Gotlandia is my boardgame under development about sheep, pirates, and overly embellished churches. Players trade resources for silver in Visby, so the game needs a decent amount of tokens to represent silver coins. So far I have made do with coins printed and glued on cardboard then cut with scissors. Cutting circles in heavy cardboard is tedious but the coins really need some thickness to be easy to pick up from the table when you play. So I’ve been looking for a better way to create coins.
You can find generic coins for prototyping in webshops for boardgame designers, but they don’t give the flavour I’m looking for. The town of Visby on Gotland minted its own silver coin called 'penning' since the 12th century. Thematically it is very appropriate with custom silver coins for Gotlandia.
Cutting things with a laser
Over the summer I ran in to some nice people at FolkLab in Hallunda who have a community workshop with a laser cutter. They have been using this to create among other things boardgames, so it was obvious to ask if they could help.
We discussed recently how it could be done and decided to cut the coins from 2 mm acrylic plastic with two layers of paint, one black and one silver. Yesterday we had a go.
I had prepared the acrylic plate and the image to be imprinted on the coins. Mats from FolkLab helped trim the image and calibrate the laser to match the thickness of the paint layers. Once adjusted to burn to the right depth, the engraving on the front and the numbers popped up nicely. The back is blank.
After a couple of hours, I came home with a decent handful of nice looking coins ready for playtesting. It took around 15 minutes to engrave and cut out 20-30 coins once everything was set up.
The flip side of the coin
Quality wise the process is sensitive to having an even coating of paint, something to be aware of next time I prepare a plate. It will also be easier to calibrate the laser with two layers of paint for both black and silver.
We did not get a smooth cut on the reverse side of the coin (the blank backside). As the plastic closest to the paint layer melts, the edges curve up. Some even got burn marks. Mats had some ideas we can try out next time. As I recall the issue was due to the silver layer reflecting the laser making it harder to hit the exact speed and power required for a clean cut.
For a boardgame prototype, the result is great. For a commercial game, I can see why you will want to engage with people who do this for a living, there are many details to be on top of. It would have taken me a good deal of trial and error to get to a point where I could do this myself without help.
Thank you Hallunda FolkLab!
Coins with character
As a side note, historically, coins were not perfect. Minting coins were a manual process and output would vary. During the early days of the transition from trading coins for their silver value by weight to taking a coin for its face value, less honest persons would shave off material from the side of the coin. Round coins could end up as squares. As counter measure, minters introduced patterns around the edge of the coin.
For Gotlandia, it is not important that the coins are perfectly circular or that two coins of the same denomination are indistinguishable. In fact, it adds authenticity if coins have each their individual flaws.