Props for your players
Posted 5th December 2008 at 06:10 PM by Janx
I like hand-outs and props when I'm gaming.
I like maps, papers, all sorts of stuff. They're fun, they make the game feel real.
It's impractical to hand a party the entire treasue in physical props. It's not hard, however, to give them tangible items in smaller doses.
The easiest thing is paper hand-outs. When the party hears of a dungeon, give them a map. Now they've got something real, and they can collect a pile of them (kind of like Tasselhoff's map pouch).
It also solves a game problem, if you give them a map right away, you can spend less time describing the physical dimensions of the dungeon. Just roll open the map, and point where they are, and ask where they want to go.
When I give players a map, to make it more "realisitic" I'll often re-draw it by hand, from my version. Imprecision will creep in, and i'll leave off any GM secrets. I'll also usually rough up the paper. Fold it a bunch of times, bang up the edges. You could stain it in tea, if you want to make it look like parchment. Carry it in your book bag, if you want some real wear-n-tear on it.
Any extra effort you put into the map, beyond, printing out a player's copy of the map you generated from a computer, will make the map stand out as special to the players. That's the real point, is to make it FEEL special.
I've also done a newspaper series, for my players. That was harder. I created a basic template in word, with the mast head, and date in place, with 2 column format. Then I'd write up short articles, and fill it in. I'd write an article about a recent event PCs were involved in, one about something the PCs would know, one about a game culture/topic (basically teaching them about the game world), and one that would be about the current politics. Overall, it was about 2-4 pages.
Doing travel papers, and such is another easy one. Declare (after some security crisis) that new laws have been written requiring papers for entry/exit from any walled city. Now to travel to somewhere else, you need to see the local lord and pay for papers. Now you can hand them some.
You can also do adventuring party papers. This is one the party could do (or you could produce on behalf of the players). It might build a team spirit, as they're PC names will be on it.
If you're skilled at leather working (it's not hard, you need a cutting board, steel straight edge, razor knife, hole punch, leather stitching thread/needle, and leather), you can make a lot of cool things. Personally, I've got (my mother made some for me when I started, I've made more):
a dice bag (used the end of welding glove gauntlet)
a pencil case (like a scroll case)
a "spell book" book cover (holds 2 books, PH & DMG)
a "papers" cover (as seen in Pirates of the Carribean), a wrap that holds/protects important documents
Other easy projects: a map case, to hold all those maps and paper hand-outs you keep giving them
A tougher project is the wizards spell book prop. For one game, I built a wizards spell book, with diary entries and spells mixed in. First, I learned, the bare minimum of book making. Namely, pages are bound in units called "choruses" of about 8 sheets. The choruses are then fastened to the book cover.
So, I wrote up a ton of journal entries (they were clues) in Word, and used the Futhark font to make them secret. I used a tolkien elvin script font for the spells, which were copied straight from the SRD. This helped fill out the book, to make it worth it. I interspersed spells with journal entries, and lots of blank pages (presumably so the wizard could write more spells in). Then I printed it all out in 1/2 page format, double sided (that's 2 pages to 1 side).
Then in units of 8 pages, I folded them in half to make mini-books. These are the choruses. I stitched each chorus (the equivalent of stapling in the fold, using thread). Once each chorus was ready, I cheated, and made a spine, the length of the fold edge, and width of the stack of choruses, plus a little more. I then stitched the choruses to the spine. Once all that was done, I glued the spine into the book cover I had made and painted. Both the spine and the book cover were made of thick card-stock (the brown stuff). Overall, it worked well. I gave the book to the player who found the book in-game, and they took several weeks to decipher it (any spell they deciphered the PC could try to learn).
That's all I have time for now. It's your turn to post you prop ideas/instructions.
I like maps, papers, all sorts of stuff. They're fun, they make the game feel real.
It's impractical to hand a party the entire treasue in physical props. It's not hard, however, to give them tangible items in smaller doses.
The easiest thing is paper hand-outs. When the party hears of a dungeon, give them a map. Now they've got something real, and they can collect a pile of them (kind of like Tasselhoff's map pouch).
It also solves a game problem, if you give them a map right away, you can spend less time describing the physical dimensions of the dungeon. Just roll open the map, and point where they are, and ask where they want to go.
When I give players a map, to make it more "realisitic" I'll often re-draw it by hand, from my version. Imprecision will creep in, and i'll leave off any GM secrets. I'll also usually rough up the paper. Fold it a bunch of times, bang up the edges. You could stain it in tea, if you want to make it look like parchment. Carry it in your book bag, if you want some real wear-n-tear on it.
Any extra effort you put into the map, beyond, printing out a player's copy of the map you generated from a computer, will make the map stand out as special to the players. That's the real point, is to make it FEEL special.
I've also done a newspaper series, for my players. That was harder. I created a basic template in word, with the mast head, and date in place, with 2 column format. Then I'd write up short articles, and fill it in. I'd write an article about a recent event PCs were involved in, one about something the PCs would know, one about a game culture/topic (basically teaching them about the game world), and one that would be about the current politics. Overall, it was about 2-4 pages.
Doing travel papers, and such is another easy one. Declare (after some security crisis) that new laws have been written requiring papers for entry/exit from any walled city. Now to travel to somewhere else, you need to see the local lord and pay for papers. Now you can hand them some.
You can also do adventuring party papers. This is one the party could do (or you could produce on behalf of the players). It might build a team spirit, as they're PC names will be on it.
If you're skilled at leather working (it's not hard, you need a cutting board, steel straight edge, razor knife, hole punch, leather stitching thread/needle, and leather), you can make a lot of cool things. Personally, I've got (my mother made some for me when I started, I've made more):
a dice bag (used the end of welding glove gauntlet)
a pencil case (like a scroll case)
a "spell book" book cover (holds 2 books, PH & DMG)
a "papers" cover (as seen in Pirates of the Carribean), a wrap that holds/protects important documents
Other easy projects: a map case, to hold all those maps and paper hand-outs you keep giving them
A tougher project is the wizards spell book prop. For one game, I built a wizards spell book, with diary entries and spells mixed in. First, I learned, the bare minimum of book making. Namely, pages are bound in units called "choruses" of about 8 sheets. The choruses are then fastened to the book cover.
So, I wrote up a ton of journal entries (they were clues) in Word, and used the Futhark font to make them secret. I used a tolkien elvin script font for the spells, which were copied straight from the SRD. This helped fill out the book, to make it worth it. I interspersed spells with journal entries, and lots of blank pages (presumably so the wizard could write more spells in). Then I printed it all out in 1/2 page format, double sided (that's 2 pages to 1 side).
Then in units of 8 pages, I folded them in half to make mini-books. These are the choruses. I stitched each chorus (the equivalent of stapling in the fold, using thread). Once each chorus was ready, I cheated, and made a spine, the length of the fold edge, and width of the stack of choruses, plus a little more. I then stitched the choruses to the spine. Once all that was done, I glued the spine into the book cover I had made and painted. Both the spine and the book cover were made of thick card-stock (the brown stuff). Overall, it worked well. I gave the book to the player who found the book in-game, and they took several weeks to decipher it (any spell they deciphered the PC could try to learn).
That's all I have time for now. It's your turn to post you prop ideas/instructions.
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Comments
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A good post on prop use Janx.
Like you I have created maps, scrolls, and other such materials.
When I first started playing D&D a very long time ago I wrote out the fragments of a book, about 50 or so pages, of the Fables of Burdock.
For modern and futuristic games I have also created computer files, documents, case files, intelligence briefings, white papers, codes and crypts, etc., all of which were either fake or adapted versions of real materials. Also scale models for use as experimental weapons, ship designs, tanks, etc.
For games like D&D I have created wands, staves, and rods (usually of wood) with peculiar and unknown writing on them, and odd little stones. Later the players figured out that the writings and devices implanted in the articles were really keys to unlocking how the powers worked for the in-game versions.
I know a lot of people think Role Playing Games can be used to develop and hone skills such as writing, poetry, composition, and acting, and that is certainly true enough. But personally I think such games can also, if pursued in this way, be used for developing such skills as analysis, computing and communications, , design, invention, a wide variety of scientific capabilities, and other real world skills of that kind and nature.
Anyways, I like the direction in which you are proceeding with your post.Posted 6th December 2008 at 03:30 PM by Jack7
- For modern/sci-fi games, you can do a lot with HTML.
For starters, you can whip up a set of pages and run them offline (directly off your hard-drive). No need for a web server.
Google up some HTML guides for how to write it, it's not hard.
You can write a "login" page for the evil corporation, for the PC's to log into. All you need is a INPUT tag for the user name, and an INPUT tag of type PASSWORD for the password, and a INPUT tag of type BUTTON for the login button, with javascript wired up to ONCLICK to check if the password and username are correct, then do a this.location='somepage.htm'
If you didn't understand any of that, go do some more studying, but it's pretty rudimentary.
From there, all you need are list pages and content pages, to mock up a corporate site. Figure you're doing an internal site, so it'll have research info, financial info, etc, depending on which NPC you're supposedly having the party login as.
If you have an ongoing theme of using the same corporation, you can keep adding onto the set of pages, as you make up material you need. You can justify the lack of content/change of content by explaining that the site only displays info that the "user" has rights to.
Thus, for adventure 1, when the party hacks into a researcher's account for BBEC, they only see documents related to his project (which the party needs). For adventure 2, when they hack in as the CFO, they see spreadsheets with accounting anomalies.
BTW, that's another cool thing about HTML, you can include hyperlinks to non-html pages, like Word docs, and when the user clicks the link, the browser will open the document. This makes it very seemless to integrate HTML pages for menus and login navigation (small pages), and Word and Excel for the documents you want the PCs to have.
Except for writing the login page, the rest of these tricks can be managed by most people using Word to write a web-page and saving as HTML. You don't really have to know HTML, to fake a web-site for an RPG.Posted 9th December 2008 at 04:50 PM by Janx
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