The 6 Levels of Collecting Minis

0:20 Hello Adventurers, Welcome to another episode. I'm Jesus with us. I'm Joe McCall and I'm Jim Cracker. And today I'm going to teach you how to spend a lot of money, uh not literally as much as you want. Yeah, and you know, not even necessarily. I'm going to teach you how to do this for free also, But today we're going to talk about miniatures. I am in the portion of my d M career where I am starting to amass some miniatures. My collection right now is very, very small, and it's gonna change, very very serious. You don't get hooked on things very I don't. You don't. You don't like get a hobby and really focus any attention. I don't have any at all. No, I don't have one hundred fish games. You go like a handful instruments. Yea, I definitely recording equipment. I definitely know how to play all the managements in my house kind of. But do you guys even like playing with minis or are you more of a fear of the mind type player? And I mean by preference, not by necessity. Oh, by preference, my preference would be to play with miniatures with incredible environmental pieces terrain Yeah, thank you terrain pieces, and have all the time in the world to build those as well. But but out of necessity, it's not always the case. So the game that you were dming for me and an our group, it is it is full fear of the mind is for the most part, theater of

1:52 the mind. We have done some map style fog of war dungeon crawl maps where you you know you're right, we played online, and we were online we were using Albert Rodeo and stuff like that. But this is and I should specify even even now, that this is going to be mostly focused actually this is going to be entirely focused on in person play. We will talk about another point online map to miniatures and stuff like that, but this is all for ever playing in person. June, what's your experience with miniatures? I mean, I used to own a game store, which means that I had access to our full inventory of miniatures all the time. We very explicitly. One of the things that I used to do at my game store was whenever a new set of the Blind Box D and D minis came out, we would get a couple of extra cases and crack them and sell the singles.

2:40 So we always had a big case full of individual single miniatures, you know for a dollar, two dollars, you know whatever, ten bucks, twenty dollars if we got the whatever, you know, the rare tamat or something like that. So we always had those single miniatures in the case, and you know, as the manager of the store, as the owner of the store, pulling some of those out to put on the table during the D and D games that I ran, that was advertising, right, So if I had no choice but to fill that table full of miniatures, And I mean my inclination, if I can, is to have miniatures for everything, for like whatever you've got on the table, and to have those be as specific as you can get, but to keep the terrain and the environment you know, represented, but to keep that more theater of the mind.

3:31 I actually don't love playing with like the super fancy, high end terrain and stuff like that. I should agree on that, yet, I mean if only because it kind of gets in the way if there's like walls and stuff that you got to maneuver around and things like that. But but I like, especially for D and D, all versions of D and D like miniatures just as far as I'm going to start to enhance the gameplay, especially because yeah, like there's characters and abilities and things like that that kind of rely on specific tactical things happening, Like you need to know exactly where people are standing when a fireball goes off, and you can do that with theater of the mind. What I really love. And you know, and especially like I said, because I was in the store, nothing gets people's attention like they walk by a table and there's a bunch of little dudes out and you've got a big dragon and all that kind of stuff. That just very very eye catching. And there's a level of engagement that comes with miniatures that I really like when we're playing, when it's D and D that we're playing.

4:32 Yeah, you mentioned there's something the fireball and like no, a DM can keep track mentally of where everybody is on the battlefield. That's a lot of mental bandwidthrough using up to do that, especially once you get past like four players and like you know, like one or two will enemies if you draw it in my notebook, actually draw like yeah, like an idea and then I and it's always about them, be like, well, how far am I from him? I about fifty feet. I've run games with like six players and like more than six enemies, all fear of the mind and like I've got to have the whole thing like visualized in my head, like it just dropped acid and I can kind of see this like this it's and it took a lot, and I made a lot of mistakes and like, Okay, I catch fireball. I'm like, cool, that's gonna hit Oh god, that's gonna hit this kiny of this guy, this guy, the one he's with, the one he's with, one he's with, And and you miss people, you know. Like my thought is, if you're at the point where you are sketching the map into your notebook that you've got next to you, anyways, you may as well be doing it on the vinyl map that you've got in between everybody do that work anyway. That kind of brings us right into the list. So let's let's let's get into the list here.

5:41 So I got this. I've got this set up as the six levels of complexity when it comes to miniatures. So let's let's get into the list. So my first level here, level one, we're gonna call this improvised improvised miniatures. This is where you use literally whatever's whatever's within arm's reach, whatever you have on the table already. If you have to get up and go get this thing, or if this was already slated to be a miniature, you're already past level one. This is kind of where people start, whether they mean to or not, because there's always going to be a point where someone's like, wait, where is everything, and then the feet of the mind DMS is gonna be like, okay, let me just let me just get this out for you, whether they grab a piece of paper and draw it like you just said, or whether they just grabbing coins out of their pocket and just set things up on a table, whatever's on the table, like salt shakers exactly. Yeah, yeah, so these amples are high.

6:34 We have so many salt shakers. Get your rolls of pennies and stuff like that. Yeah. Yes, So the examples I have here are coins just reaching your pocket and you literally have miniatures there. The little penny is those your coballs. The quarter that's your big Dad dice is a really common one. You've got dice on the table already, and they differentiate themselves all the d sixes are cobalts, and there's what do you know, there's six coballs on the table. So here's one, two, three, four, five and six. They number themselves and stuff like that. So dice is a super common one also, and my favorite improvised miniature, depending on what time of year and depending what kind of place you're playing, candy nerds ropes. I wouldn't don't know about nerds rope, but like you know, if it's especially like just around Halloween, just grabbing you grab your kid's bol grab your bowl and it's your roll, and throw that on the throw that on the table, be like, hey, this is the big bat now and bonus, whoever kills them gets to eat them. They are self cleaning.

7:28 I love it. I played a lot of games where we're like more, well, I don't play games where real miniatures are on the table and nominees to turn real loosely, because if it's small, it's a miniature. If it's small and represents a character, it's a miniature. But proper miniatures about that where the the DM brought proper miniatures, and you know, a player casts a familiar spell that he didn't account for or there's like a displaced for best style like twin twinnying type of spell. I forget what it's called. We talked better to your list too, stuff like that. So like there could be things that the ADM didn't account for. Mirror image. Yeah, that's the one, thanks Jim. So you could have to grab an improvise manager regardless. Do you guys have a favorite improvise manager. I don't know if it, if it counts, it might be level two, which I know we're going to get to. But a friend of mine, John Hambone McGuire, I played Dungeons Dragons with him. He is probably one of the first people I played with. He has a dry erase board and just will show you in space like where things are using the dry erase board. Yeah, and it's it's probably a little more than like in the moment improvised.

8:37 I think he had that idea, but I think it was probably something that was like nearby at some point in his dming career. I'll call that. I'll put them in the same categories improvise because the intention was not to bring miniatures this day. That's that's kind of where I'm getting right. Yeah, so he grabbed a dry erase board and was just like, all right, you're here, this is where you know, it's four vampires and here's a burning house or whatever. It was, same thing with your with you with your sketching in the notebook, Same thing right bigger that squeaks more when you're My favorite, my favorite improvised minis are bits from other board games. So you grab your bag full of scrabble tiles, you know, and you know the knolls are like like a couple of g's. You just drop them down on the map because they're just about the right size of scrabble, you know.

9:26 Scrabble square is about you know, like like roughly that inch that a D and D square is. Use that, use the you know, the pawns from your sorry game. You use some you know, right sized chess men, stuff like that. If you've got other games kicking around the house, there's lots of things that you can grab from those to use. Just for the absolute love of God, make sure they go back in the right box or I will have an aneurism, or do yourself a favor. Throw away a monopoly, but keep the boot in the car. Yeah, I don't know when the updated ones are that's the best use mooly. Today we're finding a giant top hat monster. Yes, yeah, a thimble barbarian there. You know, he a thimple. He's just a thimple little guy.

10:09 Level two's right, So now you've you've used your improvised managers, you start to realize that this is helping you and you know, maybe maybe adding a little pizazz to your game that wasn't there before, and it's making the collective imagination of the players at the table a little more in sync. So now we start just kind of doing stuff. Beforehand, it's still kind of improvised, but now they're with the intention of becoming a miniature. So Level two, I'm gonna call it diy is to do it yourself here and the examples I've given. The title I gave everything is also improvise. We call whatever's handy di iy is at least there's a name on it. The examples I gave was torn up paper or a torn up index card that you're all keeping your DM bag now, or the other wooden coins possibly with a label printer.

10:54 I just picked them up off the floor because fall out of my back. So this is I know you can't see on the podcast, but I'm gonna show Joe and Jim. These were wooden coins that I bought on Amazon for like I don't know, two bucks, three bucks. There are one inch circles made out of like a balsa wood or like a hard cardboard. As you're very hard cardboard. I can't end this without breaking it. And they come in a bag of like one hundred two hundred, five hundred. It's crafting stuff. And then I found a printing like a like a printing label with like like like an adhesive kiss cut type of label that's printer friendly. And I used some stuff to make the art of the player, of the of the character, and if a character has a name, I put that on the back. And now we have little two dimensional coins that represent the characters. And it cost me. I would say that the time investment was way more than the monetary investment. Something I just thought of looking at that too. If you have like a button maker, you just not put the the I you know, you can make really interesting buttons, I guess sure, but if you have a button maker, that would kind of do essentially that. Yeah, the one inch button, the one inch button is a staple of the punk scene. So like a DIY button maker, you can get those cheap and you can be punk rock yeah, and have your character on you and then you you wear your character on your battle vest and you show here's my many, that's me. That's I'm gonna make a gobo one right now. Variant of that is that there are like readily available like

12:26 one inch what are essentially poker chips. I'm looking at something on Amazon right now that they call one inch opake plastic learning chunters, mini poker chip game tokens with storage box. So this is like one hundred one inch tokens with a little rim around the outside. Eight bucks. It comes in a it comes got a little box you can storm all in. That is absolutely the kind of thing, you know, yeah, you blow off, you know, a thing of tokens where you've got the you know, you've got it alive on one side and with little x's over the eyes on the other something like that. When you flip it over and you can you can put together a whole lot of improvised token minis or really cheap just adding on to that idea, Jim put a different character on the other side. Yeah, can do that, you know, you know cobalts on on one side and goblins on the right. Yeah, you have the throw you have like the you know you have the the innocent innkeeper on one side and where'll he turns into on the other something like that. Yeah, yeah, just blow the player's minds when you flip it over on and then I on these coins too, like the same thing because with the with this kind of material, they're easy to write on. So the sharpie that you should be keeping your D M bag, I just you know, really quickly. I had a couple of them that just said, n PC. Why did you look right at me when you said that? Your eyes narrowed because they're sitting across the table from me, Joe, because I'm because I do, I will say, I'll admit that Jim's two states away. I can't look him in the eye.

13:54 Yeah that I asked Jason for a pen or a sharpie every time I come to his house for anything. I didn't ask him for a ben yet today. But well it's it's his house. He knows where everything is that seems entirely right on D and D and I leave a pile of pens out, so because I am a gracious host, you are, but on these there they're super easy to write, honest, you take a sharpie and they just trying to jot whatever they need to be. So all the wooden coins that I have left to have these labels on them, and I kind of covered up what they with what was written on them. But the last time I used them, some of them just sit in PC didn't matter who they are, because that could change as needed. That same token went from being the quest giver to the bar maid to this soldier they were talking to that that I just had to pull out of the thin air. Some of them would just say, you know, like a big s for shadow that they were fighting against. Well one just had a skull and crossbones, and that was going to be that the big bad as it needed to be, because there was a small fight and then a big fight. So whoever there was the the the big target of that one got this calling crossbones. And I also had to pull out some blank ones because three people with two players and one big bad, we're all casting spiritual weapon and I had to startment of spiritual weapons on the table, so which brings us plat hammers, and stuffy.

15:07 Sometimes you got to go back to tier one and improvise a minis, even with the best planning. So now I have pre planned two dimensional spiritual weapons of three different weapons, just so we can keep track of them. And then the last example, Jim, you mentioned this in another episode, I can't remember which one, but even using like paper and index cards, folding them in half into a little triangle tents, putting a coin at the bottom of them, drawing a little picture of your guy. Yeah, what folks would call paper craft. That's also a thing where if you have a color printer that you can shoot a little you know, kind of slightly stiff cheet a card stock three you know, you can have them so that they fold over and then it's got a little thing on the bottom and you can wait it with a penny or something like that, or one of those pok chips that we talked about. And then you get something that's a little more three dimensionally. You can have something that stands, you know whatever, an inch and a half tall. In addition to being you know, they're taking up the square on the map that's supposed to ye. So I'm gonna call it like the high end of tier two. So that's so those are the those are di y minies little craft here. Yeah, level three, So now we are We're done with Fear of the Mind. We're done with just grabbing whatever, and we want our minis to look like we wanted to look like someone else made them better than we can. I love the DIY stuff, but like they look like DIY and you want to want it to look like you're playing a higher tier game. You want your table to look more official.

16:34 I guess that brings us into level three. This is the bulk lot with a subtitle. If you have a theme, go for it. There's a couple different manufacturers and a couple different ways of bundling them together. Wh you mentioned the official D and D Miniatures game and using like the commons and on commons that the competitive players will throw away or self for super cheap. Yeah, you can find bundles of those on eBay for you know, less than a buck of figure. You know, if what you is like a bunch of like random orcs and knoles and you know, civilians and like that one fighter that shows up in every single box, where good to go with those? So this this tier is best for like building your collection and getting the little guys out of the way, so like yeah, little orcs, little goblins. So stuff like the official D and D miniatures game bulk lots are great to start. Amazon has some other manufacturers that sell in like giants just like you know, two pounds bags of stuff and you and they usually have a theme to them, so make sure you're make sure you're either searching for one that fits your theme. I almost bought one, but it was like seventy five percent steampunk stuff, and I just don't run steampunk games.

17:37 But the caveat there sign that you should. And that's that's listen, I hadn't I had an ore in there. Okay, that's where the ore is going. You either find something that's within the theme you want to run, or get inspired and run something that is outside your comfort zone, which is also just like a cool thing you should be doing all the time. Anyway. I've never been comfortable ever, so everything is that in my comfort zone. So that's Amazon as miniatures games and other systems for look for things that are made for not necessarily D and D Warhammer Warhammer definitely, that's a tier two version of doing that thing. That I talked about before, which is rating your other games for mini exactly. Yeah, So if you have a copy of gloom Haven or Dissent or you know, any of those games that use the you know whatever, if you you shelled out for a copy of the Dark Souls board game, there's nothing that says you can't yank those minis out, you know, making sure that you keep careful track of them so they can be returned to the proper boxes so that Jason doesn't get upset, Thank you, Jim. But you know, you can drop them down on the table for that game or even for the campaign, and just as long as you return them back to where they go, there's no reason that they can't do double duty when you've already bought them. And there's there's a couple of games on the top of my head and like and they're title The titles of these games are all kind of the same thing. They all boiled down to a bunch of zombies. And some of them even sell bulk boxes of spare zombie miniatures made for their game because they come as swarms and if you hit higher levels, side zomb besides on a zombie mall. Yeah, there's there's a ton of if you want to play a Zombies game, it's so

19:07 easy. Became managers for that. Yeah. Oh, and I guess the other thing that I should mention is the I mean, I think you did kind of touch on it, but the now out of print but still pretty available D and D board games that they made are pretty great for that because you know, if you don't mind spending fifty sixty bucks in one shot, you get a game that has like forty plus minis in it and a full set of dungeon tiles as well, and you know, you get something like Wrath of a chartle On or you know, the Cursive strad game that they did, you get a strawed mini in there. They're all unpainted, but that's a great source for that kind of stuff too, because you get the you know, something to use as a map in addition to all of those bulk minis. Yeah, totally. So that's Tier three. That was the bulk loot, and again those are those are great for building your Your Horde of Small Guys doesn't do a whole lot for your PCs though, so just keep that in mind that you may have to combine us with other steps, but before amassing your collection, that's gonna be Tier three. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions the Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions to talk about

20:38 them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com or the voicema at helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now let's get back to the show here. Four. Now we're actually spending a little bit of money here. This is the purchased individual minis. There's a couple of companies that are making miniatures of all different quality levels and you get exactly what you pay for. Basically, if you want something nicer, you spend a little bit more. If you don't need it to be that nice, then you just need a couple of like PCs. Then you can go for cheaper stuff. But there's pretty much a price range for really whatever you want to do. The major companies for this and Jim, I know you'll have some more to add to this, but whiz Kids and Reaper are the major ones that I found. They can come pre painted or unpainted. If you want to get into painting, you know, there'd be a good up betweeny to get into painting. I don't mind an unfinished look. I think a gray I think a gray miniature on the table looks kind of cool.

21:41 But I know I am vastly in the minority on that, maybe not at this table but in the grand DM ecosphere. I know I'm outvoted on this one, but I think this is also This is also one of the places where we mentioned that like the difference between this tier and some of the and like the couple of next couple of tiers that we're going to be getting into, probably that we're talking almost exclusively plastic miniatures and high end tokens. I was going to do a shout out to the manufacturer that I think when I think of that kind of stuff is gil Force nine. They're the folks that they're the folks that do the what they call the D and D collector's series where you know, if you want to have an incredibly intricately detailed you know, the storm Giant that you put together yourself and then paint that, you pay thirty dollars for a single figure. They've got you covered, you know, and they're gorgeous if you you know, if you're the kind of person that has that, you know, that wants to put that time and effort into it. They're resin figures, and so they've got the detail, the kind of extra detail that you get out of a resin figure, and they look amazing. But yeah, you're then you're starting to get into you know, fifteen dollars for a single player character stuff like that. Does Gale Force Yes, yeah, yeah, well I should I issue and the Gale Force nine ones are are You're pretty readily available in most game stores. That's not a thing you have to go online for. You can usually go and you know, a well stocked game store will have those kind of you know,

23:15 over the top of the regular D and D minis, you know, for maybe next to the Warhammer stuff, where the other expensive you know miniatures are are a lurking. So this is like going and seeking out a specific miniature. This is usually done for your PCs or your big bets and finding something that either you know already looks pretty close or maybe like budging a couple of physical details that you had in mind to match the miniature that already exists. You can learn how to paint. You can pay someone to paint it for you. That is a that is absolutely a service that people offer. And this is how you get your your high quality, nice look in minis that stand out over the bulk ones that you just bought back into your three. This is the purchased singles Level five. Now we're getting obsessive. This is uh. This is now you have probably some sort of game room in your house or an area of your house that like people who don't game aren't allowed to go touch. You know, prying eyes are staying away from this stuff.

24:11 You've got some you've got some space that you want to dedicate to this. This is now we have a tier two what was called DY you want actual d Y. Tier five is three D printed. This is where Joe and I really kind of like really started getting into this game a lot, like literally would be my friends for for years and years. But now once you got your three D printer, and we started thinking about D and D stuff. We got a lot closer real quick, and then and then I want my my three D printer sometime later. There's a couple of things to keep in mind with three D printing, and this is like, you know, are you getting this three D printer for miniatures or are you getting it for making little knickknacks and cool little projects and miniatures might also be something that you do. So this is not a three D printing show, So I'll just give the other the very brief, you know, a view of what to get if you're doing other projects, or if you're making terrain, or if you're making you know, things that are not D and D. If you're making you know, little attachments for your door hinge. I med all kinds of stuff with my Then you want that that filament printer. You can get all different kinds of filament. That's the one with the with the nozzle.

25:15 And if you're making miniatures and nothing else, you absolutely want resin. And you want to make sure that you have a room that you can ventilate, you know, consult a three D printing expert on how to ventilate your room properly. But the difference between buyer beware, resin stinks like, it smells very strong. It is dangerous. Yeah, it'sd it is odorous, like it's gonna smell like resin. But yeah, you need a very well ventilated you're working with it, you should be using a respirator. Yeah, we're doing it properly, which is the hardest part about resin is doing it with proper ventilation. But that's for that's for the three D printing shows to talk about, not us. I have. I have miniatures that I printed with my filament printer, and I have miniatures that were printed by a friend's a resin printer. And the difference is absolutely night and day. It's not even close. So you have the means to do so go resin if you can. And I'll just just add to that advertisement for your local library.

26:18 Some local libraries. I know that our local library has three D printers and you can sign up to use them. I think you may have to take a class on it first and sign up. It's a free class, but it sounds like fun free. I don't know that they've stepped up their game, at least at our local library to resin printers. You're a part time librarian, how was that a thing at yours? Oh my gosh, no, no that was not like that's that's not a little that that was a little too industrial for a library that I work. So your results may yeah right, but definitely checked because it could be available to you. And then I'm sure high schools. I know some teachers that have had them in their classrooms. And so high school's your high school, your college. Have a friend the teachers ever a friend the teachers that the technology class in her school, and that's something that they're If there's a lab, then usually there's hours that sign up use it. Sure, So that's where to get the printer from. And then where do you get the files to print? The big, big, big one is thinger Verse. That's where you can get all kinds of stuff. There was some like PC and like adventure miniature stuff on finger Verse. Last time I checked is not a lot of them are great, but they're free and they're out there. And what I did find super useful thinger Verse was finding like beasts, wolves, bears, things like that.

27:37 I found a bunch of those on thinger Verse in a you know, like with the base on it and everything like made to be D and D and you may have to resize some things, which kind of got me thinking, Okay, well if I recized this one down to an inch, where if I did another one or two that are at two inches, and now I have a giant bear. There is a one shot that around where a bear gets hit with in large so be kind of cool. Alert if you play is yeah, one of the dozens that I run, so he's got to go there. Kind of cool, just like swap out the minature and putting a bigger one. And then there's some creators out there that this is what they do. They sit around and design three D files with the intention to either sell the file or to They're the one that I followed as a subscription. He doesn't through Patreon, So I'm going to give a big shout out to and I don't know if he has real name, but it's MZ forty two fifty and I follow his Patreon And all the PC minis that I brought to that last game that we had Joe were from his STLs. Yes, they look awesome, and he's got them all sorted out on a giant Mega dot NZ file and there's he comes up with new ones daily. There's thousands and thousands of the monsters and PCs and stuff all from this guy.

28:48 So we go check out MT forty two to fifty if you have the means to three D print, so that is that is three D printed. That is a tier five. So I said, there's six tiers, like, how much more could you possibly put into this? Then three D printing them yourself? Well, Tier six is the full custom. This is you design it, you go from the ground up, make it however you want, and then you three D printed yourself. You can make this as complicated and specific as you want. If you have a vision for your PC or your big bad this is where you can go spend hours and dollars and that kind of thing. So there's three websites that I want to shout out here. I'm sure there's more that are up and coming, but these are the three big ones. Of course, there's hero Forge. I wish you to know hero Forge by now, and if you don't, it is a fully customed three D rendering that you don't have to like have a technology degree, and you just tell it what you want your thing to look. Like, you pick from the options and it puts it all together for you. A side note, this is how I make my character portraits. I do it up fully in hero Forge and then I take a little screenshot and then that's why I'm like my character portraits. Hero Forge has the most options by far, and it's not even close. They come up with new stuff every single month.

30:02 On their newsletter, they always tell you what they just added. It's a lot of like it's not only just fantasy stuff. There's a lot of steampunk in there. There's a lot of like splash buckling stuff in there, and they always are really good about like inclusion type stuff too. There's a lot of like prosthetics and wheelchairs and things along those lines that if you have a specific direction your character needs to be going in, or if you want your character to look like you and you fit one of these categories, there is stuff in hero Ford for you. Once you're done with creating the character. It's only eight dollars to then download the three D file. So if you're gonna go print it yourself or have your local library to do it for you, it's eight bucks and just sum of your time, and it's fun that's if you're gonna print it yourself, you can have them print it for you. And this is where the dollars come in. You can do something as cheap as a two dimensional acrylic standy, which I've made. I've made one of that looks like myself and that's my stand in Big Bad for he just looks however he needs to. That was only like twelve fifteen dollars, is pretty cheap. I have made full color plastic three D prints if you were a listener of Commergence and Dragons, one of our original co hosts, Jack, I made one that looked like him for Christmas, and it was a little little inch and a half tall little Jack Dwarf looked awesome full color and those were like fifty bucks. You can do them in a gold print and I think they're actually gold cast. I don't know exactly what material they're using it, but they're like but they're yeah, I think they're metallic too.

31:29 And it was like one hundred bucks. Those are kind of cool. Where like I consider like if we hit like level twenty and we end the campaign, like if we like really like complete the story and I want to immortalize this character it's one hundred bucks, so remember years of storytelling. I think it's kind of cool. And I think there's other ones too. I think there's like there's unpainted ones you can get for like twenty thirty bucks, and like if you get them bigger with bounts and stuff, other full custom websites, so very similar hero Forge, there's titan Craft, and there's Eldritch Foundry. They all kind of operate the same way. Titan Craft. The way I like that they do it is you purchase the assets and then you have infinite access to that asset. So you can just buy up their whole library for under three hundred dollars and then just print as much as you want.

32:14 So if you have the printer, you don't have to pay per miniature. You're paying per asset, and then you get to reuse. Like by asset, I mean like this particular hat you and like you can build one miniature, buy the assets that you just use for like a couple of dollars. Then you have infinite access like to that hat and that armor and that sword and that kind of stuff, and if you want to reuse them, you already have them, or you can buy them in asset packs, and I believe there's like the if you get all of the bulk packs all at once, it ends up being like three hundred bucks. But then to be able to three D print as many as you want, So this could be kind of cool. If you're running a lot of small games and you want the players to make their own PCs every time, you can tell them to go to titan Craft, make up their mini there, and then you can print it for them. The Eldrich Foundry operates so a little closer to hero Forge. I use the options that are within there, and then you pay per miniature. They don't quite have the same options as hero Forage, but I believe they may be cheaper. I have much less experience with Eldridgeoundy than I do the other ones. But hero Forge if you want all the options, all the bells and whistles, and you want to order a fully done miniature for you, Titan Craft if you want to make lots and lots of things all the time and would rather a larger upfront cost than a per print cost, if you want to go all in on it. That is Tier six, that is the full custom miniatures. You thought we were done I've got a bonus list here, so that is how you can obtain and make your miniatures. But what do you do after you have them? So I'm gonna do just just a real quick five levels of map grids. So you've

33:47 got your six levels of miniatures, and there's five levels of map grids as well. And Jim is like emphatically nodding his head. This is one of his favorites. So my tier one, this is your entry level. Ready for this one? None don't need one. You can absolutely play without one. The tabletop the tabletop itself, and there's actually like a small I'm gonna call it a movement, but there's like the idea of using non gridded terrain is kind of going around on like Instagram and TikTok right now, where like rather than counting everything by grids and by squares, people are counting by just raw movement. And so you would have like like a little string with knots every inch or so to show you how you know what your character's movement is.

34:28 Thirty feet cool, you get six, You get six knots, and you get to move that string however you want, which actually, if you play Balder's gate Ballers K three. That's kind of how movement works in that game. So there is a push going around now for either for non gridded maps or you might as well just not have a map at all, just have knies on the table and you're playing on this void that has my coffee on it. And it's cool. It just play with you commitiatures. It's fun and it's free. It doesn't cost you anything to not buy anything. Level two This is the DIY map grade. These are super easy. You just make it yourself. You can take a blank sheet of paper and just drow up a quick map on there. So you gotta ripped up pieces of paper on a larger piece of paper. Why not? Yeah? Why?

35:17 I mean, what do you think miniatures are, Joe? Okay, graph paper even though graph paper is is a lot of little squares. You might be able to find one that's one inch by one inch, or even if it's tapped into by half inch, okay, cool, every four is a five foot square and you get the bonus of like, okay, maybe you only want to move half and that kind of closes the gap between like no, if if two miniatures right nice to each other, it says they're five feet apart. It's like, no, it doesn't feel like we're five feet apart. It feels like it feels like we're right on top of each other. So graph paper can kind of get you a little more granular. And then the one that I mentioned in earlier episode. You can go to the dollar store, get yourself some cheap o wrapping paper and flip that over. And a lot of them have one inch grads on the back of the wrapping paper. It is not sturdy at all. It will rip, but cost you like a buck. And if you need a big bad you could Santa Claus or whatever. Yeah, or if you need to cast a banish, you can just wrap the miniature up and mail it somewhere there. Yeah.

36:14 But like what's your paper, like a roll of butcher paper or something like that. That is another thing that that's great for because then you just kind of roll it out, draw on it what you need, and then just you know, tear it off. Get some more. You can get those sessions. You can get those in your local your doctor's office. Go to throw out the dryer aceport again. Level three. This is what most people have. Most people use. You'll see these all over the place. This is the Chessicks matt, and there's other brands that make them too, but Chessix makes the most popular one. They are this this cool kind of rubbery ish material that you can roll up. It is final Final battle mats. Yeah or what We're usually two sided reversible, right, yeah, yeah, I could not think of the word vinyl. It's like a record. Yeah, yeah, that's a thousand records in this house. But yeah, yeah, they'll they'll be either a blank or have like a two diferent types of terrain on either side, like one looks sandy, one looks like an ocean, one looks like a forest. You can get these either like by itself and they're not too much in bucks twenty bucks, or you can get the set of them for thirty forty to fifty and now come with like three battle masks that are each reverse posts. You really get six out of it.

37:15 And a lot of the backpacks that I see made for DMS will have like a little buckle on the side made for the rolled up matt. Yeah. Some of them are just parchment color too, so you can just draw on the exactly their dry erase their X on one side square on the other one inch by one end. So let me just some of them are dry erase. The ones that are laminated are dry erase. Right, if it's a vinyl matt, it's wet, it's wet e race. So you do need to get a thing of wet erase markers. And if you draw on it with a dry erase marker, it's like drawing on it with a sharpie and it will not come up. So you just want to make sure you creak care off with your vinyl mats, that you don't draw on it with your dry race markers. Play safe kids, Yes. Yeah. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that's kind of like something that's sort of tier two that kind of goes into tier three is that you go to like your office supply store, your staples or something like that, you can get presentation pads which are the like you know, like maybe two feet wide, you know, two and a half three feet tall, like dils, like like you make big flip charts with. But yeah, like those easel pads and they do make those with one inch grids. Oh wow. So yeah, so that's I mean, you're going to be paying you know, like like like a bucket page or something like that for one of those. So it's a little more than just doing it with you know, like like a big pad full of regular draft paper. But if you can find the right kind, you can even get them that has the little like post it sticky stuff across the top, so you can take that and you can slap it up

38:49 on your wall and then draw on it and stuff like that. Was kind of a cool thing, and you can do that. But we used to use those in the store because you just kind of throw it down on the table, you draw on it as you need it. You can put some tiles and stuff down on it. Sorry, tiles, I'm I'm crossing over into another into another tier there, but you can, but you can use it for that as well. I actually don't have tiles on my list. That's I'm gonna put. I'm gonna put tiles on the same tier as this next one. So and and I agree I agree that this that these are on the same tier. So tier four, I'm going to rename this from map books into pre made maps. So so the tiles that you mentioned with like you know, like like building yourself room by room, dungeon type of stuff. There's a few brands that make those. The D and D ones are great. There's three official D and D sets. I don't that kind of go in and out of print, but there's a dungeon set, a wilderness set, and a town set basically, and if you can find those somewhere, if you get the three of those, they're great. And like I've been, I've used them for years and I swear by those. That's basically all I own, yeah, is a roll of vinal map and those three tile sets, and you do pretty much everything you want. And the tiles make is scalable too. Mm hmm. You only one room in this tavern, you got one tile? You want to build the whole town square, make as big as you want. What I had in mind was that these books pre made maps, particularly the ones made by Lake. I have all of their large books. They have a lot of smaller books that I don't have, but we use these, Joe, you and I use these at the the Brewery game that we ran. But these are their full color, they're already done their dry erase, and they look awesome, and they

40:22 are varied enough to where like I can kind of get something that's close enough to what I had in mind for that particular room, or in some cases it gave me inspiration on what a room should look like. There was one of them where I had our final showdown and I didn't envision it to be two tiered, and they have like stairs going up to a balcony, and it kind of changed. It kind of changed how the fight went, and it was really it's really cool. Actually, So that's the the pre made maps that's Tier four and Tier five. If you're already going nuts with building your own miniatures and already going nuts and everything else, you can do what I have and get the digital map. This is is a repurposed flat screen TV turned into a tabletop map set. And from here there's like sub tiers of like I can't even do a tier list on the digital maps themselves, because you can just you know, find find a PDF and just you put that up on the screen and that that's what that's all I do. That's all I really have, the the the artistic know how. And then there's there's like these animated ones that have like weather and lighting effects of fog of war, and like some of them work with touch screens. That wherever there's a miniature or not does the flog of war. They get insane and I am not good enough to work with those. But there's all kinds of Instagram and TikTok accounts you can follow for stuff like that. I do make some of my own maps in there's a program called the Dungeon Alchemy that you can make your maps pretty quickly and they look awesome, and there's like a like a semi three D effect, and there's like a really like subtle motion,

41:54 like the trees will kind of move a little bit in the wind. And I wish there was more animation than what there is. But like the fire, you know, looks like fire and there's little smoke coming from it, and it's just like that, just that one little extra step of immersion. So I do. I do use that one. And I'll use like you know, two dimensional PDFs and just throw them up on the board. So that's your and so to make one, it's you can make it yourself. Their plans all over the place. You can do it for fairly cheap if you're if you're a woodworker and just get someone gets some two buys and make some make a frame for a TV and a find a way to mount it inside there. I bought mine. I had an extra TV line around after we moved. We wanted one less TV in the house, so I dug the I dug this extra thirty two inch TV out of a closet and then bought a frame that was already made. It cost me like three hundred bucks for the frame and the mounted of this TV I already owned, and just keep an extra HTMI cable in my DM bag. But the next set, the next step from there is to get like a cheap like Apple TV or some sort of casting device and have that already pre mounted inside there so I could throw wirelessly. Yeah, but someone else had the idea of using like in an extra monitor with like a splitter so I can see without having to lean over the table what's on the board. And there's some cool stuff there.

43:07 But that's that's that's your level five. You want to go all in map, I'm gonna I'm actually going to add a sixth level for I hope you do. Yeah. The sixth level would be to buy you can buy some really nice expensive terrain pieces. Yeah, behigh and resin terrain is ye that are are already done. There's modular systems. Maybe I don't know, maybe Level five kind of splits into two different directions where you go full digital and full tactile full analog. Yeah, exactly, full analog. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen really cool videos on like so I mentioned that that like animation, that animation, but like the map software that with full animation and like weather and stuff. There's dms that are combining that with terrain on the digital board. Oh sure, yeah, so now it is not on interactive it's three D yeah. Yeah. And then I actually saw a really cool example of I guess a little bit deep but advanced, was using XPS insulation and like carving it out. Oh yeah yeah yeah, I mean maybe really basically making like a large diorama for your players to play on. Yeah.

44:16 And if you need help on how to work stuff like that, especially with like the heat knife that you need to cut through that, go to your local gaming store on Warhammer Night, yeah, because all those Warhammers guys all know how to make that stuff. At that point, you're almost playing at Warhammer. Yeah. I see. That's the kind of like stuff that I'd love if I had the time. I would love to do that. Listen, I love reading rules. I don't have the patience for Warhammer. No, no, no, no, not for Warhammer. I'd love to make ter rain. Yeah, yeah, thought I thought it make me take a loan out or something because Warhammer's expensive. Yeah, but it's also worth noting going back to something you said before, Jason that I mean, no kidding, not joking. Warhammer night is when you go to the store to find people who are happy to take ten bucks from you to do a custom paint job at one of your minis because they're spending all their time painting all of those space marines or orcs or whatever, and just like throwing a quick wash and then a little bit of dry brushing onto your fighter to make them look cool. They can do that in like fifteen minutes in a way that would sort of take me like two hours, and that would still come out looking crabby. So that's a great place to find that resource and also to maybe get someone to get someone interested in D and D who you already know is into MC gamings. Yeah, so that's my little bonus list on. How about different tiers of maps to go along with your different tiers of miniatures?

45:42 And they don't fantastic. Those those tiers don't have to match each other. You can absolutely have expensive miniatures on No Planet and vice versa. You guys, it the way, That's the way I prefer to do it. If I got money to spend, if I had fifty bucks to spend, I would never spend it on a resid terrain set. You know, I would buy one of the like limited dragons that they come out with once a year or something like that. You know, I'd always much rather have you know, cool figures and then we can draw it and use tiles and fig the rest of it out because that leaves the players with a lot more possibilities. Yeah, I mean, just because of the order of which I got things. And like I said, the digital map came from me having an extra TV, which is like one of the bigger hurdles of making a digital map.

46:22 I got the digital map before I own a single miniature. So here I am using my Tier two wooden coins on my Tier five digital map. You know, these are absolutely mix and match, and you make a table fit how you want it to fit, and don't forget like that. You can spend infinite money on this stuff. You don't have to the important thing and we have to remember that at the end of the day, does this help us tell a good story? That's why we're here. And if having a totally immersive battle map helps just a little bit more, then go for it. If your table does just fine without it, go for it, like it's it's totally fine. And also with the digital ones, you can really bite up forth and you can chew very quickly with those, So make sure that you're using it properly. And that's with anything else. If you're laying terrain on there, make sure that you're actually like making it worthwhile, like if you're gonna put down like if you're gonna put down like hills, you know, make sure that you're actually doing difficult train as we're trying to climb, you know, stuff like that. But use these tools to make your game more fun or more immersive, or your story get told in a better way. You can go to fear to the mind, if you can pull that off, doesn't matter. So this is all to say that, like, if this is a route you want to go, here's how I'm breaking it down. That's all it is, right, So we're gonna put some links to places where people can find some of the stuff. Yeah, as as I go and edit, I want to just crab all the links of everything we said, and links to every fantastic links to everything that I can think of will be in the show notes. So go check those out.

47:52 And if you have anything that I missed. If you have, just tell me how you do your miniatures. Tell me how you got your first miniatures. Tell me the first miniatures that you played with, whether they're yours or someone else's. I want to know how miniatures fit into your games. You can just you can send us an email over at Hello Adventures Podcast at gmail dot com or tell us yourself at Hello Adventures podcast dot com slash voice, and if it's a cool story, we'll put it on the show. I am actually old enough that my first d D miniatures were actually made out of lead. Wow, which which may say a little something about how I ended up, but yeah, actually led lead miniatures earlier. Ralph Park the leed d D. You were talking about plastic miniatures earlier, and I thought that's the direction you were going to go with it, because yeah, well that's I mean, you can still find those out there. They're very expensive because they're they're big up collectibles now, but they're out there to be found, no where to look. So we're gonna we're gonna call this here, go forth and make your games, make your games miniature. I have a feeling that we're gonna see some miniatures that are king soon, I hope.

48:57 So it's fun. Yeah, So thanks so much. Listening to the show with your host, Jason Portiso, Joe McCaul and Jim Crocker. The music is by Nick Scurryer artwork by Kristin Roderick. I think that's going to do it for today, So until next time, goodbye, h