Amazing that just about one year ago, thanks to you this project was kicked into gear. Huzzah for the anniversary! Huzzah for the Vaulter community! Huzzah for the Vault of Mini Things!
This update features an in-depth look at standee tabs as well as a community poll for its name. The update also shows off new Marshall art, and answers some excellent questions from the Vaulter community.
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Let's talk tabs.
Absolutely Tabulous
The Vault is not just a big box of loose stuff. It’s designed to save time and effort via what we consider to be a clever and intuitive organization system. The most fundamental element of that system is the tab at the bottom of each standee.
More than just a piece that lets the base grip the standee and hold it upright, the Vault’s tabs convey crucial information. Each standee’s color-coded tab tells you which category that standee belongs to, where it goes within that category alphabetically, and a unique number. All combined, each standee has a unique identifier that lets future adventure authors specify particular Vault standees. We’re also planning on hosting a living online reference doc that’s searchable, so that you and your players can look up creatures and quickly discover where they are in your Vault. This reference will be updated over time as we release new expansions.
The red lines are representing the die tooling cut lines.
We agonized over just what information to include, factoring in space limitations, localization, ease-of-use, and expandability. To clarify our various ideas, we put the focus on the customer and identified these priorities:
1. As a Vault user I need to be able to quickly find the standees I want.
2. As a Vault user I need to be able to quickly organize my standees at the end of the session, so that next session I can achieve priority 1.
3. As a Vault user I need to be able to do the above two things after I've included any expansion products.
To accomplish those priorities, we identified these functional requirements:
1. A user needs to be able to determine the category and identity of desired standee(s)
2. A user needs to be able to find that category.
3. A user needs to be able to find the standee in that category.
4. A user needs to be able to find standees across multiple products.
In the end we determined that the best solution is to follow this format:
CA L ###
Where CA is an abbreviation of one of the Vault’s categories, such as, “Heroes”, “Animals, “Foes”, etc. These categories provide the initial organizational “buckets” the standees are sorted into.
Next we have L, this is the first letter of the creature’s name and allows for more specific alphabetical sorting within the categories. All the As, all the Bs, the Cs, etc.
Let’s pretend we’re trying to find a Black Bear Standee for a wildness encounter we have planned. Bears are animals so we’d first goto the Animal category, Bear starts with B so let’s head for the B section of the Animal category, ahh there it is, right next to the Bats and Beetles, a Black Bear with "AN B 2" on the tab, AN for Animal and B for Bear. Nice.
But wait, what’s the 2 all about?
This brings us to the last element of our sorting system and that’s unique reference ### numbers for every standee. There maybe many "AN Bs" but there’s only one "AN B 2" and that’s the Black Bear!
So, why have unique reference ### numbers, and why not just print the full name for each creature? Primary reason is space limitation. These tabs are not very large and some names are lengthy. But also, it’s just faster and easier to sort by a system rather than by a name. After all, the inspiration for the Creature Catalog system, of which the tabs are a crucial part, is the library Card Catalog or Dewey Decimal System. Remember those? You’d first find the section (fiction, nonfiction, etc) then the authors, and once you found the Cs you’d just look through to find your authors name–whether it be Crichton or Card.
We’d love your feedback on this, though we’re pretty committed. And! We’ve got a poll at the bottom of this update for you to choose the cheeky three-letter-acronym for the tab itself.
Marshall Art
But first, some new hotness from the digital pen of Marshall Short. The usual caveats that these are print prototypes, not necessarily indicative of the Vault’s form-factor and materials, etc.
The Red Dragon!
Angels!
Little Angels!
Groceries?
So you need a knife and an axe. You've come to the right place!!
Vaulter Community Q&A
Update 25 prompted some great questions, and rather than have folks search through comments we thought we’d answer them here:
Q: Jeff asked,
Still very curious about the base. Looks nice in the gifs. Is the connection snug enough that you can hold it by the art and not have the base fall off? Training players to only move a mini by the base is difficult.
A: We’re actually super proud of the engineering that went into our custom bases. Job one was to overcome your worry: to have a base that gripped the standee such that you can confidently move them as you intuitively want to, by grabbing the standee. But! Just as important was for that snug fit to not come at the cost of long-term damage to the standee from multiple insertions. That’s why our standees have carefully angled contours that safely guide the standee tab into an ever-tightening gap. The benefit is that standees insert easily, bases grip snugly, and damage-over-time is vastly minimized.
The top is the alignment and the recess on the bottom makes it easy to push the base insert to pop it out of the base.
These is one of our 3D printed bases with the reversible POG insert.
I assume that the red lines in the test output image are cut lines? If so, then wow, looks like we are getting some great detail there, even more than is really shown in the image as there are cutaway sections instead of black fill.
A: Good eye, and that’s right! Tinker Lane wrote custom software that examines each and every work of Marshall art, and then draws a dieline at uniform distance. It even identifies interior dielines, so that the Vault standees will have actual airgaps. Then Tinker Chris goes over each and every individual standee and manually adjusts when necessary to ensure the minis look the best they can be while also being sturdy and stable.
Q: Jblu asked,
I'm wondering why you use thick carboard instead of thin one like printable heroes.
Thick and thin can be subjective, so let’s get technical. For terrain pieces like walls and trees, we use 2mm chipboard. For creature standees and small props / dungeon dressing like torch stands and chests we use 310gsm weight cardstock–similar in feel to Magic cards. We use these two different materials because chipboard gives a confidence-inspiring heft to elements that should be stable, like dungeon walls. While cardstock allows us to include hundreds of minis at an affordable price, without taking up too much space.
Q: Borie Florent asked,
I was wondering if you can tell us the size of the box ?
Subject to change, but: right now the box is 295mm by 295mm by 170mm.
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That’s all for this update! Thank you for the understanding for the shipping delay–your ongoing support is an inspiration and morale boost. Even with the adjustment we’re in the home stretch now. The 20% of final details that take 80% of the time are getting locked down one by one. And with each to-do crossed off, the whole team here gets more and more excited about finally getting it in your hands.
