And the Oscar for best use of Props goes to...

I'm huge on props and production value. Especially for handout maps, physical puzzles, and game pieces. I also tend to do a lot of character props for Christmas and birthday gifts for friends and family.

Some useful links!

Propping up the Mythos - http://www.reocities.com/Athens/9133/cthulhu.htm - The current incarnation of an old geocities site from the late 90s.

Propnomicon - http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/ - PUtM's modern day sibling in blog format.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Paper-Look-Old - A handful of simple paper aging techniques.

Campaign Coins - http://campaigncoins.com/ - They're too pricey to use as game pieces, but I like to throw one or two in to prop packs that I make for gifts

I really lucked out on teeny skulls, I once found a shop that had either mispriced, didn't know what to charge, or was just trying to get rid of these: http://www.scareflair.com/alchemy-g...jAoqdJmjUBn1XwZxIZgHq6M4JYn2Ba2w1oaAkH78P8HAQ and I bought like 40 of them for 25 cents each.


[EDIT!!!] OMG How did I forget Paranoia?! http://www.crd-sector.com/uv/download/index.htm

Fallen Seraph said:

Right now for my current campaign I am building I am gonna be having lots of punch cards. Be it ID for the PCs, information, Rituals (they come in punch cards and use a portable difference engine to be cast), etc.

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That's very cool! Did you make your own, or repurpose old punch cards?

Rechan said:

I've heard so many stories on "How to make paper look like parchment". I've soaked things in coffee and tea and it never worked, ever. It just made the paper wet.

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For this to work you've got to first scrunch up the paper a bit, soak it in strong tea (the stronger the brew, the darker the stain) and leave it in there for about five minutes (you can also rub the edges of the paper while it's wet to distress it), THEN put it into the oven on a low heat. It works really nicely and putting it in the oven gives it lots of nice random blotches.

Also, experiment with it! Use more or less tea, tear bits of the paper, burn it in patches once it's dried, etc., etc.

I self-published a little book of my drawings and writing (kind of a comicbook/zine thing) and I used that trick to give all the pages a distressed look as I wanted it to look like they were pages from a journal I'd discovered. The front cover is the main picture on my gallery page and you can see on there the distressed parchment look in the pink background. [/shameless plug]

I am always picking up "junk" when I see it, things like broaches, necklaces, rings, boxes, coins, etc. Micheal's Arts & Crafts has some interesting things that can be used, also use pictures, for larger items.

Have found that players become more attached to a visual item.

When I started playing D&D many moons ago, my mom had made me a bunch of leather things for the gaming supplies that looked like they fit in the game as a prop. So I have a leather scroll case that holds my pencils. a leather dice pouch for dice, and a leather book cover (holds 2 PH sized books in one) that looks like a big tome.

That kind of set me off on making stuff for gaming.

I've made:
a wooden canoe to hold our minis when we were traveling down a river for an extended journey

a miniature fire pit (with stones and logs) for when we stopped to camp

I've made a lot of terrain for MageKnight and MechWarriorark Age when I played that.

I have a bamboo map case for holding all the game maps I ever get.

I made a leather documents cover (akin to what Legolas gets to be a lawful pirate in Pirates of the Carribean 2 (or 3 or 4) from that East India guy. Useful for handing out important papers like letters of marque to the PCs.

For X-mas, each player has gotten an engraved wooden token representing their current character. This is useful for marking initiative order, or place in a fight as it is truly distinctive to the player

I made dice rolling boxes for some birthday presents recently, with felt bottom, as those players had just bought fancy stone dice and wanted to use them in game.

For dungeons, I always hand the players a map, so that we don't waste time doing the square by square exploration and reveal to the players. To do so, I take a roughed up piece of paper (see tips below), and hand draw the map with an eye to not be precise and to skip the "secrets". Thus, the map looks like somebody drew it while exploring a place, rather than by somebody who had a piece of graph paper. Since it is roughed up, it looks authentic. I usually use sheets off my old fan-fold printer paper (from the dot matrix days). That stuff is discolored because it's at least 20 years old.

I made a wizard's spellbook/journal by hand. The cover was made of painted tagboard, with choruses hand sewn to a spine and then I glued the spine into the cover. The pages were spell descriptions (from d20srd.org) in an elvish font and journal entries in some other non-english handwriting font. I interspersed the content as if the wizard was simply using a journal to document his thoughts and spells as they came to him. The journal entries documented the horrible things the wizards guild was doing to unregistered wizards which is what turned the PC who was a die-hard guildy to work against them when she (the player) deciphered the journal between game sessions. It's been almost a decade since that campaign, and the player still has it. I didn't age the paper, but simply made up a Word document with the content, printed it in half-size, double sided so it could be folded into Choruses.


Tips:
One simple way to get an rough look to paper edges is to carefully tear the edge off (no more than 1/2"). This torn edge will inherently have irregularities that make it look worn. If yo needed a precise/straight edge, fold the paper over and tear along the line.

I also second the tip to crumple the paper into a ball, to give the paper itself a worn, not-modern look.

thirdly, if you do any of the soaking trick, make sure to use a laser printer, not an ink jet or the ink will run. (this is assuming you print onto the paper, then rough it up and stain it, since you can't run it through a printer after that)

I enjoy using maps and hand-written letters from NPCs as props in games. The players seem to enjoy it as well.

Most of the game props I build are buildings or other structures, which I make out of cardboard or poster board. So far, I've made:

• A small tower keep
  
  
• A rectangular castle, complete with four towers in the corners and a drawbridge in the front (I also made the interior buildings removable, allowing me to repurpose the building as three different castles thus far simply by changing the interior structures)
  
  
• The Planar Scout, a sort of extraplanar hovercraft powered by lightning quasi-elementals
  
  
• A temple to Pelor, complete with collapsible walls (as it was under attack by undead forces led by a storm giant wight)
  
  
• The Low Planes Drifter, a combination barge/paddleboat
  
  
• A small group of circus wagons of various sizes
  
  
• A wooden structure mounted on the back of an undead monstrous crab
  
  
• A planeshifting, six-story tower
  
  
• A retriever, built by putting a poster board "costume" over a big plastic spider
  
  
• A stone colossus - basically, a castle transformed into a humanoid shape

Johnathan

Richards said:

Most of the game props I build are buildings or other structures, which I make out of cardboard or poster board. So far, I've made:
A small tower keep, A rectangular castle, ...

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Jonathan (and other paper terrain/mini/tile/prop builders), check out this chance to show off your stuff to your peers and perhaps win some credit at your favorite PDF marketplace!

http://cardboard-warriors.proboards.com/thread/7052/papercuts-2015

The rules are simple: make stuff out of paper, take a picture, start a thread in the appropriate part of the Papercuts Showcase boards on Cardboard Warriors. Post your pictures and a upload (if a design entry) of the model or miniature. Discuss and enjoy. Judging will be determined 100% by forum member voting. You do not have to pay anything to participate. Just register in the forum (also free) and enjoy.

The categories:

1) Best Single Figure (Original)

2) Best Multi-figure (Original)

3) Best Model kit - 3D terrain, vehicle, building (Original)

4) Best Tileset (Original)

5) Papercraft in Action (Stock Model Builds + SOME non-paper)

6) Hot Rod and Kit-bashers - (Modded Kits)

7) Best In Show (Chosen from all the entries above)


Visit the page to know more and participate. The deadline is 09/01/2015.

http://cardboard-warriors.proboards.com/thread/7052/papercuts-2015

One week left to enter!

I just published my entry: "Miracle at the Igreja com Cuzerio"

Just a sample:

Time to vote and/or check out the amazing entries this year. A record (and a record number of first-time contributors!)

http://cardboard-warriors.proboards.com/board/156/papercuts-2015

It'll be tough to choose a winner, but the first 4 categories all required the designers upload their figs/models/tiles for FREE download!

How can you not check out the free stuff?