The Cheap DM

The first actual-play session I did with the kids I had a bunch of monsters printed out and glued to foam-board, but I didn't have any images for their characters yet. I needed something I could use in the meantime, so I stopped by the local second-hand shop and ended up with a bag of classic Army Men that I picked up for a dollar. The kids each grabbed a solider in a different colour/pose and used that the first night. 

Which got me thinking, why doesn't a game company do something like this? Its easy to find spiders and insects around Halloween, and I've seen people finding packets of skeletons and zombies, so why not packets of cheap, common monsters like goblins, kobolds, spiders, or more authentically D&D creatures like owlbears, umberhulks etc? You could even do 'hero' packs with generic knights, eleves, dwarves, haflings and wizards. 

It would be a blessing for cash strapped DMs such as myself who absolutely cannot even begin to afford the absurd cost of building a decent mini collection. 

While I wait for that particular corner of the nine hells to freeze over, I've been working on my standees and I'm quite pleased with how they are turning out. All I do is grab some art from the interweb, size and format it in Excel and save it as a PDF before sending it off to Staples to be printed on their cheapest cardstock. I can do about ten pages for less than $5, and I end up with a decent amount of monsters, though I am not looking forward to cutting out the eight-pages of goblins.

The finished party, along with some plastic pieces scrounged
from second-hand shops and dollar stores. 

At the same second-hand store I found a board game I'd never heard of (something about making movies) that even had a few small maps. But what I really liked was that it came with a whole bag of plastic bases. The cardstock from Staples isn't thick enough to fit into the bases, but all I have to do to for a fix is glue a few extra strips of the cardstock to the inside of the folded standee.  

I didn't have to print this guy. I don't even have
a place for him in the story yet, but by-gum I dd it anyway.   

The first batch of monsters I did that I'd glued to foam-board isn't holding up so well. With no other way to stand them up, I used small butterfly clips, with works but that crushes the board and/or peels the cardstock off the backing. I'm not too concerned. I'll use them until they fall apart and if I still need them, I'll print them again as standees. Lesson: Foamboard is great for tokens, terrible for stand-ups.  

My shadows took a beating.  

 And last but certainly not least, I was FINALLY able to pick up this little beauty. For almost two months been sitting on the shelf at the local game-shop where I play with the kids, but since the bi-weekly game night is always two days before pay-day I'm usually pretty strapped. This time I deliberately put aside the cash, and was able to pick it up for a very reasonable prince. They shop has a few decent modules and I've already picked up an original Expedition to the Barrier Peaks as well as a copy of TSR's Lankmar.