Hi all!
I make tabletop game tokens, and I’m planning to design a set for miscellaneous objects in the game world. I’ve already got a draft list (chests, trees, campfires, healing potions, etc.) But I’m curious to hear from others, what item tokens do you use or wish you had in your collection? Are there any specific ones you’d like to have?
Thanks, appreciate any and all feedback.
Objects that convey cover or height would be what I would like. Assuming they are made to a 1" grid scale, I think that would be most useful to support immersion during combat. Boxes and barrels always seem to come up. Also, a chest, wagon, sarcophagus/coffin, stone table, and a generic macgiffin (however you choose to represent it) would be the most useful at my table.
Rght, this is really useful, thank you… a little falcon statue as the universal McGuffin token is funny to me, but I feel like that be immersion-breaking i.e. better to have various little object icon tokens and let people pick out their McGuffins individually.
Also, that actually just made me realize – probably the object tokens should be sized consistent with the other tokens, e.g. healing potions and amulets and such should be considered tiny and get ½" tokens, chests and swords on the ground should be considered small and get ¾" tokens, etc.
(Also I’m still wrestling with the eternal question of whether a horse is a player token, a creature token, or an object token (since those categories have different color schemes / art styles to keep the battlefield visually organized). Currently horses are themed as objects, with mastiffs themed as creatures, but that’s always bothered me slightly and I can’t come up with a system for it that makes me happy.)
Oh, I agree clearly it’s a creature – I’m just talking about how to categorize it in order to give it an art style. It’s useful for a visual hierarchy if the player tokens on the battlefield are heavily distinct from the creature tokens so you can look quickly and say “blue = me, red and orange = other players, tokens with complex graphics = monsters” or something like that.
I think what I’m going to settle on is that the default style is that anything that’s player related (players, horses, healing potions, etc) gets a white background, and anything that’s monster related gets fully colored (either a solid color background or graphics all the way to the edge of the token). And mastiffs are “monster related” even though if you’re hip you’re going to be a halfling riding one. 🙂
Just finished the first draft of a set of item tokens
it’s worth having a cart, a wagon, a small boat, a carriage… Those are things you often want to be tokens, because they move around during combats, but finding good tokens to use is always a nightmare.
It’s probably worth having a barrel, a sack, a backpack, a bedroll, a small tent, crates.
Hm, maybe big rectangles for the vehicles? Whenever I did boats I would usually draw them on the map and have them as terrain… I could see tokens for it being really useful as long as they’re big enough to fit everything yes. Maybe 10’ by 15’ for the carriage (two spaces up in front and 2x2 in the back) and boat, and 5’ by 10’ for a simple cart? Rectangular or odd-shaped tokens make everything more complex, but there are a bunch of great use cases for them so maybe it’s worth doing…
Just finished the first draft of a set of item tokens – I’m sticking with just large round tokens for the vehicles for now, barring something happening that makes me think it’s worth getting fancier with it.
