Props

[STARP_President]

What props do you/have you used in your game, either as a player or as a DM? I ask this for two reasons:
1. Curiosity
2. Attempting to ascertain exactly how much of a geek everyone is.

I personally rarely use anything beyond player handouts. I have, from time to time, adopted clothing to portray certain characters, putting it on and off again quickly like some kind of vaudeville artist.

What do YOU do?
Why do I care?
What happened to MY life?

 

[Desdichado]

Other than maps/notes/handouts, very little if any. Unless you count the occasional evocative and (relatively) well-painted mini, that is.

 

[fusangite]

I used to only hand out notes. I have now expanded my repertoire to include illustrations and maps. But that's about it.

 

[Warehouse23]

I was really impressed when one of my players passed me (the GM) a business card across the gaming table as he spoke to the Johnson (this is SR) and his character passed a business card to the J. It was pretty cool. Didn't hurt that the business card/marker rocked.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Hand-outs - keep players up to date

Battlemat - AoO stuff - this also includes cut outs I have done to lay on the battlemat.

Minis - location, location, location

Pictures and drawings - this is the ring you find, the sword, the gold statue. The internet has mad this soo much easier and they can be inserted to hand-out.

 

[Rel]

I'm running an Eberron campaign set in Sharn right now. The PC's occasionally get messages delivered by House Orien messengers and I like to actually hand them a folded piece of paper with a seal on it.

I also publish the front page of the local newspaper, The Sharn Inquisitive, on a regular basis. The page contains two main stories and some short blurbs that are the little "Also in this issue..." sorts of things. The actions of the PC's have been mentioned in both areas and they really like the fact that there's a sense of the PC's actions having an impact on the game world.

If anybody wants a copy I can attach it in this thread.

 

[broghammerj]

My modern game includes multiple pictures of evidence during a police investigation. Pictures of bodies, buildings, maps of homes, locations of crimes (pictures of places taken in my home city). It really enhances the game. I also like to have the internet available on my wireless network so the PCs can investigate on Google. I have most of the web pages they would search for on a subject already bookmarked for them to narrow down search time.

 

[eris404]

What props do you/have you used in your game, either as a player or as a DM?

I think the occasional prop or handout is neat. Of course, we use miniatures, the most common prop. DMs will often draw out special maps or write out a letter or passage in a book that is important to the plot. I printed out the Deck of Many Things PDF for a DM to use in game. That same DM brought two wooden boxes to game to show some things we had found in the lair of a cult: one held the above deck, the other a rubber hand - yes, that hand (it's a near epic campaign).

As a player, I found a necklace that resembled the magical necklace my character owned and so I would sometimes wear that to the game. That character was a druid and liked to turn into a raven, so I used a tiny carving of a raven I bought at a reservation to represent her in raven form. Another member plays a psion and uses a brooch from her grandma to represent her psicrystal.

So yeah, props are OK with us.

 

[eris404]

I was really impressed when one of my players passed me (the GM) a business card across the gaming table as he spoke to the Johnson (this is SR) and his character passed a business card to the J. It was pretty cool. Didn't hurt that the business card/marker rocked.

Yeah, one of our DMs did something similar. He had made business cards for himself for his freelance business and had a few left over. So, he printed up a nice business card for an NPC that my character wanted to contact. It was such a nice touch - I really like it when DMs do things like this. It's not necessary to use or make props all of the time, but it shows that some thought and care went into the game.

 

[diaglo]

i give props to EGG and DaveA