knife or box cutter will work fine.
• 1 inch hole punch - I got one made by Marvy. It went through a comic book backing board fine, but had some effort with a magazine backing board. A Martha Stewart 1 inch circle punch couldn’t even make it through the magazine board, so avoid this one. You can find these online or in the scrap book section of a crafts store.
• Counter template - Make your own, buy or find one online, or you can download a blank token template, or a lettered and numbered token template. Feel free to edit them and make your own, just give us some credit if you do (and please share).

Instructions

1. Download one the above templates, or use your favorite illustration software to create a template. Remember you’ll need some way to indicate facing, and to uniquely identify each counter. Don’t count on the artwork to determine facing or identity.
2. 
   Print the template out on the adhesive label. Place it on one of the magazine backing board. Be careful lining up the label.
3. 
   Line up each row, and cut them. Use the straight edge to cut a straight line. Alternately, if you have a paper cutter that will cut through the magazine board, that would be quicker. The lines don’t have to be straight, you just need to be able to feed the tokens into the punch.
4. 
   Line up the token image in hole of the punch. Try to get it as centered as possible. The Marvy hole punch comes with a “clear” cover over the hole, so you’ll want to take it off help line up the punch. Use the palm of your hand to squeeze it out, unless you got strong fingers.

Prior to trying magazine backing boards, I tried large illustration boards. Unfortunately they were too thick to punch with the hole punch. Regular scissors worked fine, but it was hard on the hand and I couldn’t make a good circle. There are a couple of circle cutting options, but the punch appealed to me.

Since one of the players in my D&D group has a large bag of plastic Dungeons &Dragons minis that he bought on eBay, I haven’t had a chance to play with these. Lately, he hasn’t been able to make it to all the games, so I should have a chance to try these out soon. As I make improvements (like a fast way to laminate them, so I can use wet erase markers), or new templates, I’ll post them here.

Tags: counters, Dungeons & Dragons, tokens

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 9:48 pm and is filed under diy gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.