I thought it was time to share some of my tools of the trade.  This toolbox was supposed to be the first post in that series, but I realized the section with Flatminis wouldn’t make much sense without doing the Flatminis article first.

Anyway, I would like to start by making it clear that this is just my toolbox, what I’ve decided to put together and what works for me.  This is by no means saying that this is “THE” way to put a DM’s toolbox together, this is just what works for me.  I know many other DMs who use almost completely different and often much smaller sets of tools/ game aids and run games as good or better than mine.  I also bring in the toolbox regardless of whether I’m running or playing, as a DM can always have a bad day when they forgot to bring something, or a player might have forgotten stuff for the character they are playing that night.  I must note that I’ve only been running Adventure League games with this toolbox, so the items I might need are more predictable and the NPC characters are premade, so there are some items that homebrew DMs might use to help with a more spontaneous game that are not included in the toolbox in it’s present form.

I’ve included hyperlinks in this article to the appropriate Thingiverse pages for most of the items in the box.

For my toolbox, I got a standard crafting toolbox from a hobby store, since it has a bunch of compartments for small objects.  I customized it a bit for my own use.

Translation of the runes:

“I prepared explosive runes this morning”

I finally found a place for a bumper sticker I’ve always wanted to use.  I thought it was appropriate for DMing.

One of the top compartments holds a couple of spare sets of dice, in case of a new player or someone forgetting their dice.  The other holds a couple dozen goblin Flatminis.  You can never really have enough goblins.

Here’s the inside of the toolbox.  As you can see most of the items in my toolbox are 3D printed.  I won’t go into everything in the box, but I  will cover some of the highlights.

At the top of the toolbox are minis I keep for a lot of common enemies, mostly the Flatminis kind.

This toolbox has minis for groups of:

• Goblins
• Hobgoblins
• Orcs
• Twig Blights
• Kobolds
• Wolves
• Spiders
• Skeletons
• Zombies
• Rats

For use with those, I have numbered bases to make DM monster accounting simpler, and unnumbered bases for more distinct minis that I covered in another post.  For enemies I don’t have specific minis of, I have ninjas.  Because… why not ninjas?

FlatMinis: Ninja

I have doors for when we want to mark open or closed doors on the game mat.  When I made these I scaled them up so they’d match a 1 inch grid.

Mansions of Madness Doors

I even have a kicked in door that someone designed on Thingiverse shortly after I put a general inquiry out on one of the groups.

Broken Door Miniature

For when I don’t have a distinctly different mini for a chieftain or other leader of a group of enemies, I have some different colored marker bases to indicate them.

Minis Leader Marker

For creatures that are enlarged from medium to large, or to hold some of the larger minis I have, I have these bases which I modified to be compatible with a few different things.

Numbered Multicompatible Enlarger Base

I also have a few templates for various spell effects, and markers for effects.  The easiest to do one are the status effect indicators, which are just rings from plastic soda bottles.  I keep them on a carabiner clip for ease of storage.

Some of the most fun/useful items to me are the tokens I use.  I have tokens to remind people of various effects they have access to.  Inspiration tokens for DMs to hand out, bardic inspiration tokens for my bard to use, a token to mark enemies who failed to save against vicious mockery, and death save success and failure tokens.

There are many other odds and ends in here such as scatter terrain, and minis that I rotate in and out of usage when I feel I need them (or not).  I often don’t use more than a fraction of the box when I’m not DMing, but I’ve also had situations where it ended up saving the game that night because the DM forgot to pack most of their minis or didn’t have a collection of their own yet.  That (and all the stuff I tend to make for my own characters) makes it worth it to me to carry it around every game night.

Oh, and I can’t forget this guy:

OH YEAAAAAAAH!

Sometimes you just need somebody to represent a large creature.

I’ve been going through some of the files on my desktop, and decided to catch up a bit more on uploading them.

Bardic Inspiration Token

This is one of the 3D printed items that I’ve used the most at the gaming table.  It helps remind people when I’ve given them bardic inspiration, and reminds me of how many uses I have.

The below items I haven’t got printed examples of, as far as I know.  They are items I mixed into new items, but then decided not to actually use.

Bone Pile – Based

Meeple-Based Commoner Token

I’ve probably been a bit confusing with some of my posts so far, referring to my collection of Flatminis without really explaining them, so here it is.

Flatminis are series of RPG minis available on Thingiverse for free to 3D print.  They are more of what I refer to as 2.5D minis, as they are designed to print flat on a 3D print bed, and it adds depth to them in layers, not requiring any sort of support (though I do highly recommend printing them using rafting, or you’ll have a hard time getting them off the plate).  You print the mini that has a standardized connector tab, and you print a matching base system to go with them that you insert the tab into like so:

1.

2.

3.

The base design is standardized, so if you have your printer calibrated well you can print a number of the bases, and then print an even larger number of minis because you likely aren’t going to need all the minis at the same time.

Also, by storing the mini and base separately, you can store them much more compactly.  I keep a lot of the bases in my toolbox, and the player character/npc minis in a separate case for ease of storage and access.  The case is a little display case that I found at a hobby store and added some layers of felt to thicken up the padding and make it look better.  I also had to tape back the display stand portion of it so it wouldn’t flap in the way.

Personally, I sometimes refer to these as Crayola Characters.  Why?  Because I like 3D printing, but not so much doing the detailed painting others do with minis, I literally use crayola markers to color in the white plastic characters, and then clearcoat the outside with nail polish topcoat 24 hours later to seal in the ink and prevent smearing/wearing off on other items (or my hands) in use or storage.

Sure, these minis can be simplistic and goofy looking, but I like them.  It allows me to safely and easily carry a wide variety of minis for when someone (particularly newer players or players with new characters) doesn’t have a mini, or when we need some random NPCs in a game.

Also, my enemy minis are mostly Flatminis as well, allowing me to keep an assortment of common enemies on hand without having to carry a bulky foam case with a lot of fragile minis.  I have at least 8 of each of the following minis.

Thingiverse has a pretty good variety of them, which I and some others add to every so often as we create things for our own needs.  I tend to remix in the connector pieces from existing Flatminis, and use a combination of Paint and Microsoft 3D Builder to turn 2D images into minis designs like I did with the heads of the orcs.

Sometimes I also find keychains or other mostly flat designs on Thingiverse and remix them into Flatminis, like I did with my ninja minis and making twig blights out of a model of baby Groot.

For DM accounting purposes I made some modified bases with numbers on them,

There are also some large size Flatminis.

It’s really convenient storage and portability-wise to use Flatminis, and enables me to always have a good amount of mini variety at the table.  It’s also kinda awesome when we have new players at the table who don’t have minis.  There’s almost always something close enough for someone to use.

Note:  There are weapon sets made to fit Flatminis, but I don’t make these due to some issues with the 3D printing process of such small and thin objects.

I’ve posted some new models to Thingiverse for use at the gaming table:

Flatminis Swedish Chef

Flatminis Groot Twig Blight

Swedish Chef Pawn

Giant Lizard Based Mini

Low Poly Dragon Mini