These are the first craft I ever did for D&D. I wanted to have tokens we could move around on our game mate. At that point, we were using a whiteboard on an easel for visualization of battles. I glued small magnets to the inside of some bottlecaps and we wrote on the tops with dry erase markers. Eventually, I made individual ones for each player and then I began making them for NPCs as well. I like to represent character with symbology but it works just as well with printed images. I use black and white images for my NPCs (many drawn for me by the wonderful Hodag RPG Illustration over on Instagram @hodagrpg). The black and white helps my player characters stand out on my game board.
Another great thing about these is how sturdy they are. No flimsy mini pieces here! And I can just grab a handful of my enemy NPCs before a game starts and my players don't have any clue what sort of baddies they are going to face. For medium sized creatures, I use standard bottlecaps but for large creatures I use growler caps, similar to the ones I use fo the air elemental (more on that here). I like to match the color of the cap to the player's character and the cap design and I like to have a variety of colors for enemies to help make it easier to track them in combat.
I also have used bottlecaps to make spell tokens. I teach D&D to my middle school students and having a tactile representation of their spells is so helpful.
Another great thing about these is how sturdy they are. No flimsy mini pieces here! And I can just grab a handful of my enemy NPCs before a game starts and my players don't have any clue what sort of baddies they are going to face. For medium sized creatures, I use standard bottlecaps but for large creatures I use growler caps, similar to the ones I use fo the air elemental (more on that here). I like to match the color of the cap to the player's character and the cap design and I like to have a variety of colors for enemies to help make it easier to track them in combat.
I also have used bottlecaps to make spell tokens. I teach D&D to my middle school students and having a tactile representation of their spells is so helpful.
Character Tokens
1) Pick your bottlecap. If you have a ton of them like I do, pick one that you think will suit that character.
2) Trace the top of the bottlecap on a piece of paper. If you are using a printed design, trace around the icon you want for that character. 3) Draw your design. I like to add a dot to my tokens to show which direction that character is facing, 4) Cut out the circle and glue it onto the top of the bottlecap. Optional step: You can paint your bottlecap prior to glueing on the paper design, especially if you don't have a great variety of caps to choose from. 5) Glue on small magnets to the interior of the bottlecap. This step is optional but useful if you want to use them on a magnetic whiteboard. |
Spell Tokens
1) Paint the bottlecaps a solid color. I prefer a black background to make the colors on my tokens really pop. I used a cheap chalkboard paint but acrylic pants would work just fine.
2) Decorate each spell level with its own design. Make sure to make plenty of lower level spells for your casters. 3) For extra durability, add a layer of clear coat nail polish or clear modge podge to the caps once they have dried. |