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Banjax
2013-12-16, 04:24 AM
What are people's favourite tools/accessories for tabletop gaming?

The games club my RPG group is part of is giving us some money to buy stuff to improve our gaming sessions (approx £60-70) which we are allowed to spend on whatever we wish and we'd like to buy some tools for pen and paper RPGs.

We play a fair range of systems so we would like to keep things fairly generic, what sort of tools do people use in terms of maps, combat trackers, minatures etc?

I know Paizo does all of the above for pathfinder, does anybody have any other reccommendations either for manufacturers or other products to use?

BWR
2013-12-16, 05:00 AM
Must haves
Dice. (lots. you can never have too many)
Pencils, pens, paper, erasers.
A dry-erase battlemap (even if your system doesn't use it for comabt it's very useful to quickly illustrate maps and other things)

Nice, but not vital
Minis (dice can function as minis, but there are some nice minis out there)
A printer for character sheets and whatnot.
Combat tiles (can often add a little more flavor to the encounter terrain. Stuff from Hero Quest etc also work)

Banjax
2013-12-16, 06:55 AM
Aside from a battlemat we're into the nice but not vital category, everybody brings plenty of dice and stationary.

It's an opportunity for us to get some of the extra things that make the games easier/slicker/better using somebody else's money.

Mastikator
2013-12-16, 07:11 AM
Everyone must bring:

Dice
Pencil (with eraser)
Papers


Stuff that is vital to be present at the game

The book(s) that explain the rules, player hand book and the like, digital form is fine (if not preferable)


Stuff that is nice to have at the table:

In game currency
Miniatures to keep track of combat
A calculator
Something to contain the dice so that when people throw them in their dumb awkward way the dice doesn't fall off the table and under the sofa every single damn time.

Incorrect
2013-12-16, 07:17 AM
Do you have mood music?
Candles?

I would probably buy an assorted collection of miniatures, and have a free-to-enter painting competition with a small prize. I like painted miniatures and friendly competitions.

Khedrac
2013-12-16, 07:35 AM
It depends on the system normally played. If D20 or similar then some form of battle-map is essential. I find dry-wipe better than wet-wipe even if lower quality - they are simply a lot less messy to clean.

If playing actual D20 then a set of AoE templates is very very useful.

Also most games benefit from a decent range of miniatures - they don't need to be the right ones, but enough types and sizes that you can use (say) orcs for space marines, kobolds for zombies, humans for specific characters and trolls for earth elementals...

Banjax
2013-12-16, 08:16 AM
Cheers for the suggestions so far,

It looks like miniatures are definitely going to have to go on the shortlist, I know Paizo sell card minis in bulk (their Bestiary and NPC boxes) do anybody else or can you only get them in smaller packs?

We don't have a single system, in the past we've played everything from Pathfinder, D&D, Shadowrun, Ashen Stars, Trail of Chthlhu depending on who is GMing so its more the tools etc that make the games easier that we're looking at.

Atmospherics probably won't make the list, we play in the back room of a community centre (while the wargamers play in the main hall) and people have to walk through our room to get to the toilet so immersiveness isn't as big a part of our games as it could be if we were playing at somebody's house.

From what I've seen online the 2 big battle map manufacturers are Paizo and Chessex, does anybody have experience with one or the other (or both)? to make a reccommendation?

Airk
2013-12-16, 10:11 AM
Honestly, I think you're going about this the wrong way.

You DON'T need miniatures and nonsense, and they add very little to the game, because overall, unless people have purchased minis with the express purpose of matching characters, they're basically no better than using cardboard chits with numbers on them for battlemap tracking, because they won't look anything like the characters they're trying to represent anyway. It usually goes something like this:

Player 1: <rummages through miniatures bin>
Player 2: What about this guy? He's got a staff, and that's kindof like a spear.
Player 1: Yeah, but he's a wizard. My guy uses a shield.
Player 2: Well, here's a guy with a sword and shield.
Player 1: Actually, that's a girl in a chainmail bikini. My character is a half ogre.
Player 2: Cut me some slack here, we work with what we have.

Seriously. Minis are terrible as a shared resource. Actually, they're pretty terrible overall. Their primary benefit, IMHO, is to print money for the companies that make them. :P

My group actually uses LEGO minifigs, because people can customize them to look kindof like their characters, but the amount of money wasted to implement this solution is pretty vast. (On the plus side, you also get a bunch of fun LEGO :P )

But in all seriousness, forget the miniatures. Start spending that budget on purchasing GAMES and create a club library. This way you're not dependent on people's personal copies of rules, and you can buy and try out systems that you might not have otherwise.

Remmirath
2013-12-16, 12:57 PM
While my group does use figures all the time, they are not as necessary for most groups and are rather expensive (and as Airk points out, unless you've a very large collection as we do it can be hard to find the right one for the character). If you're not intending to have anybody play more than one character at a time, they can probably be done away with -- although I do prefer at least in battles to have some indication of where everything is, this can be accomplished in different and less expensive ways when you're on a budget.

Necessary:
Core rulebooks for whatever system is in question.
Dice needed for said system, in sufficient quantity.
Character sheets.
Pencils with/and erasers.

Used in every session, bordering on necessary for us:
Dry-erase sheets for map drawing (any large sheet will do).
Dry-erase markers.
Figures (for us it's metal ones, mostly Ral Partha, Grenadier, and Reaper).
Big bags of plastic army men and such for hordes of monsters.
Any additional rulebooks that are useful for that particular campaign.
Calculators for high level games.

Nice to have around and often used by us but can be easily done without:
Different sizes of dry-erase sheets, from table-covering to rather small.
Different colours of dry-erase marker.
Specific monster figures (random objects can work, too).

Occasionally handy for us and more often used by other groups:
A variety of extra rulebooks and supplements.
A variety of modules for various systems.

TheThan
2013-12-16, 05:05 PM
Here’s a few suggestions.

Tablet or laptop
I keep most of my books digitally now. So a use a tablet for storing and accessing books, storing and accessing DM notes, playing music (speakers suck but meh), presenting images to the PCs that sort of stuff. You can do all this with a lappy if you’ve got one, it can double as a Dm’s screen.
I would suggest not allowing more than one or two at the table, as much as a boon as they are, they’re also a tremendous distraction. There’s YouTube, web comics, video games, chat programs all sorts of things that can divide someone’s attention. If your group really wants lap tops, fine, I suggest turning off internet options while you game, it’ll cut down on distractions.

Dice:
Obviously, you need dice, while you can do digital dice on your smart phone or tablet/laptop, there’s just nothing like rolling real dice.

Miniatures:
May RPGs make great use out of minis, dnd, pathfinder, iron kingdoms etc all want minis at the gaming table. While you can play without them, using them is often times a huge benefit. These can be anything from marked poker chips, to full on painted minis, just don’t use anything edible like jelly beans as they tend to get eaten.

A gaming table top:
This is a cool Idea I’ve seen used. You set up your gaming table to have some form of surface you can write on so you can draw maps, make a grid jot down initiate order all sorts of useful things you can do. Just make sure you can somehow erase it. I’ve seen people use dry erase boards or sheets, digital projectors hooked up to laptops, even fancy (and probably expensive) digital table tops.

Snacks and drinks:
It’s nice to have something to munch on and drink when you’re doing a long session. Especially if you’re gaming into the long hours of the night.

Airk
2013-12-16, 05:30 PM
Miniatures:
May RPGs make great use out of minis, dnd, pathfinder, iron kingdoms etc all want minis at the gaming table. While you can play without them, using them is often times a huge benefit. These can be anything from marked poker chips, to full on painted minis, just don’t use anything edible like jelly beans as they tend to get eaten.

That's the thing; Miniatures - as in, the little lead people - offer ZERO benefit for their cost, as compared to the aforementioned poker chips, unless you can make them match up with the characters/monsters, which will happen once, when you buy them, and quite possibly, never again. At that point, it's just "Yeah, my guy is the one who looks like a battlecrazed gnome. But he's actually a pixie."

CombatOwl
2013-12-16, 06:45 PM
What are people's favourite tools/accessories for tabletop gaming?

The games club my RPG group is part of is giving us some money to buy stuff to improve our gaming sessions (approx £60-70) which we are allowed to spend on whatever we wish and we'd like to buy some tools for pen and paper RPGs.

We play a fair range of systems so we would like to keep things fairly generic, what sort of tools do people use in terms of maps, combat trackers, minatures etc?

I know Paizo does all of the above for pathfinder, does anybody have any other reccommendations either for manufacturers or other products to use?

Other than dice, pencils, paper, etc...

short-duration "hour glasses" -- 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute... Use these for timing a player's turn. Also helps to remind people who's turn it is.

Drop some of that on minis. See if you can get some used ones--you won't be able to afford to buy many single new minis on a $60 budget. If you can't afford it, cardboard tokens. If you do find a deal on minis (at your budget, just see if you can get a sizable bunch of common minis for less than $15) pick up some pipe cleaners in various colors for status markers. If you're stuck with generic tokens, at least make sure to get five or six different colors. You might also want to invest in a permanent marker to number the tokens with (red 1-10, blue 1-10, green 1-10, etc).

Index cards -- Useful for practically everything.

Simple Calculator with sizable buttons -- You don't need a scientific calculator for (the very large majority of) tabletop games. Granted, you might play GURPS 3rd with vehicles or something...

Incidentally, you can actually play most games without a battlemap if you have a tape measure. 1in = 5ft. This is not preferable, but it works in a pinch. A fair number of games actually use distance measurements rather than squares or hexes, so a tape measure is a good thing to have (and fairly cheap). Examples of that include most any wargame, Savage Worlds, the new Iron Kingdoms RPG...

Honest Tiefling
2013-12-16, 08:54 PM
Some tokens to use as minis, a dry-erase board and a wet wipe battle map. Fairly cheap, and not married to a particular system. I also advocate getting more games until you have an idea of favorites you'll want to play. Sometimes, those books can take quite a beating, or having multiple copies will just be plain useful.

In America, you can generally buy glass pebble thingies for crafts at dollar stores, not sure about your location.

WbtE
2013-12-16, 10:00 PM
Start spending that budget on purchasing GAMES and create a club library. This way you're not dependent on people's personal copies of rules, and you can buy and try out systems that you might not have otherwise.

This is good advice. If you want to stretch your budget further (and seventy quid isn't that much), get .pdf copies of new games printed and either ring bind them or put them in clear-view folders.

Jay R
2013-12-16, 10:51 PM
Don't get dice. My experience is that everybody wants to use his or her own dice.

Knaight
2013-12-16, 11:23 PM
Don't get dice. My experience is that everybody wants to use his or her own dice.

It's probably good to have a set or two for new players, even if something like the Gleemax Pound of Dice is complete overkill. The whole games club thing seems to indicate a decent chance of new people without stuff being around and possibly trying the game, and they might not have dice.

Also, as long as we're looking at personal experiences, my experience is that one person brings all the dice, divvies them out, then gets them back again at the end.

Banjax
2013-12-17, 03:49 AM
It's probably good to have a set or two for new players, even if something like the Gleemax Pound of Dice is complete overkill. The whole games club thing seems to indicate a decent chance of new people without stuff being around and possibly trying the game, and they might not have dice.

Also, as long as we're looking at personal experiences, my experience is that one person brings all the dice, divvies them out, then gets them back again at the end.

I actually bought a pound of dice at the beginning of the year for pretty much exactly this purpose so we're generally covered for dice.

I must admit I'm becoming less and less sure about the idea of buying the figures/paper minis as I think about it, yes it is nice being able to pick up something that looks at least vaguely like your character and it makes it easier to remember whether the hob goblin is the green token or the orange one but they'd be a large part of our budget gone if we did buy them.

Airk
2013-12-17, 10:20 AM
I must admit I'm becoming less and less sure about the idea of buying the figures/paper minis as I think about it, yes it is nice being able to pick up something that looks at least vaguely like your character and it makes it easier to remember whether the hob goblin is the green token or the orange one but they'd be a large part of our budget gone if we did buy them.

It can be handy to have some sort of custom tokens - sorry, I wanted to make some recommendations about cardboard counters, but the only place I could find 9www.fierydragon.com) doesn't ship outside of the US/Cannada - but the whole point of miniatures is "this guy looks like my character" and that only works for...that one character. And yeah, they're expensive.

Jay R
2013-12-17, 10:36 AM
Minis are quite expensive over time. People who love painting minis will collect a bunch over time, but the time and cost aren't worth it for many other people.

My experience is that I have no interest in the hobby of collecting minis, but it's great to have one or two people in the group who enjoy it.

Airk
2013-12-17, 10:41 AM
Minis are quite expensive over time. People who love painting minis will collect a bunch over time, but the time and cost aren't worth it for many other people.

My experience is that I have no interest in the hobby of collecting minis, but it's great to have one or two people in the group who enjoy it.

Truth. Although honestly, even better than having a miniatures painter or two around is really the LEGO Minifigs approach. I mean, tell me THIS (http://www.flickr.com/photos/51675614@N05/5459161894/)doesn't look like an adventuring party. And when that party disbands, you can take them apart and build new adventurers who look nothing like them.

Sadly, there's no good way to accumulate JUST minifig parts.

ElenionAncalima
2013-12-17, 02:03 PM
I agree with the suggestion of buying the game books in PDF and printing them out.

I would also add that it might be worthwhile to get some prebuilt adventures or modules if you are ever in need of a quick event.

Honest Tiefling
2013-12-17, 03:40 PM
Don't get dice. My experience is that everybody wants to use his or her own dice.

Everyone in my groups always forget to bring the dice. Food? Check. Character sheet? Check. Mini? Check. Phone to look up things? Check. Actual dice? Nope.
Might sound odd but another thing people forget where I am are pencils.

Through I think you can easily get by in 4-6 player groups by getting 2 sets of dice.

Icewraith
2013-12-17, 04:03 PM
If you really want a particular creature on the map, grab a picture of it off a website, scale it down so it prints in the right dimensions, cut it out and use it.

Dry erase battlegrid is the best thing ever.

Knaight
2013-12-17, 05:23 PM
Minis are quite expensive over time. People who love painting minis will collect a bunch over time, but the time and cost aren't worth it for many other people.

They also turn completely useless as soon as you play anything outside of a handful of specific genres. D&D style fantasy is easy, any space fantasy where you can use Warhammer 40K style stuff is easy, military infantry is easy (toy soldiers), and just about everything else is going to be tricky. Poker chips, cardstock, Tokentool, and some tape can make fairly good tokens for a fraction of the price, for far more games.

Slipperychicken
2013-12-17, 09:22 PM
If playing actual D20 then a set of AoE templates is very very useful.

I've always wondered if there was some kind of cookie-cutter-type object which you could just slap down on the board and use to quickly gauge AoE. I had no idea what those were called until now. Thanks!



Also most games benefit from a decent range of miniatures - they don't need to be the right ones, but enough types and sizes that you can use (say) orcs for space marines, kobolds for zombies, humans for specific characters and trolls for earth elementals...

As for minis, you'll be fine with the little cardboard things that you can mount on plastic stands (my GM got some of those (http://paizo.com/products/btpy8x1f?Pathfinder-Pawns-NPC-Codex-Box) from Paizo, and they're great. I think they come with the core book and adventure paths). As long as you can get a whole bunch of them relatively cheaply, you'll be good.

I don't have experience with printing out paper minis, but you could test-run it to see whether those are durable enough for actual play.



Dry-erase sheets for map drawing (any large sheet will do).
Dry-erase markers.

This. You always need markers. Different colors can be useful for marking things like elevation (i.e. one platform is higher than another).

AMFV
2013-12-17, 10:16 PM
A knife... for "offensive purposes"

http://basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2011/6/12/how-to-get-into-your-opponents-head.html

CoffeeIncluded
2013-12-17, 10:20 PM
For minis, maybe you could draw your own or use the kickstarter ones, if anyone participated.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-12-17, 11:20 PM
it makes it easier to remember whether the hob goblin is the green token or the orange one but they'd be a large part of our budget gone if we did buy them.
You're pretty much just replacing it with remembering if he's the skeleton or the human fighter.

What I've done in the past for tokens is buy a bunch of wooden dowels of decent thickness and saw them off to ~1-2 inch lengths. If you want to be fancy, you can print pictures and wrap them around the thing; if you're lazy, you can just write numbers or symbols on top with a marker. Doesn't work so well for larger creatures, but it's pretty nice for medium-sized.

For a battlemap, if you're keeping it in the place, get a big whiteboard and score a grid into it with a knife.

Jay R
2013-12-18, 12:50 AM
Don't guess - find out. At your next two or three sessions, keep track of anything you need and don't have. Then place the order.

Slipperychicken
2013-12-18, 01:01 AM
Don't guess - find out. At your next two or three sessions, keep track of anything you need and don't have. Then place the order.

That's smart. I'm seconding this.

Berenger
2013-12-18, 01:44 PM
Dice cups.

http://www.gmdice.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/d/i/dice-cup-runic-red-and-black.jpg

Airk
2013-12-18, 01:52 PM
Don't guess - find out. At your next two or three sessions, keep track of anything you need and don't have. Then place the order.

Then spend the rest of the budget on new games. :)