I am frequently annoyed by dnd youtubers proclaiming cheap minis when they cost over $50 and saying "that is cheap to some" No. No it is not. This is how it is done. I hope you all enjoy, Like, Comment, and SUBSCRIBE.
Add wood 1 in squares, match sticks, and popsicle sticks. I knocked out some nice modular wall markers. Spray paint with black base and a second light grey coat for great results.
I have used that for a while, and awhle back took some 1/2" and 3/4" dowleing and cut them into 1-1/2" lengths for columns. You can even toss a thin sheet of plexiglass to add floors. All cheaper than one of the WOTC books...
finaly someone who knows the meaning of the word 'budget'. I also used magnet whiteboard with magnets for minis, but i want to build a cardboard module terrain now. I'ts a bit of work but will cost just a few penny.
This is fantastic, thank you, I've recently started DMing and unfortunately due to circumstances out of my control, money is tighter than a ducks arse in winter.
Great video! I've been looking for an ACTUALLY cheap way to run a table-top RPG. I personally already had a printer, chess, plastic and a white-board pen, which let me do some things differently: I printed foldable standing paper-minis and character sheets. I used the chess-pieces as stand-in NPCs for characters I didn't have printed, such as peasants (pawns), animals (knights) or towers/pillars (rooks) etc. I used the chess-board with plastic on top as a map, drawing on the plastic with the white-board pen, wiping it off when changing scene (albeit this made every scene no bigger than 8x8 squares). With paper clips I could easily organize all the flat minis and sheets in a folder, while keeping the chess-piece "minis" in the chess-board.
For Minis, I've used Glass beads for years. The ones for decorating with a flat bottom. They come in a variety of different colors and shapes and it is easy to differentiate the characters. My group customised their "minis" by painting on them for easier spotting. Now I just print pictures of the characters in a rectangle format and put them on little plastic holders. Did some for our NPCs where you can write their name on it and some for monsters with numbers and bigger ones for bosses with a skull symbol. To protect them, I just "laminated" them with clear tape. Overall very cheap and looks good on the table and everyone can find everything really quickly.
My library system has LOTS of books and FREE colour printing. Browsing my local thrift store will often reward me with games with minis & dice for super cheap. Dollar store "Jenga" is a better alternative not only because of the price but because of the perfect size and 2 different colours.
I quickly scanned to comments and didn’t notice theses suggestions: 1.)Walmart has craft pain for $0.50-1.00 2.)skip the transparency/ and use a ruler instead of a grid. 3.)if you where inclined to play D&D with full rules instead of the free quick start and didn’t want to pirate them, 3.5 and 4.0 books can be had cheaply on EBay.
Excellent suggestions. I'm a fan of using rulers instead of a grid as well. Also, I feel like the 3.5 SRD has more rules than the 5 SRD, and it's free, so you could use that as well.
You don't have to steal anything. D20 SRD is free, and that's D&D without the books. There's tons of modules people have written also for free (and some for cheap if they aren't free…) That won't give you a ready supply of monsters or a world map, but there's tools for those things too … and the secret for monsters is always decide how hard you want it to be for your players and write the stat block accordingly based on other stat blocks.
Best video I've seen on the topic! Thanks friend! I'm currently a third year in industrial design! So I suppose we're at pretty similar places right now!
You can get craft paint at the dollar store too. It's usually just 4 or 5 colors for that price, but last time I was there they had 2 different types. One was red, blue, yellow, green; the other one was black, white, gray, silver, and what I would call non-metalic gold or maybe pale bronze. I dunno, but they were cheap and would work fine on wooden minis. Also get your paint brushes at the dollar store. And for the bases you could pick up some elmers glue while still at the dollar store, and cut some 1 inch circles from cardboard you find for free (or you probably already have some lying around, I always seem to for some reason). Use the glue to fill in the edges of the cardboard. If you want to go a step up from the wooden minis you can also get those bags of toy soldiers/skeletons/bugs/etc. Even when I use "real" minis I often use those as my bad guys. Spend 1 buck and get 30 bad guys, works for me. They also right now have these metal mini-figs for WWE. I'm working on repainting those to be D&D themed. They're a few mm too tall for regular minis, but most players don't really care about that level of detail when playing. It represents my character, and it doesn't look like a plain circle or just using some dice.
when I was really new to the game I used 2d paper nets to construct dice models and lego figures as the miniatures. Now I use... exactly the same thing. Update! I now have a set of dice! Yay me! ... I still use the lego though...
You could also use Lego mini figures for characters and bricks, etc. to build walls. And there are trees. This is only budget friendly if your Mom kept your old Legos from when you were a kid or if you manage to find some second hand or on a good sale. There are often small scale children’s toys in the low cost stores that can be used. My group has found dragons, trees, knights, wagons and castles this way. Pet stores sell castles and ruins in the aquarium section. The scale is usually good. If you have an iPhone, ask Siri to roll a D20 etc. for you
Im glad to see someone else using the little wooden figures. I bought mine at a surplus store for 25c a peice or 10c for the goblid/halfling size, they called them mini wooden game of life characters. I love that surplus store.. they have barrel shaped wooden beads, pot shaped wooden beads, those wooden bases, 5 sizes of wooden cube including the holy 1x1x1", wooden spools that made great pillars, and even more.
Look I never claimed to be a scientist. When I said between 2-3 I think that threw me off. I had calculated the numbers before hand and was and 7 was what I remembered it being.
I LOVE that you're doing a "D&D on a budget" video that's ACTUALLY on a budget. Every time I see a video that says it's "cheap" or "easy" it always involves a Proxon hot wire table, 3D printer, multiple materials from multiple stores, etc. etc. etc. Thank you!
Thrift store plastic soldier minis, actually the blue ones are police and the yellow ones are construction workers. Portable budget solution: folded up wrapping paper inside out (there's Inch squares on the inside for cutting the paper) covered by an equal size plastic sheeting cut from a roll from Wal-Mart. 10 minis, dice, map materials, dry erase markers 3x5 cards & pencil for dm notes.
Love this vid. I started playing at university last year and was also on a budget so I resonate with this a lot haha Something I do a lot now to save money and enhance the game is keep any cardboard that would be thrown away and build locations from it with paint and craft glue. Pretty easy and also fun
You could even take the Jenga blocks to the next level by gluing little magnets to them to put additional stuff on top, like bushes or fake moss for tree tops or fences for dungeon terrain
Chris Gonnerman's "Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game" is completely free online. It's like OSR D&D. There are physical books available for typically under $5. They don't have all the pretty pictures and formatting, but - free. No stealing involved.
I've found that with kids, the best minis are letting them draw their mini on a piece of card stock and then using a binder clip with the metal arms removed to stand it up!
my current minis are pictures that i cut out (print a page from staples for about 6$) double side and tape (acts like laminating) then glue to a bingo chip (can get a pack for 8$) so depending on size of the mini (range from gnome/dwarf - dragons) you can maybe .25-1$ per mini
I used a poster frame from Walmart and flipped the background that came in it , Took a borrowed tape measure and with a pencil used that to make a grid on the back of the paper that came in the frame . I used paper with clip stands that was hand drawn for the PC and enemies
Amazon often has sales on the books too, recently they had a crazy sale and the main 3 books (dungeon master guide, monster Manuel, and player handbook.) Were about 20 bucks each. I have no idea if the sale, is still going on but its definitely cheaper than the regular 60 dollar price.
For my minis I just print pictures I find online,put then together on a word document, and glue them to pieces of cardboard (any cardboard works really, as long as it isn't too flimsy), and for the bases I just use cheap binder clips from a chinese store. For the bigger ones you can also make the bases from cardboard, since binder clips no longer do the job for the bigger monsters
My mom still had toys from when she was a kid in the sixties, so for the first year we just used the OG Little People (which I've always vastly preferred over modern. But alas they're choking hazards) the original ones are perfect for dnd scale. They're painted wood cylinders with super basic faces and plastic hair or hats on their circle heads. My mom also saved the two giant ass Lincoln Log sets she got at a yard sale so we used those for terrain
this is one of the best videos on youtube dude i immediately followed 2 of your tips. dunno if you'll see this but this helped out someone who is also a broke uni student and i sent this video to like every DM i know lol
Hey just throwing it out for everyone, librarys near u "should" have computers and internet. The one i go to allows me to print sheets for .75 a page for black and white or $1. For color. Just helping out cause i like doing things cheap ^_^
I would highly recommend the Wikidot page for DnD 5e, too. They have pages for races, classes, spells, feats, backgrounds, items, etc. And then as Brodie said, DnD Beyond has the basic rules, or you can go over to D20's SRD. I'd also recommend getting the laminent grid and paper/foam backdrop he mentioned, but also get some cheap dry-erase markers to draw on top of the laminated grid. Easy to wipe off once you're done or need to adjust the scene. Chess pieces if you have a cheap set also work well for minis for player characters and major NPCs. I didn't know about using Jenga tiles for walls and such, though, that's really clever!
Hey brother, this is by far the best video of this kind in RU-vid. I’ve wanted to get into D&D for a long time, but cost has always been a problem. Great info, keep the content coming.
I started DMing for my family at home, and a group online using roll20 last fall. First, I bought the monster manual and player's handbook physical, used copies from a library $25 total Next, I purchased Lost Mine of Phandelver for the online group, and the Starter Kit for home which comes with Dragon of Icespire Peak, both of which came with dndbeyond codes for a digital copy... also ended up purchasing the monster manual, DM guide, and player's handbook on dndbeyond to give both of my groups access to these books digitally for character creation. Can't remember the exact cost, but after all of the cupon codes and everything it was ~120 total. For the digital campaign that was it! done! It was a lot of work to import maps and monsters into Roll20, but once it was done it was very easy to run, and very cheap. For the home campaign I ended up buying a bunch of dice, maps, etc... and we barely use any of it. Ended up making a bunch of printouts of monsters and characters using excel. It basically had a trifold with image printed on front and back with a 1" base, and that worked out pretty well. For the maps; we just download the art from dndbeyond, scale it up using MS Paint of all things, and print out tiled sheets. Cut and tape them together and you have a perfect map to play on, including grids... and we don't have to rely on my terrible art ability. So ya... looking back, I would just purchase digital books and campaigns, and then print out tri-fold minis and maps. You really just need the PHB and campaign for character creation as the starter campaigns have everything you need as a DM built in. The DM guide and monster manual are mostly just for home-brew campaigns as the digital copies of all of the monsters and items unlock when you buy the campaign. Anywho, that's my 2 cents. Not quite as cheap as downloading free books, but it still isn't too much investment, very little required for setup and artwork abilities, and very convenient for new players to make toons online and print their sheets or use their phone and have everything on-hand at all times.
I'm years late but I only recently got into dnd and let me tell you how brilliant your Jinga idea is, I didn't think about it but it's so obvious that I'm kicking myself for not considering it before, thanks so much 😁
I LOVE your philosophy! For the miniature monsters I've found that I can add some pipe cleaner "arms" and/or wings and spray paint them green. I would support you but I got this for free soooo......
for the price of your laminate sheet and board go to dollar tree they have foam board for a dollar, get 1 bottle of dollar tree mod podge and 1 dollar black paint, and a 1 dollar ruler and a pen you have laying around your house or dorm . make and cut out modular dungeon tiles for under 5.00 as for cheapest minis i use a package of purple yellow and blue buttons of altering sizes from dollar tree for a buck one other dollar tree find - you may have to check several stores but i have found dollar tree carrying 1.00 D&D dice sets now
I got a big sheet of clear vinyl from the fabric section at Walmart for my battle mat. I went with the thickest stuff they had, so mine was about $3.50 per yard, but they had some that was only $1 per yard. If you carefully marked out some grid lines with a sharpie I think it would be the cheapest you could get
You just need graph paper. Draw your maps with a pencil then place them inside plastic page protectors. Place them in a binder. Use multi-colored markers to place players and monsters. Use notebook paper to make character sheets. You can get cheap polyhedral dice at Walmart, 3 sets for $8. I bet the cost is less than $20. And I wonder if the local library might have books about D&D.
printable heros have good paper minis you can download and print (there are free and patreon based ones) -easy storage -you can have someone else print them -education institutions usually have price per sheet, so there will be some math there -large mini's are printed as 1 usually -small characters (like cobalts) are printed as 10-12 -bases are in the printable sheet as well
I am new to D&D, i use hero forge to design my mini, screenshot, and print. Then i cut it out, laminate with packing tape, and hot glue it to a flat washer.
Now _THAT_ is budget. I haven't know the jenga trick, what I do is a plastified A3 with squares in one side and hexagons in the other. I use it as a whiteboard, and the best thing is that you can print 2 of them to put them together for bigger maps.
For minis, cardstock is about as cheap as you can go. If you don't want to print one of the thousands available online, you can draw them. They can be 2d or 2.5d (flat standup) and then you don't need a box to store them, just some envelopes.
It should also be noted that some companies actually make free versions of their rules in pdf form. For instance, Troll Lord Games' awesome system, Castles and Crusades ( it's essentially AD&D converted over to d20 rules) offers a free version of their 7th printing of their player's handbook from their web site. No matter what printer you have, Castles and Crusades rules are the same. the various printing are basically correcting editing errors and adding new artwork/ page layout. I believe you can also still find a version of their " Monsters and Treasure" pdf for free as well. You really only need those two things to run and play Castles and Crusades, though they also have lots of supplements and other books, adventures, etc, to buy as well.
you're godsent! i was so enthusiastic with d&d before since i saw that it mostly needed only dice (which is like, my christmas gift to my friends to make sure they TRY TO PLAY WITH ME) but then i saw the handbooks and starter sets and my poor student's wallet just hurt. a lot. ive been scouring local d&d groups to see if they had considerably cheap minis, then i suddenly had the idea to check what youtube had to say. AND YOUR VIDEO SHOULD DEFINITELY BE AT THE TOP. it's functional, non-committal, doesnt need like, all of your life savings to enjoy! i was about to buy a starter set but you made me double think abt the decision LOOOL. i still think i'd end up buying it if only because it had the screen thing and the super easy module, but i think im going to try your method first. thank you again!!!
You can make a DM screen with either some file folders or cardboard from a cereal box/amazon shipment box. Cardboard is easy to come by, just tape some together, get some clips, and print off cheat sheets(many are online for free) either at a library/friends house/school/whatever that you can clip to one side of your cardboard DM screen. I think Lost Mines of Phandelver is about $12 on amazon? It comes with a smaller/basic players handbook, a book on how to run the module + all the monster stat blocks, pre-generated character sheets, and a set of dice (minus the d100). The game is designed to last a good 5-10 sessions, which if you're playing about once a month, that's half a year or more of play! The Dollar Tree also sells this foumlar foam core that's like, $1 for a whole sheet and the dnd crafting community is NUTS for it. You can make buildings and all kinds of props for dirt dirt cheap.
So what I do in my campaigns is I use Jenga blocks and the back of Christmas wrapping paper. I Use online Dice and books. And I used chess pieces for a I minis.
I would actually suggest skipping the map, minis, and paint. You can condense that down quite a bit more. The mini-jenga thing from the dollar tree is a good start, grab 3 of them and grab a dollar store chess and checkers set (1 of each). That gets you a decently sized grid area and minis that can be used rather easily without paint, or a couple cents to add a bit to them (Or just grab some rubber bands and coil the around to differentiate between them). I would also suggest going for the D&D basic rules first from the official site before pirating stuff, easier to actually learn the rules there anyhow. Personally, I prefer to have actual dice rather than using a dice roller when playing in person. It tends to make things simpler. Spend some of the saved cash there on a good set or two. If you want something really cheap and portable, there's what I used for a long while as a travel thing. Rules on my tablet, and I got one of the 2 pack of magnetic travel games with a chess and checkers set in them ($1 for the combined sets). I used a black sharpie, a white out pen, and some clear nail polish ($1 each at the dollar store, the marker and white out you might be able to borrow easily) to number the checkers pieces and the chess pieces with more than 1 of the same in the same color (Black on White/Red and White on the Black, then covered it with the nail polish). I got a roll of magnetic tape and some of the thin craft sticks ($1 each) and used a heavier duty pair of scissors (Already had a pair, but I've seen some in the Dollar Tree that would work) to cut them into various lengths and matched them with the tape at the same length for terrain options, then coated the wood with the nail polish I'd used earlier). A local game store had and still has sets of mini-dice for $5 and often has sales that include them, normally about 20% off. Other than the tablet, the entire thing fits inside the two game cases, and with a small notepad (and a free pen that I'd gotten somewhere) it's $12 for the entire thing, and if you want more pieces, you can spend bit more on the travel game sets as several have other pieces and colors or even another of the same 2 pack and just up the numbers, you can even put the cases up against each other to expand the board. Back when I'd started, the chess board was the easiest battlemat option and still, sometimes, shows up for smaller combats since it's easy to use for it, and my travel gaming stuff also works well and can easily fit in a pocket or two...I'd expanded it and normally put everything in a cheap pencil case I also got for $1... But from there, while you're at the dollar store, glance at their toys and you can normally find things that work well for taking things a few steps further...
This is a great inspiration for gamers! Cool stuff! Also, never underestimate cardboard power. Write a name on them, stick them to a penny and boom. Or, use them for terrain :) also, you can totally start with a non-D&D game! Most of the 1st edition retroclones are free online! And they are worth every (non spent) penny!
Very helpful. Id recommend instead of jenga buy a cheap hand saw for like less than 5$. Then buy 8ft firring strips from homedepot for like 1.25. Thats a lot of jenga peices
I know I'm a little late, but for anyone watching in 2022: The Lost mine of Phandelver adventure (the one in the original starter set) is now free on D&D beyond. Also, if don't want to download the books from anyflip, there are lot's of apps for mobile with monster stats and character sheets and all sorts of things you can use
Thanks for the lost mines of phandelver tip. I'm about to start dm'ing for my schools club, and most of the players are new. This is very helpful so I don't have to start with my campaign I've been writing
A lot of RPGs, including D&D 5E and Pathfinder 2E, have System Reference Documents (SRDs) online which are perfectly legal to use. Some other systems only use regular six-sided-dice which are pretty cheap to get if you don't have some already.
I've used cardboard circle cutouts and painted em like little multicolored coins. Used the tearable removable part of bottle lids as status indicators.
Good stuff there. I like the little wooden people minis, although I went heavy into tokens. Now I gotta say that it's good you pointed them to D&D Beyond for the rules BUT, being an OSR Grognard, there are a LOT of rulesets out there for free besides 5E. For instance, the entire line for the Basic Fantasy ruleset is free as pdfs (www.basicfantasy.org) not to mention both Labyrinth Lord (goblinoidgames.com/index.php/downloads) and Swords and Wizardry (www.froggodgames.com/product/swords-wizardry-complete-rulebook) have no-art versions on their website for free - the complete rules, just no art.
Omg this threw me back. My friends and I started when we were so broke we used lined paper for maps and character sheets. We used things like earrings or origami cranes for our minis. Now that we live far away I use google Jamboard for maps my players can interact with. I can also make tokens for them and provide town maps on it.
Lined wrapping paper (dollar tree)/small figures in the toy section(dollar tree & thrift stores)/purchased gm,players guide, bestiary books amazon and actually thrift stores)/scenery (various sources)...... i was able to do a 5 year campaign with 100 maps about , 250 minis and an uncountable amount of scenery stuffs all for a total of $150 usd over the course of 5 years... it ended up being like 5 bucks each shopping trip except for the books where I bought 2 brand new and the others for like 5 to 15 used at book stores and thrift stores
I use Legos for my minis, I have a bunch from when I was younger and I have found some knock-off stuff for cheap they r good if my players want a more personal flair but they make so much more since then buying new figures for each campaign and character. I have also used those metal paperclip binder things to hold up a paper drawing that I glued on cardboard. If you don't have any artistic talent that's ok, I don't either the trick is to force your friend who likes to doodle to draw everything for you. Also side note its not the DM responsibility to pay for everything if you want to get minis or something make sure your players chip in
I gotta say, Jenga is a GENIUS idea - cheap terrain, that works for more or less any scenario indoors, or if you stand them up, you have a forest. Incredible
I'm new to Dnd and I'm cheap. I do have a chess set with mouse pad material board. Boom...instant minis and grid. my board has 2 1/4 inch squares ao I'll make each one = 4 feet. Hey...it will get me started lol. Now where's that Jenga set we used to have? If I can't find it I'm breakingnout the Catan set, I've got roads for walls right there. And the game board pieces can be repurposed for bushes! boulders, trees etc. Pretty sure we've got a leggo set somewhere as well. I'll make it work.
For minis you can also buy shrink film on amazon, I personally like to use sharpie to color them in, but you can use off brand permanent marker, just make sure it's not washable. Binder clips as the base works well. Also, to make the matt cheaper you can use wrapping paper and glue it to foam board
I really like this. Cause like you said all the other "budget" videos are more expensive than they make it seem or take like hours of time and a bunch of material to make complicated things.
Dollar store is your friend. Some have dice with all the different sides, Amazon also has cheap dice as well. Amazon also sells game pieces/ tokens and meeples
