Theater of the mind assets brainstorm

So I was looking to collect some assets for a theater of the mind game and wanted to draw from the community about nifty things that might be cool to have. Even the non-representational folk need some swag sometimes! I've created a board that looks nice and might be cool as an in-between-combat-map-rest area. It even has a cute gimmick where you can rotate a wheel to show day/night cycles! I was also looking to create a few generic tokens to stand in for combatants when it'd be cool to have relative-distance and number. I'm totally the type of person who has poor short-term memory problems and am always asking things like, "HOW many bandits were there? I thought I was scouting ahead of the party? Is that guy next to the cleric still alive?" My issue is I don't know what kind of tokens I should have. I was inspired by a fantasy novel where a magic chessboard had uniquely colored/shaped tourmaline pieces to represent individuals. But I'm not sure how well I can sell pretty gemstones as NPC A21. If I go with something more representational, I dunno where the line in the sand is about how much information to give away with the token.  This is a set that I painted up which feel generic enough but wasn't sure if I maybe should go for more generic/wargames sort of tokens. Maybe abstract shapes of various materials?  I was also thinking of larger stylized rings or circles to represent "you are in the fire" or behind cover.  What do you guys think? 

I like the idea and approach in general. I play a portion of my gaming in Theater of the Mind style. We use a vast amount of photographs & portraits. Anything front-facing, not top-down. For example a mysterious path leading into the woods, the entry mouth of a cavern, or a door/puzzle like in Lord Of The Rings "Speak friend and enter".  By the way your day/night clock background could be useful indeed. Another similar idea would be a tent/campsite with a fire (lit and unlit or gone-out to embers). As far as the generic tokens, the ones I use for Player-Characters are called "Blue tokens" by Author: Stewart Werley in the Roll20 Marketplace (192 tokens). They are distinguished because each token piece has a letter.  An extensive set of Tokens like those you demonstrated would be useful if there are enough to cover all the Characters, at least; and then perhaps another set that could represent all-or-many of the monsters/enemies/NPC without using repeats a lot. Your example tokens are distinguished not by a Letter or Number on the token, but rather by the appearance, colors, teeth, eye color, glow, and so on. Good luck with your creations and keep sharing. I'm sure some other users will come along to offer their feedback and ideas as well.

That's beautiful! I'd kill to be able to make something as good looking as that, lol. I do something similar for when we're not on a map in my game, but yours looks much better. What about simply using a portrait of the character as the tokens?

I usually use either a map of the general area where the events take place (sometimes blurred as to not distract the players too much), or like Gold, various photos and other artwork that corresponds with the theme. They are quite easy to grab off the net. I'd love if roll20 had a feature to just display an image instead of a map, that would take some of the unnecessary work involved with stretching the image to fit the map area, removing grid, sizing the "map", etc. (I think I'll post such suggestion when I get a new vote)

I usually do something similar to what Gold and Cyber Killer do, and only use a grid or map when we enter into an encounter. However, not really the point I wanted to make. Mainly I wanted to say that your page, with the day and night slider is one of the coolest things I've seen. I absolutely love it, and wouldn't mind hearing a bit more about how you made that. Good stuff for sure!

The rotating wheel is using layered pngs and of course roll20's ability to rotate art assets. Maybe you had experience with old-school "pop-up" children's books. A lot of times one of their tricks is a wheel embedded into an envelope of paper. Same premise here.  Background image> Wheel > Over-image with a window cut out of it The constellation ring over top is necessary because of how roll20's selection works. Transparencies in images doesn't allow you to click through them necessarily, so I needed a piece of the wheel to extend up over the front plate.  I've actually gone and decided working on a different token style, made of wood and carved to look a little "period". I really liked Gold's suggestion of having an alphabet set of tokens to fill in the odd necessary demands so I did a set of those as well. 

Good to hear of your progress, Richard, as well as the transparency envelope idea tips that you shared. Is your letter-token set going to be available on Roll20 Marketplace or otherwise for others to use? I would like to add to my collection of Letter tokens. Here is a video demonstration of my game, where we combined top-down map, letter tokens, theater of the mind, and pop-up fullscreen images with the Shift-Z automatic letterboxed black background, <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/msgendler/v/23843456" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/msgendler/v/23843456</a> This Roll20 game replay will be available to view on Twitch TV for a limited time.