Miniatures for Mendicants

Once D&D 3rd Edition came out there was a shift towards a greater use of miniatures. Tightening of area-effect rules, distances and (oh god) attacks of opportunity made it seem pretty vital to know where characters and monsters were on a round-by-round basis. The new edition of the game pushes the need for miniatures even harder at every opportunity, but what if your budget won't stretch to the miniatures and bits of scenery that that game endorses? These are lean times, and we can't necessarily justify making such frivolous purchases. Well, the low-budget alternative is to make your own counters. All you need are pens, paper, your computer and a printer. The software I've used for this article is GIMP, which is available for Windows or Linux.

1. Create a new image: either A4 or US Letter, depending on your paper size. Either way, the resolution should be 300 points per inch.
2. Change the measurements on the image to inches.
3. Press SHIFT+CTRL+N to create a new layer. Call the layer counter and specify Transparency as its fill colour.
4. Choose the Ellipse Select Tool. Use it to select a circular area measuring one inch across. Using the SHIFT key after pressing the mouse button ensures the selection is circular.
5. Press CTRL+. to fill the selection with white.
6. From the menu, choose Select → To Path.
7. Press CTRL+SHIFT+A to clear the selection.
8. Choose the Paintbrush Tool. Change the brush size to Circle Fuzzy (07).
9. From the menu, choose Edit → Stroke Path. Select the Stroke with a paint tool option, and select Paintbrush. Click Stroke. This will draw a circle.
10. From the menu, choose Layer → Autocrop Layer to cut the layer down to size.
11. Reposition this layer using the M key to select the move option, and the SHIFT and arrow keys to move it. I recommend moving the layer to the upper left-hand side of the image.
12. Press SHIFT+CTRL+D to duplicate the layer. Move this duplicate layer next to the original. Repeat until you have a row of five or six circles.

13. Press CTRL+L to open the Layers window. You will see all the layers we have created so far, named Background, counter, counter copy, counter copy#1 and so on. Each layer has an icon of an eye next to it that toggles its visibility. Deselect the icon for the Background layer.
14. Go back to your image. Press CTRL+M to merge the layers. Click Merge.
15. Press SHIFT+CTRL+D to duplicate this layer.
16. Press M, then hold down SHIFT and press the down arrow key twice to position the next row of counters.
17. Repeat the last two steps as many times as necessary.
18. Merge the counters layers again, as before.
19. Back to the Layers window. Reselect the Background layer's visibility.
20. Save the image as counters.xcf.
21. Print the image, then glue the print-out onto cardboard. Cut the counters out.

Of course, these counters are blank, so unless you want to draw a tiny picture on each disc you'll have to get some artwork and paste selected images into each disc before printing. Before long you'll have armies of humanoids at your fingertips!

Download blank counter sheet (284.7 KB ZIP)