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The Vault of Mini Things - An RPG Encounter Toolkit

The Vault of Mini Things - An RPG Encounter Toolkit

The Vault of Mini Things is a comprehensive full-color minis and terrain solution for Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, Frostgrave, and other fantasy tabletop games.
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$169,650 🎉
of $50,000 (USD) goal
967
backers
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A vast panoply of diverse creatures, heroes, and monsters inhabit the fantastical worlds of tabletop RPGs. How can a GM bring such a menagerie to the table without dedicating an equally vast amount of time and storage space? If only there was a single solution with a huge assortment of gorgeous full-color fantasy figures and terrain, all organized in a simply elegant system for quick selection, fast cleanup, and concise storage.


We proudly present for your consideration: the Vault of Mini Things.



The Vault of Mini Things is a comprehensive full-color minis and terrain solution for Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Blades in the Dark, Five Leagues from the Borderlands, Frostgrave, and other fantasy tabletop games. New and veteran GMs alike can bring their campaigns to life with hundreds of beautiful and monstrous creatures and characters, and deploy them quickly and easily alongside vibrant terrain. 


This guys sits atop a 50mm base. The scale of the standees is 30-32mm.
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Pledge at the Vaultkeeper level to receive the Vault of Mini Things, well-equipped with the Creature Catalog (tabbed organization system), a built-in dice tray, plenty of storage for dice, and the following contents: 
  • 800+ Standees
  • Custom sleeves for the standees 
  • 26x 25mm bases (with 52 reversible terrain art inserts)
  • 6x 50mm bases (with 12 reversible terrain art inserts)
  • 4x 75mm bases (with 8 reversible terrain art inserts)
  • Dungeon, Tudor, and Wilderness Tray of Terrain Starter(including map tiles)
  • All of the unlocked Community Achievements during the campaign




Pledge at the Vaultstrider level to receive the Vault of Mini Things as well as a handsome case for transporting the Vault in comfort and style. The Vault is equipped with the Creature Catalog (tabbed organization system), a built in dice tray, and plenty of storage for dice. It also includes: 
  • 800+ Standees
  • Custom sleeves for the standees
  • 26x 25mm bases (with 52 reversible art inserts)
  • 6x 50mm bases (with 12 reversible art inserts)
  • 4x 75mm bases (with 8 reversible art inserts)
  • Dungeon, Tudor, and Wilderness Tray of Terrain Starter(including map tiles)
  • All of the unlocked Community Achievements during the campaign

The custom carrying case features:
  • Hand and Shoulder Strap
  • Storage for additional Tray of Terrain
  • Compartment for books and notepads
  • Clips for maps
  • Exterior Pockets for dice and drinks
  • Durable polyester fabric construction


Are you a retailer interested in bringing the Vault to your customers? We'd love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] for more information.

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If you want even more content to secure in your Vault, good news: we’ve designed it to be able to hold even more terrain and standees. We've also provided an option to upgrade your dice tray to a beautiful wooden version.

Pouches of Mini Things

The Pouch of Mini Things add-ons are built around themes. They’re curated collections of standees that gamemasters often want to have more of, or are environment-limited specialists deserving of a standalone package.



Trays of Terrain

The Tray of Terrain add-ons are cleverly designed to swap-out with the starter Tray of Terrain included in the Vault. Each Tray will neatly slot right into that space with oodles of terrain and standee props for a number of thematic environments.







The Hardwood Dice Tray Add-on

Our Hardwood Dice Tray’s patent-would-be-pending-if-we-weren’t-so-busy-with-this-campaign design facilitates a swift scoop after every roll. The time savings are obvious, but consider also the comfort: less joint strain, lower danger of carpal tunnel injuries, and reduced incidence of blunt trauma to fingernails (these claims have not been evaluated by an attorney). For real, though: we anticipate what we’re calling the Marshall Method™ tray design to be all the rage among premium tabletop accessory makers once these get out into the wild.
We reached out to Green Fox not just for their beautiful craftsmanship, but also because we want to support fellow small businesses within our community. When we asked if they’d be up for building the dice tray that fits in the Vault of Mini Things they jumped at the opportunity. So know that when you select this Add-on, it will be hand built after the campaign ends by lovely folks who are proud to enhance your gaming experience.

And as backers, you’ll have first-dibs on Marshall Method™ ramped dice trays. Only after the campaign ends and all backer rewards have been delivered will Green Fox make them available in their online store. Meanwhile, you can see all of their currently-available wares here: https://www.greenfoxwoodworking.com/ 

 
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Thanks to the magic of economies of scale the more folks back this campaign, the more value we can add to the Vault. More monsters. More NPCs. Alternate colors for more variety. More terrain pieces. More options, for more adventures.

Backerkit handles stretch goals a little differently. They call them "Achievements", for one thing. More importantly: the Backerkit platform has a dedicated section in the UI to highlight and track progress. This is much better, in our opinion, because instead of looking for changes and campaign progress here on the main page you can instead simply check the dynamic page devoted solely to this campaign's Achievements. You can find this section under community. Here is a direct link to the Community Achievements. 



We will highlight each stretch goal in detail via campaign updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But we can't achieve these achievements without your help. So spread the word on your favorite message boards. Share the campaign to your socials. Consider gifting a Vault to a friend, loved one, or gaming club. Get your friendly local game store on board. Together, we can add many more things to the Vault of Mini Things!
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A place for everything, and everything in its place. 


The Vault of Mini Things contains vast wonders, but it’s much more than a simple box. It’s a thoughtfully designed organization system, sized for convenient storage and transport.


A huge variety of minis is any GM’s dream, but they’re useless if a particular mini can’t be located quickly and easily. That’s why we’ve taken a cue from our personal Magic: The Gathering card collection and integrated a system of sleeved organization. Small and Medium-sized standees fit into custom double-pocketed card sleeves, while Large standees get a sleeve of their own. The base of each mini is color-coded for easy sorting into general categories: Heroes, NPCs, Animals, Foes, and so on. The categories are subdivided via tabbed dividers for quick & easy discovery during setup and play.



We utilize that same tab divider system in a separate area of the Vault for game masters to set aside encounters and locations. So when the party arrives at the dungeon’s guard room or returns to the town’s tavern, you'll have all the creatures and monsters at that location ready to go. This functionality also lets you “save” the game at the end of a session by taking every mini on the table and conveniently storing them all in the same tabbed section.

Of course, we’ve included plenty of room for you to add additional standees. Available as a Pouch of Mini Things that you can add-on once you pledge,  as well as future expansions that we plan to release. 

Because we intend this to be used on the table during a session the Vault comes with a tray for rolling dice. The dice tray lifts out to reveal more storage for dice, standee bases, terrain inserts, and anything else you can think of to enhance your players' experience. You can also upgrade your tray with a beautiful hardwood tray from Green Fox Woodworking available as an add-on item.


Tray of Terrain

TinkerHouse Games is known for high-quality, full-color tabletop terrain–and the Vault contains a tray for storing exactly that. The tray included with the Vault of Mini Things comes with a GM’s toolkit of starter terrain for dungeon, village, and wilderness encounters.


Behold the assortment of walls, map tiles, and props included with the Vault of Mini Things:



Want even more dungeons, village, or wilderness? Or terrain for ruins or graveyards? These adventure environments are available as Add-ons for this campaign. Each Tray of Terrain is the exact size of the Tray included with the Vault, allowing for hot-swapping of trays so your Vault can be equipped with whatever terrain your party will explore next.


An Army of Art

How is it possible to fit hundreds of heroes and monsters inside a board game-sized box? By packing them flat. 2-D standees mounted on industry standard-sized bases deliver the tactical precision and vivid visualization that some encounters and games demand, without requiring bulky carrying cases–or any time or effort to paint.





All those fantastical creatures require fantastic artwork. That’s why TinkerHouse Games teamed up with Marshall Short, who has been creating tabletop RPG art for years on a Patreon supported by thousands of players. 

"I realize that not everyone has the resource nor the time to print, cut, and assemble Printable Heroes miniatures themselves so I'm incredibly excited at the opportunity to provide a pre-printed, pre-cut and easy to assemble alternative for folks to get neat looking miniatures on their tabletops and get to the fun part of telling their stories."
- Marshall Short, Printable Heroes
Standee sizes example.


We’ve applied our 100+ collective years of game mastering experience to select over 800 standees representing the variety of heroes, NPCs, animals, and monsters encountered in a fantasy world. Small, medium, large, and truly enormous creatures are all contained in the Vault, each fitting into bases compatible with any 1-inch grid battlemat or terrain tile system. And the Vault’s bases come with a custom twist: they’re engineered to fit a two-sided, full-color terrain puck, allowing a figure’s base to show dungeon floor, wood floor, wilderness, or urban cobblestone.

Feast your eyes on the below samples of art included in the Vault of Mini Things. It's a long scroll, yet it doesn't include each and every color variation or works-in-progress. Community Achievements can add even more heroes and monsters to this already-vast catalog!


























Art for the Female Hill Giant, Male Stone Giant, Male Frost Giant, Female Fire Giant, Female Cloud Giant, Male Storm Giant to come.










Art for small, medium, & large silhouettes in both bipedal and quadrupedal to come.
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A project of this scale requires a truly huge number of art assets. Fortunately, by virtue of the fact that we're drawing upon an art library that's been built up over the past eight years almost all of that art is already complete. When our campaign closes we will need some time to finalize art elements for manufacturing and add any additional features from stretch goals; we anticipate final pre-production work to take 6-8 weeks and then we go into manufacturing. Once manufacturing is completed we ship out to our fulfillment partners, and then the products ship out to you. We estimate late summer/early fall of 2024 for delivery to be complete. Updates will be posted on this campaign page throughout the pre-production, manufacturing, and fulfilment process--twice a month.


Shipping and VAT charges will be charged separately through the pledge manager after the campaign ends. We will do our best to keep you updated on any changes to shipping costs. Below are some shipping estimates, and are meant to be a rough idea based on similarly weighted and packaged products, so you are not blindsided by shipping fees in the pledge manager. We will provide more details below if you want to know why your particular country has the shipping charges that it does. All prices are listed in USD:

United States: $10-16
Zone A: Canada, the EU 27, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ukraine; $26-$39, includes VAT/GST!
Zone B: Australia, Gibraltar, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Serbia, Turkey; $36-$55, before import fees.
Zone C: Everywhere else (other than the Forbidden Zone list below); $69-$98, before import fees.

For backers in the United States: We will charge you sales tax if you live in any of the states where we have a Sales Tax Nexus. Currently that is Missouri and Washington.

For backers in Zone A: VAT/GST and import fees are included in the shipping cost estimates quoted above and will be charged in the pledge manager at the same time as shipping. For EU 27 backers, your products will ship from within the EU and not be subject to any fees on delivery. For Canada, we will mark all labels as "bill taxes and duties to shipper", which means that FedEx should bill us. However, in our experience, FedEx will mess that up for some of the shipments - if that happens, just reach out to us. We don't believe that there will be any fees for the non-EU, non-Canada backers in Zone A, but if there are, we'll refund you.

For backers in Zone B and Zone C: You may have customs charges on import that you will be responsible for paying - it depends on your local laws and regulations.

Finally, unfortunately, there are a small number of countries to which it is impossible for us to ship. If your shipping address is in such a "Forbidden Zone" country we will be forced to cancel and refund your pledge. We wish we could send games everywhere, but it’s not always possible. The current list of “Forbidden” countries is: Belarus, Brazil, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Antarctica (which isn't technically a country, but is certainly a place to which we cannot ship). We hope the list doesn’t grow any more, but if it does, we’ll update it here.


The risks and challenges fall into these categories:

Non-completion.
For some overall reason we are unable to complete this project.

Production challenges or shipping and customs issues.
Our product is made in China. A tariff in excess of 50% or a ban on Chinese imports would seriously delay delivery and/or, in a worse case, shutdown this project entirely. In the worst case scenario, we will do our best to issue refunds to backers, minus any expenses we may have already paid into the production.

Concerning the risk of Non-completion: we've already completed a couple of crowdfunding projects of a similar caliber and are aware of most of the pitfalls. Two things that could cause the non-completion of this crowdfunding are either the loss of our inbound shipments or a disaster at our fulfillment warehouse.

We have learned from our previous crowdfunding efforts that delays sometimes occur. Delays are an inherent risk for any project that involves third-party suppliers and overseas shipping. Some delays we have control over, other delays are out of our control, such as US Customs and Border Protection and labor strikes. We will do everything possible to avoid delays and will always update you as soon as possible if we run into any issues.

It is possible that additional tariffs, or even a possible ban on goods from China may befall us. This is a worse case scenario situation, and will be approached in much the same way as any other delay issue.

Lastly there is a possibility that we create different artwork or may not produce a specific item as shown. We have yet to run into this issue, but in the event it happens you will have plenty of time to adjust your pledge in the pledge manager. Also, we reserve the right to modify any part of the product shown to meet cost and production requirements. Modifications may include the removal or addition of new parts to the product.


We will have the pledge manager up and running soon after the end of the campaign. If you do not log in and confirm your pledge in our pledge manager by August 31st, 2023 you agree that we have fulfilled our obligations to you in full for payment or donations received. Unconfirmed pledges make it difficult for us to plan production and logistics. If you confirm your pledge late (after August 31st, 2023) we will make an effort to fulfill your reward, but some items may no longer be available.

You are required to maintain updated shipping address information and ensure this address is deliverable by normal methods before your rewards are shipped.

You must have your address correct and up to date in the pledge manager when we announce that shipping is beginning. You may change it at any time until then. There may be a shipping surcharge associated if you change the “ship to” country. Rewards returned to us as undeliverable will be shipped again postage prepaid by the Backer.


We will refund your entire pledge amount if a request is made within 14 days of the closing of this crowdfunding. After 14 days, but before the closing of our pledge manager, we will refund your pledge minus a 10% fee that we will have incurred. Once our pledge manager closes, refund requests are subject to review and may not be and may not be granted.


About TinkerHouse Games

TinkerHouse Games was founded with the mission to help tabletop players get to the fun, faster. We have years of experience designing and engineering full-color, easy-to-assemble terrain for sci-fi wargames and are excited to expand into tabletop fantasy RPGs. We are putting our learned experience and past crowdfunding successes together with the existing Printable Heroes art catalog to bring you an incredible toolkit for epic adventures.
 

Who is behind this project:

Mike Fehlauer Hayes
My journey with D&D began in the early 80’s as a 1st grader, when I was recruited by my older siblings to crayon-in the numbers on the included dice of the D&D box set. Once those dice hit the table I knew I’d be playing that game for the rest of my life. A big part of my adult career has been devoted to sharing the joy of tabletop gaming: by founding the PAX game festivals, launching the Acquisitions Inc liveplay series, and funding efforts exploring the therapeutic benefits of RPGs. Since becoming a dad my greatest joy is going on fantastic tabletop adventures with my own kids. My hope is for the Vault to empower DMs new and old to realize their creative potential, and bring their amazing visions to life.
 
Chris Marshall
As a kid in the 80’s I was an avid artist. My D&D adventure started with an art contest at my local game store where I ended up winning a $100 shopping spree that I immediately spent on as much D&D stuff as it could find. Unfortunately all of those books and stuff ended up going away due to the “Moral Panic” and my younger self ended up losing interest. I kept drawing, became a graphic designer, maker, entrepreneur, and an avid tabletop gamer. My interest in the tabletop gaming industry is driven by the desire to bring people together and put smiles on faces. The joy and inclusiveness of this industry is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before and I can’t wait to share those experiences with my kids. 
 
Lane Daughtry
Tell me if this sounds familiar… I grew up fascinated with RPGs and wargaming. My early loves were Rolemaster, Earthdawn, and of course D&D (AD&D to be specific). Necromunda and later Mordheim were my intro to minis gaming, and that has been a deep, deep well to dive down. In the decades since I've always been interested in how to make it easier to get to the table. More streamlined. That led to helping to develop TinkerTurf for wargaming terrain, but I also always knew I wanted a quick to the table and compelling mini's and terrain solution for RPGs too. Helping to develop the Vault has been a great joy, and I can't wait to get it into everyone's hands!
 
Marshall Short
I grew up playing D&D and Warhammer (Necromunda if we wanna get specific) in the mid 90s and by "playing" I mean dreaming up worlds, making terrain, and painting miniatures for my friends. Somewhere along the line I discovered that I'm really at my best when I'm creating things for my friends and I feel incredibly fortunate that I've somehow stumbled into getting to do that every single day. I really hope you enjoy the Vault; it's chock full of literally hundreds of heroes, monsters (my favorite, don't tell the heroes), props, and terrain that I’ve made over the years. May they help you tell your stories with your friends and family!

If you believe that this project is not in compliance with BackerKit’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service, you can file a report by sending a message via this link: Report this project