DIY Gaming: Make Your Own Status Tokens
Characters with a purple token are Disaffected (save ends).
A lot of the games we play have ongoing status effects that are easier to track when you can mark the units on the table in some way. There are some great products out there that serve this purpose, but they can get expensive. Here’s a way to make about 100 status tokens for virtually any game using supplies that cost ten bucks (not counting the table saw).
I made these tokens with D&D in mind, so to start, I bought an oak dowel with a one-inch diameter from the local hardware emporium. It cost $3 and change. You can find wood dowels at hardware and craft stores in a variety of sizes to suit whatever game you might be playing.
The only tricky part of this project is cutting the dowel into tokens. A table saw works great – if you don’t have one, find a friend who does (like I did). He set a brake by clamping a chunk of scrap wood to the saw’s base, so he just had to push the dowel up to the brake and then cut. Each token was the exact same size as a result. The tokens tend to shoot randomly across the room when they’re cut, so bring goalie equipment.
Here you can see the cut token pieces with some D&D minis for size comparison. The edges will be pretty rough and jagged, so rub them across a piece of sandpaper to smooth things out. If you want to get fancy, you can really sand them down nicely, but I went for quick and easy and just trimmed down the rough spots.
From there, it’s a simple matter of slapping on some paint. I hand painted a few using acrylic paint, which the oak takes very well. Acrylic is easier to work with than enamels, since it doesn’t smell bad and washes off with water, but you can paint wood with pretty much anything. You could even varnish some tokens and get a natural wood look in a variety of shades. If you want to paint a whole bunch of tokens the same color, you can spray paint them. After the paint dried, I hit them with some clear coat so the paint wouldn’t rub off. Gloss would look nice, but I happened to have some matte clear coat lying around, so that’s what I used.
One of the benefits of hand painting is making custom markers. You can see a glimpse of one in the above image, a silver and black striped token. This comes in handy when your 4E D&D party has multiple fighters (like ours does). Which fighter marked which hobgoblin? It’s easy to tell when one fighter’s marker is in the colors of the player’s favorite hockey team, and the other looks like a Union Jack.
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April 6th, 2009 11:26 AM
I’ve been using poker chips & little aquarium beads.
April 6th, 2009 12:12 PM
By the way, Robot Viking is working again (the same friend with the table saw recovered my files and fixed my computer).
So on top of being sick and having my computer die last week, on Saturday my Xbox went Red Ring.
April 6th, 2009 12:13 PM
(the table saw was not involved in the computer repair)
April 6th, 2009 12:13 PM
Poker chips FTW no fuss no muss available everywhere in assorted colors and striped varieties.
April 6th, 2009 2:08 PM
You can go to any Hobby Lobby, Michaels, or other suitable crafts store and find pre-cut wood or plastic disks in a variety of colors and sizes. Educational/learning stores also carry an astonishing array of that sort of stuff.
No need to own a table saw or spend any time sanding or painting.
April 6th, 2009 2:18 PM
Or you can do it Ed’s way and have the satisfaction of creating something with your hands instead of paying for a piece of machine-molded plastic.
April 6th, 2009 3:10 PM
our table is awash in pennies, beads, dice, paper, computers an playing cards that we just grab what’s handy and go with it.
April 7th, 2009 2:08 PM
> Or you can do it Ed’s way and have the satisfaction of creating something with your hands instead of paying for a piece of machine-molded plastic.
Not everyone keeps a table saw in their dorm room or apartment.
April 8th, 2009 6:32 AM
When I was a kid we had to gnaw our “marked” disks with our teeth! & for minis we had to smuggle lead in our cheek pouches, & melt it with hot water & cigarette lighters! Our Player’s Handbook was chiseled in a rock & only had ten rules! Grumble grumble.