Quote from: BarefootGaijin;792841Apart from that, "stuff" seems to get in the way.

I've found that.  Various gimmicks over the years have fallen flat.  Realistic-looking prop maps?  Cool, the players say coolly, but aren't nearly jazzed enough for the work that goes into them.  Prop scrolls, complete with charring?  Much the same.  Things I do use?

* I am a staunch partisan of Chessex battlemats.  I use two, and the one I've owned the least amount of time is 25+ years old.  I could spend a great deal of time and money putting together dioramas, or I can do a quick sketch with wet-erase markers on the mat.

* SJ Games had cheap minis called Cardboard Heroes, once upon a time.  I never used the figures themselves, owning a large collection of lead minis, but the sets came with a good many 2-D full-color props: chests, "dropped" weapons, heaps of treasure, and the like.  I use *those* extensively.  Along with those, I've got a small box of teensy colored rocks -- we're talking 3-10 mm.  I get a fistful and toss them onto the map to represent broken terrain, works just fine.

* I've noted folks citing dry-erase boards for quick sketches and suchlike.  But honestly, I'm a fan of the plain old pad of white note paper.  Those provide sketches and notes that can stick around for years, if need be.

* I've never used a DM screen -- I've felt it to be a barrier between me and the players.  Instead, on my stand to my left, I've got a thin 3-ring binder with the pertinent charts and tables, marked with color-coded tabs which I can flip open in a twinkling.

* Save everything.  Everything.  All your adventure notes?  Stuff them in a folder.  NPC sheets?  Stuff those in a folder.  Make copies of PC sheets, and stuff those in a folder too.  Quite aside from the nostalgia factor of gazing at your campaign's past, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the road you'll be stuck for a plotline, and there it'll be.  Or you find you really need a key NPC and you don't feel like developing a personality, putting skills together, whipping up equipment ... but your buddy Sarah ran a great healer back a dozen years ago, and you remember a half-dozen quirky traits her character had off the top of your head, and hey! here's Magistra Elorie's sheet right here!  

Saved my bacon a number of times, I can tell you.

For minis, just use chess pieces. Cheap, plentiful, distinct, come in two colors to distinguish PCs/allies from antagonists, and abstract enough to force the players to use their underworked imaginations.

Excellent ideas guys.

Stuff I use:

Beer caps (reversed so the "top" is on the bottom) marked with numbers make great minions or monster tokens when you don't have any.

Laminated grid: In one of the core 3.5 books they give you this decent sized grid to use for your games. I laminated it (using the white plain grid) and put a plexi-glass cutout on top with dry-erase markers. This makes tracking spell areas, traps, hazards, and room details really easy instead of using the "official" maps and tiles WotC sells. Also, you can still use tiles from WotC and put the plexi-glass on top of that so it doesn't move when dice are being thrown around.

Plastic dice box: Sometimes when you buy dice they come in this little plastic box with a bottom. We often use these empty things to put our minis on to represent flying or height to add a 3D element to the game.

Sound effects: With technology becoming easier to access and smaller in size it's fun to cue up special sound effects on your smart-phone, ipod, ipad, mp3 player and use those little speakers they sell. I used this for one of our Halloween adventures with creaking doors, flying bats, moaning zombies, etc. Adds a special element to your game.

Reflavor / Refluff: By the time you've gamed with your friends or group long enough to know they're birthdays and kid's birthdays (which is irksome when they miss sessions due to it) it often becomes harder to deceive them from normal threats. For example, an adventuring party meets a warband of Orcs. There's a level of "Oh, yea we know how to bring these guys down." that's more from a player's perspective than a character's one. BUT when you reflavor them as some abhorrent monster with tentacles, fangs, and other visuals, they often get taken aback and approach the situation with FAR more caution, even if the monsters have the same exact "stats" as your orc warband.

Countdowns: In certain situations when you want to make things really dramatic, try employing a countdown to the encounter. And make it visual. I like to use a d8 or d10, ticking it off as rounds go by or perhaps when a player  does something good or bad or even the monster. For example, in our 4E Forgotten Realms game the PCs were attempting to stop a undead "ex"-cleric of Amaunator (wearing the Crown of Horns) who was slowly turning the second sun over Elurgard into a black sun that would give un-life to the thousands of bodies littered across the Field of the Dead in the Western Heartlands (for those FR enthusiasts here). The ritual was set into motion as the PCs faced off against him and each round that went by the d12 slowly ticked away. When the evil cleric would spend his turn furthering the spell, I'd tick off an additional point. Soon it became a "lets STOP that thing" instead of the often usual systematic slaying of monster then BBEG the players often employed.

Yeah, while I like the idea of LEGO minis, my concern is getting sucked into trying to represent everything. That's one area where I prefer dry erase, the ease of sketching out a map fast.

Quote from: Will;793152Yeah, while I like the idea of LEGO minis, my concern is getting sucked into trying to represent everything. That's one area where I prefer dry erase, the ease of sketching out a map fast.

One important thing to keep in mind when using Legos:

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!!!  

Quote from: Will;793152Yeah, while I like the idea of LEGO minis, my concern is getting sucked into trying to represent everything. That's one area where I prefer dry erase, the ease of sketching out a map fast.

Yeah, simplicity is the whole key to using tools. If it takes forever to set up and use, then it's probably best not to. It's one of the reasons why I don't like tiles. For one, they don't connect so any movement to the table, board, etc. from dice or bumps instantly messes the whole thing up. It's sort of a pet peeve of mine. Dry erase is much easier, just re-draw it.

Yeah, and watching the GM roll up her mat for next time... muuuch easier.

Still, man. So many LEGOs.

My ideal, I suppose, would be somehow making a LEGO flat which you could draw on.

Hmm. Maybe something transparent, with a plastic sheet backing, and you draw on the underside and shows through?

Index Cards for containers. Write "Oaken Chest X" on the back of an index card, perhaps with the word "Locked" under it. On the front, put any trap on the top line, then the contents of the chest below. Your notes include Chest X and the type of trap as well. Place the card face down on the table when found. If the players search for traps or try something to trigger any traps safely, your notes help you determine what happened. If not, and they just open it right away, they turn over the card and see immediately what happened, or what the chest contains.

Do the same for bags and sacks. Small bags can hold two items no larger than a dagger. Large sacks and backpacks hold up to six items around the size of a helmet. Instead of tracking weight, you can just count lines, with one item per line. Full bags weigh the same as a 5 pound bag of sugar, full sacks weight the same as a 30 pound bag of potatoes.

Use index cards to track which hand(s) a character has free. If carrying a bag or sack, place the card in front of the player. You can use index cards for shields, torches and lanterns, too. Anyone with only one card in front of them can draw a one-handed weapon, while those with no cards can use a two-hand weapon. To free up a hand, the player moves one card to the center of the table to represent dropped items, which anyone can grab later.

Track lighting on Torch Cards. Put a d6 on the card to represent the turn number when the torch is lit. GM can use a d6 to track the turn number, changing the number showing every turn. Whenever a torch's die result matches the GM's die, that torch goes out. Lanterns only go outevery eight hours, so they really don't need to be fussed over.

If no player has a torch or lantern card on the table, there's no light.

Egg Timer. (any clock timer, too)

Pacing is always a challenge as there's this temporal vortex in the middle of any public speaking. Also, when really in the zone it's hard to pull yourself out of it and keep on task, especially if the group split up.

And especially with splitting up, a great way to equitably distribute time and hold to it, very "set it and forget it."

Quote from: Opaopajr;793214Egg Timer. (any clock timer, too)

I had a hour glass (well actually a minute or so glass) that I used. I liked the old school feel of the sands slipping through the hourglass. Plus the players could see time passing.

Quote from: Bren;793215I had a hour glass (well actually a minute or so glass) that I used. I liked the old school feel of the sands slipping through the hourglass. Plus the players could see time passing.

It has a nice feel, but it's so quiet... After too many unhappy games of competitive Pictionary and the like (I mean, honestly, who takes Pictionary seriously?), it's easy to get in the zone and space on keeping an eye on the timer. But mainly I need the noise when managing groups that split up.

Otherwise, yeah, hourglasses are classier.

also for buff intensive games like 3.5

We had folded Index cards that had bonuses written on them with the type so If some one cast bless the Bless Index card would go on the table with Bonus and type on each side so everyone could see it.

Made life easier. Might be cool to do ones with conditions and just set it in front of players when they are effected. It would list restrictions etc.

A long time ago, I mapped out each room in a (smallish) dungeon so each room could be revealed as entered and laid out on the table.  A lot of work, since it was the 80s and I had nothing computerized to produce these; they were done with photocopies.  All of it stuffed in a carefully cross referenced notebook; the dungeon had a time limit so I wanted things to move quickly in the game session.

I have no idea how it would have worked out then; it was specific to a particular adventure and the party avoided the dungeon in favor of attacking Orcus's castle, and I never got motivated enough to repurpose it.  But I reused the idea much later and with less effort later, with the dungeon as explored pinned to a medium sized bulletin board (easier for multiple sessions) and that worked pretty well, although it oversimplified mapping difficulties (a big deal in early games I was in).

Quote from: Opaopajr;792705CCG cards. Using Magic: the Gathering cards is a great resource for wandering monster tables, artifact ideas, and enchanted "Mythal" effects. They even come color coded for terrain, rarity. And now they have enough Culture/Theme settings to adjust around those tropes, too (Mirage, Ice Age, Theros, Innistrad, Khans, Kanigawa, etc.).

Was just doing this today for my new 5e game worked really well and the pcs are now shit scared of snakes.

1) Really think hard about the opening scene (or session) of the game so that you can hook the players immediately and get them involved from the start.  For 1920's COC opening scene was a bar knuckle boxing match in a warehouse in Chelsea, MA.  For D&D, party was with whole town as a bound and gagged "wizard" was the centerpiece for a public hanging.  Present day game (players are running regular guys hiking the AT with no knowledge of games premise)  Near end of a 4 month hike, just off trail they come across a fresh body with throat cut ear to ear.  Another D&D, characters on a ship traveling across a great lake when storm breaks out and they and the boat captain are the only survivors that wash ashore.


2) List of first & last names so you can name that cop or sage or whomever on the fly;

3) Lower lights for horror and such.  Music that fits the theme.  In old days, for Shadowrun I played a lot of Queensryche (Seattle band with some urban, & sci fi themed songs).;

4) Try to describe scenes with some atmospheric detail before you get to the meat of the encounter.  Immerse them in their location.  "As you round the large rock on the mountain forest path you see a thin fog that partly obscures a 30 foot dark green moss-covered-wall with numerous small channels cut by downward flowing condensation.  A handful of what looks like light blue phosphorescent fungi pepper the wall as far as you can see.";

5) One or two appropriate "random" encounters all set and ready to go if you need it.  Sometimes these events can turn into a reasonably sized theme.

6) Have a few curiosities and magic items for random encounters.  short sword +1 with some interesting abilities, unusual wood carving that might get the party interested, page from a diary, etc.  Sometimes the PCs want to explore this stuff and it turns into something;

7) Take notes of stuff PCs do that gets them off track.  Could turn into something later.  Shadowrun game, PCs broke into an apartment.  Found and stole a spellbook.  Three sessions later, with another time to gather evidence and research,  that mage summons a fire elemental to appear in the party's room when they were taking some down time.  Back and forth with party and mage lasted for a few months as a running subplot.

With that fire elemental, one PC wanted to grab a fire extinguisher from the hallway.  We had an disagreement about how much time it would take.  I argue that with his bad die roll, he tripped, was frantic and couldn't locate it quick enough.  Finally decided to do a real life mock up and time it.  Guy runs outside to get it, door happens to slam shut on him and LOCK.  He banging on the glass . . . "guys, guys"  Laughed my head off.

Good luck