Our Favourite Tabletop RPG Props

Adding a few props to a tabletop RPG game can be a lot of fun. The props shown here are our personal favourites at present. All except the very latest technologies have been tried out over several years and most are best used sparingly. Props tend to lose their effect if the Gamesmaster (GM) turns up looking like an extra from yet another Harry Potter movie.

Candy

There’s candy and candy. A few skull-shaped milk gums are OK but there’s a lot more on offer out there if you look around. Bleeding hearts, exploding jelly skulls and large edible spiders are all highly recommended. We wouldn’t advise too much at one go and it takes a bit of searching to get more interesting or unique items. Candy Warehouse, home to Candy Blood Cherry Liquid Bags and the classic  Apple Flavored Green Candy Warts, is a good place to start, (with a categories search), but don’t show the kids; this is extreme candy!

Thanks to Patrick Nijhuis over at SXC for the image

This one is definitely not for kids! To see candy props taken about as far as possible go to Youtube and watch Heston Blumenthal preparing a graveyard dessert in the last twenty minutes of his ‘Gothic’ show. We’re not going to give a direct link, as clear caution that some adults could find it offensive. We’ll be back to the food shortly but Heston’s work doesn’t fit into our Horrible Food category. His work is part chef, part urban art and part industrial chemistry.

Figures

Schleich, Safari and Papo sell large, pre-painted figures and scenery. The figures are too large and too expensive for players who want a figure for every encounter. However, they are ideal for creating a ‘line up’ of player characters and youngsters are likely to be impressed with and enjoy playing with these kinds of figures on the table. It’s worth adding some out-sized dice to match. Earlier posts with links to Schleich, Papo and Safari figures are HERE and HERE.
Boardgames

Boardgame accessories, counters and pieces are an excellent source of props. Dice, wooden counters, plastic counters, ‘Casino’ chips, coins and plastic tokens are just some of the inexpensive extras available from specialist suppliers. Some boardgames that you already have in your games collection may even lend themselves to this, e.g. Dread Pirate is a simple introductory boardgame, which trades almost entirely on it’s piratical ‘look and feel’.

We were so impressed with the custom dice sets available HERE that we’ve e-mailed the company to ask if they’ll let us do a full post on their dice and use their images.

The Great American Coin Company is a must visit for any GM. Most of the replicas and props are too expensive for many gamers. Nevertheless, there’s no harm in getting a few ideas on how to design your own replicas and mock-ups using pencils or a computer. Go HERE to take a look but leave the credit card outside the room!

Touch Tablets

The iPad, recent Android phones and a swathe of touch tablets on the way from HP, Dell and others are starting to show their worth. GM utilities and character-building apps are beginning to appear, rule sets are getting passed around the table in PDF and web browser formats, and many mobile phones already have dice apps built in.

It can be fun to take an occasional break from tabletop RPG play by dropping the players’ characters into short, rules-light strategy games like Agricola, Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. We’ve posted on these games before, as they don’t take long to learn, are quite quick to play and often reward clear thinking. Those named, and similar boardgame conversions, are ideally suited to touch tablet gameplay in terms of being easy to pass round, clutter-free, intuitive to use and suited to a 10″ display.

Catan is already out in a variety of mobile formats

Horrible Food

Serving up some horrible or at least questionable looking food during breaks goes down a treat, so long as the food actually tastes good. The Celebrity in the Jungle Bushtucker Trial approach is not good, because making players eat mustard and chilli powder isn’t really that funny. Leave the poisoning up to the celebrities and serve up an Orcs’ Stew or a Devil’s Cheesecake as a mystery meal. I’d happily drink a beaker of Sulphuric Acid Swig from HERE but I wouldn’t spoil it with concentrate.

‘Hands-On’ Puzzles

The Happy Puzzle Company is an excellent source of learning games for UK players. There are some gameplay gems among the candy-coated learning. For example, the Scrambled Egg Silhouette Puzzle could be used to give players who construct certain shapes a selection of optional extra powers. Perhaps not something you’d want in every session but potentially amusing if your players like occasional puzzles.

The Happy Puzzle Company also have books which specialise in particular types of puzzles. It’s generally not a good idea to make completing puzzles either central to play or ‘mission critical’, but ‘Brain Boosting Lateral Thinking Puzzles’ and ‘Brain Boosting Sequence Puzzles’ can add a bit of variety to general gameplay.

3D Printers

HP’s 3D printers are capable of turning plastics into just about any shape imaginable. At $15,000+ the startup and running costs are beyond most consumers and many RPG businesses for the time being. Nevertheless, 3D prototype printing can create all kinds of customised scenery, layouts, figures and models, and it won’t be long before costs start to come down.

The original 2D laser printers cost many thousands, so costs should come down fast and competitors are already offering basic 3D plastics printers in the region of $5000. Actual designs are likely to be inexpensive, as free Google Sketchup 3D Design software and a CADspan plugin can already help to prepare plans for some 3D systems. Designs are then easily shared or sold.

We will, of course, be waiting for the extra shiny, colour model after learning that the HP Designjet Color 3D Printer can print in ivory, black, red, olive green, nectarine, fluorescent yellow, blue and gray. For now, that’s still just one colour per piece of plastic but it wouldn’t be hard to make click or screw together figures and scenery. The lack of a flesh colour is a bit of problem with figures. Click together scenery and architecture is a different matter, as eight colours is enough to make impressive ‘print-outs’.

It shouldn’t be long before we’ll all be able to collect inexpensive, custom, multi-coloured fantasy figures. Quick thinking games stores with a few ICT skills might be able to add value to their businesses through these devices, as offering designs, printing others’ designs and marketing a potentially limitless product range is potentially profitable. High quality, custom single colour figures are already HERE. Traveller and Rogue Trader players probably want to take a look HERE.

Temporary Tattoos

Most players can put on temporary water-based tattoos without any problems. Sharks, serpents, pirates, monsters and legendary creatures are among the packs we’ve tried out. Kids love them and they can last a few days if you put them in the right places, e.g. the inside of a forearm. Rather obviously, don’t stick six on one child until you’ve checked that the first one doesn’t cause a rash. Beyond two or three days it’s generally advisable to wash them off. We’ve previously linked to some good quality temporary tattoos HERE.