Hello and welcome to DnD Arts&Crafts. I am Michael and this is a Thrifty DM tip on buying Gaming stones.
As I mentioned in my past article on Spell Slot Trackers I played in a Savage Worlds game at Gencon 2013 and that GM used Gaming Stones like these:
To keep track of spell points. If you are not familiar with Savage Worlds, some casting classes use spell points. When they cast spells they spend the points. When they are out of points, they are out of spells. Using these gaming stones worked great for keeping track of them.
I’ve played a bit of Savage Worlds and decided to pick some up for those games and to use as described in my past articles.
I bought the ones you see here to the left at one of my Friendly Local Game Stores for around $3.30. I’ve seen them for as low as $2.50 and has high as $4.00, but $3.30 is a solid average price.
Certainly not going to break the bank. The insert says 20 or more. I ended up with 23 – so that’s just under .14 per stone.
A few days later, I was at a Dollar Store and found these ‘accent stones.’
They had them in several different colors. Including Red, Blue, Clear, Green and Black. I bought one of each. There were 75 stones in each bag. That’s less than .02 each per stone.
These stones are not exactly the same. As you can see here, the ones from the Dollar Store are larger than the Chessex Brand.
So, now I have a ton of gaming stones. While shopping at my Local Meijer I found these generic spice jars for .99. I also found them later at a Big Lots for .80 each. I think they work and look great at the table.
So each game I hand a jar of stones to my players that need and want them and the rest stay behind him on a shelf and look like oddities you might find in a wizards shop.
If you are not opposed to having odd-shaped stones, I also found a bag of decretive stones at Meijer. They were less than $5.00 and I filled up over 5 of my jars with them. Haven’t done the math, but i’m guessing they fall somewhere between the .02 for the Accent Stones and the .14 for the C
hessex brand stones.
My collection.
Comments and Feedback are always welcome.
Michael
E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy
Follow us on twitter @TheRpgAcademy
Visit our Facebook Page
Join our new Google+ Community page: The Rpg Academy
Become a backer: Patreon.com/TheRpgAcademy and get episodes early and other great rewards
2 pings