(from One Monk's news page, April 1st 2010 ..and no, this isn't an April Fools gag)
After much thought and deliberation, I have decided to to change my hobby back into a hobby, and provide my designs for free download for all who want them.
I really want to thank those of you who have supported me over the years by purchasing my figure sets, and I hope they were of a good value to you. My decision to go free will hopefully not anger some of you who had purchased my figures in the past. Having a little boost to my income was a great help, especially as I transitioned from a high paying stress filled job, to a lower paying, but much more rewarding job in the adventure gaming industry. Now that I am a bit more established in my position at my new job, I no longer have such a great need for the extra income, and have lost my drive to design more stuff to sell.
So, what I want to do, is offer everything I have designed, and will design from here on out for free. This will allow me to design whatever I want. I can design figures based on published games, movies or TV characters, roleplaying games and more. Having this burden off my shoulders will allow me to do what's FUN! and that's designing super cool amazing miniatures that can be printed and cutout by anyone.
Some of you probably already know I have a huge collection of pewter miniatures, but I completely understand the "sitcker shock" that new gamers, especially young gamers, feel when they walk into a game store. With the average price of a single character mini being somewhere around $5 not including paint and brushes, and with that cost multiplied by at least 20 for tabletop fantasy wargaming or stocking a dungeon, and with the general state of the economy now, this could not have happened at a better time.
There are dozens of free or nearly-free fantasy roleplaying and tabletop wargaming rules available on the internet. I've mentioned several on this blog even. With those kinds of resources, and with free game-aides like One Monk's paper minis, all a kid needs is a pencil, some paper, a computer and printer..and maybe some dice.
And if you don't have dice, you can download and print some of those too.
