Tag Info

It's extremely rare, but some players, GMs, or entire groups enjoy it. I've played D&D for almost fifteen years, and until my current group, we never used props or costumes. This is despite the fact that my groups over the years have been made up largely of theater students, Renaissance Festival participants, cosplayers, and other types who enjoy ...

No. It's not very common at all. The reason you see it on television and in videos is because it's a distinctive way of showing an interest in "fantasy" and in depicting characters who are extreme in their love of games. Sometimes, you'll see a GM or other moderator wear a funny hat to indicate their position and to mock the serious tone of some fantasy ...

Think about what the purpose of such a map is. Medieval maps tend to fall into three categories: road maps coastal maps maps of the world If it's for pilgrims and merchants traveling by road, it'll have all the major roads marked, along with inns and convenient places to stop to water the animals -- and it won't describe the wilderness or the sea at ...

Aside from being unwieldly, prone to soda spills, sudden gusts of wind and players taking a peek…? :-) Personal opinion: As nice as professionally-printed dungeon maps might be, personally I much prefer sketching the current part of the dungeon on scratch paper as the players advance. This has several advantages: it is clear to everyone that my sketch ...

Can you imagine watching your favorite movies without a soundtrack? Film directors use music to control audience expectation and trigger emotional responses. As a GM, you too can make use of these techniques at your gaming table. The simplest plan is to put an album on to play. Slip in a CD, get your iPod out, and press play. I once ran a Sci-Fi campaign ...

Real-world medieval maps tended to be a mix of indicative and artistic and in many cases draw by people that had never been to and barely heard of a place. They would have used in many cases information that was word of mouth from many people and could be contradictory. Hence the map you bought could be anything from a nice picture for the wall and useless ...

here's a brief list of some of the most well known art sites. guess browsing these should keep you engaged for a few years (;D) if you haven't seen'em yet. have fun! :) cghub (various, hundreds if not thousands) conceptart.org (various, hundreds at least) cgsociety, 3d (various, hundreds at least) cgsociety, 2d (various, hundreds at least) cgsociety, 3d ...

Any sort of fire is very dangerous and should not be used. Read up on fire twirling for using fire if absolutely necessary. You could use LED lightning to represent fire; LED lights are cheap and come in many colours. If you stick to reds, yellows, and orange, you could get good fire effects. You could also use electroluminescent sheets (known as EL ...

As @DavidAllanFinch said, our modern concept of accurate maps wasn't really common in the Middle Ages. They tended to be more figurative, lacked a lot of our modern methodologies, and further more, didn't try for a 1:1 representation, which was usually held in lower esteem than a moral representation. See a nice example here. In general, though, if you want ...

I like this site: D&D Monster Finder It's a searchable monster database that helps me find monsters by level, environment, alignment, book (and many more) and it has pictures for almost every monster in every book.

I've seen large creatures represented using lengths of cloth, held on poles, by two or more people. Think of the way dragons are represented on parades. This works really well. It's been used by theatre companies for all sorts of mythical or dreamlike creatures. It's a good combination between physical representation and players' imagination.

As a GM, I love handing out props but I don't have a lot of time to build them. And as Melon points out (I've run some of his campaigns) portability and storage can be an issue. I've organically developed some question over the years, to help me analyse my props and make the most of the few times I use them. Why am I adding this prop? This is the big one. ...

I think the best game aids are interactional rather than just demonstrational. If you go through the work to make a parchment-looking piece of paper, why not hide a hidden message in it somehow? Maybe if you fold the paper a certain way the message becomes clear, or maybe the characters later find a blank paper with holes cut in it that pull the message ...

Immersion is trumped by safety. Combat You need light. Period. You must have a well lit area or the combat is dangerous. Make sure everyone is aware of the "safety" call. There's nothing you can do but have big lights -- projectors are great apart for the poor sod who is in front of it. You can use filters (red is good, black lights are good) to make ...

Not that I can think of. Cover-the-dungeon-and-reveal is one good method of revealing floor plans gradually, and works perfectly well (assuming your table is large enough for the full map). There is a minor possible issue: crumpled tissue paper is light and easily knocked around during play. This depends on your table, weight of paper and players, so it's ...

My first thought is to create low level ambient lighting, like strings of holiday lights around the room on a dimmer. Then give the players a light source similar to their in-character lighting. If their character has a torch, give them a candle, a flashlight, or a reading lamp. If the mage casts light, turn on a side-table lamp next to him. (And if you're ...

Your best bet, actually, is images.google.com. This, combined with TokenTool will get you both "pogs" (print it out, cut it out, paste it on thick cardboard). I use images.google.com for any player avatar I need, and the 4 editions of monsters combined with the imaginations of artists on, for example, deviantart, supply an excellent variety to choose from.

Take a page from The Lion King and Avenue Q For the lion King: They have puppets controlled by actors dressed to match he pattern on the coats. Instead of going for a Beauty and the Beast level of theatrical similarity, the showing of puppets-as-puppets allows audience members to choose to suspend their disbelief without needing to convince them that ...

Okay, some friends make this guy a long time ago. But I've never seen a better large monster, ever. He's a stone golem, constructed from 4" thick foam mattresses, hot glue, and paint. The best thing is he completely covers a large man in 3" foam, so he's all soft and safe :) Video here: Stone Golem Rocks YouTube This monster was built with 5 foam ...

Well I was going to point you to thingiverse and the modular wall system that's up there, but that's the first thing in your link. I do have some generic useful things to know if you're looking into 3D printing for gaming. There is a resolution that comes with these printers. It depends on the settings and the program you use to turn the model into ...

Paper should be all over the map, not only where rooms are printed - empty spaces should be fogged too. That way - if they want to escape monsters into uncovered area - they won't have a clue where is a better terrain, be it bigger, or with more turns, or with possible exit near the map's edge. I also dislike such way because players can judge how BIG the ...

I've played through my fair share of D&D campaigns, some with pretty heavy prop usage, some with slim to no prop usage (in some cases, we didn't even have room for a battle mat!) Generally in my experience, props that will actively help the PC's keep track of things (maps, notes/letters discovered, riddles and the like) are extremely useful. They give us ...

I will take the dissenting view. I never use music as part of a game, except for very specific narrow situations where it's a plot point or one time gimmick. It is distracting, both for players and for the GM - either you let whatever's on play and it isn't really appropriate to whatever's going on, or you waste GM time fiddling with it and losing momentum ...

You might try Magic Set Editor. The stock templates are sort of M:tG-oriented, but there are a ton of alternative templates on the download page. For the sake of completeness, I'll note the 4e-oriented Universal Card Set MSE project -- some of the templates there could be useful as well. Personally, I use OmniGraffle on my Mac to make cards, but it's not ...

It is interesting to see the great differences between the Nordic LARP communities and their Anglophone counterparts. I'll give some answers based on my experiences with the Swedish LARP community, and the views on this issue that are most common here. We use very minimal lighting solutions. In-game, if it's dark then it's dark. We usually have tiki ...

Speak / chant throughout the ritual Use Latin, Tolkien Elvish, or another foreign or created language. Learn a set of specific phrases that are relevant to the ritual that you can chant over and over, as well as other phrases that should be said at specific action points during the ritual. Chanting is a standard part of many rituals for good reason. Be ...

One way that I’ve used is to take real newspapers from the time period, and replace one or two articles (in a separate layer, of course). Find a nearby font, and use the tools of your graphic editing program to age the new text to match the old text. I used GIMP to great effect in a time-travel adventure using the “pick” tool. The basic steps were: Import ...

I would recommend beyond lighting, using music. I have found that, personally, using music is a great way to cause a mood without needing to change the lighting much. For instance, I use a set of songs from a "modern classical" group Nox Arcana. It is gothic and creepy sounding, background enough that you tend to not notice it, but up front enough that ...

I usually get good results simply by doing Google Image searches, often with a site:paizo.com or site:wizards.com if I'm looking for D&D type images, or similar scope limiter. If your initial search is mixing in something less useful you can often exclude, like if you want pirate pics but without lame Halloween costumes, search pirate -costume. I make a ...

I staff at a steampunk larp that takes both immersion and safety seriously. For general character use: Most people carry around their own light sources (usualy flashlights or battery powered lanterns), but they mute them so that their lights do not blind others. The mute your light "rule" is especially true if you have something lit by the white LEDs. ...