"Feelies" with your tabletop games

[wingsandsword]

For those who don't know what "feelies" are, they are those add-in items thrown in with 80's computer games (especially Infocom text adventures) to help build the mood/feeling of the game since graphics were very limited, if not only pure text.

In a d20 Modern Dark*Matter game I ran some years ago, I decided to give the concept a try. After all, a tabletop RPG is much like a text adventure, it's all words and imagination (especially if you don't have miniatures, and there are fewer mini options for modern-day games as opposed to medieval fantasy and sci-fi games).

So, for every important NPC the PC's met, they got his business card. I made up actual business cards for the recruiting office of the Hoffmann Institute, various scientists, government officials, and such. They liked having the cards of various people they talked to (especially helped them remember people's names and keep them straight)

When one PC found a copy of The Grey Key, I made as close of a simulacrum of the item as I could (in the setting, it's a CD-ROM with mental exercises that help trigger psychic abilities in humans), so I gave him a CD-R with obscure/esoteric MC Eicher-esque images and strange glyphs and hypnotic patterns ect, and told him that whatever was on the prop was what his character found.

The PC's find that a conspiracy-theorist fringe scientist has "committed suicide", and they find the suicide note. I give them a copy of the note. . .which they pore over the wording of it to find the discrepancies that show it wasn't a suicide, and they loved it.

I looked around on conspiracy-theory websites and downloaded various UFO sighting pictures and other fringe phenomenon photos, which made nice handouts for when talking to witnesses and they said they got a picture of the thing.

For D&D games, after preparing a number of deeds and noble writs and other formal documents for LARP's, I started doing that for my D&D games when PC's would get formal paperwork. They liked not only earning a title of Knighthood and/or the deed to a Keep, but getting a formal looking certificate on parchment-style paper printed with calligraphy-type fonts to represent it.

In a Star-Wars campaign, when PC's earned rank with the Rebel Alliance I made replicas of rank insignias (those little square metal chest badges with blue and red dots on them), and when they found a holocron, I'd hunted down a square glass paperweight that kind of resembled one to pull out as a prop, and when a PC in a rebellion-era game found his first lightsaber and was going to become a Jedi. . .I had a beat up old piece of pipe that I had dressed up to look like a battered but intact lightsaber.

So, have other GM's done things like this for tabletop games?

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Maps are probably my favorite. Sometimes they lead to buried treasure, sometimes they depict an ancient civilization at its height.

 

[the Jester]

Oh, props? Yeah, sure, I love using them. Maps, bits of verse, entire diary/journals, etc... even physical representations of special items once in a great while.

"Feelies" sounds like what happens with the obnoxious couple under the table, though, so I'll skip adopting that term if you don't mind.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So, have other GM's done things like this for tabletop games?

For my Supers: 1900 campaign- basically set in the Vernesian/Wellsian world of Space: 1889, but using HERO as the system- I had an infra-agency newsletter that I'd post on our host's gameroom corkboard. In it, the players would find a report on their last mission, reports of other agents' missions, rumors, news of the worlds, and so forth.

They ate it up!

The rumor/news sections gave them all kinds of leads to follow- it was kind of a sandbox-style game- and it always got them talking and thinking. This worked great for me since they'd do that in front of me...which meant that they sometimes came up with better plot twists than I did. The magic of parallel networking: with many minds doing the campaign's plotting instead of just mine, I never had writer's block!

 

[khantroll]

Most of what I've done is more in the nature of party effects. We use various colored drinks in backlit glasses when we play D&D, and I have various themed chalices that can be used for various in game functions. We also use some effects lighting, like green or purple lights in buckets for caverns, and blue for underwater effects.

We use printed scrolls and maps on a special template on golden rod or resume paper.

We sometimes use tavern menus on the same paper. This often leads to mini dinner parties, so the food itself is a sort of prop.

The last time we played Esoterrorists, we did something like what you are talking about. We had toy guns, and a leather journal book, and we had business cards, and reports. The group complained about it until they actually needed it to solve puzzles.

 

[KidSnide]

My PCs get letters from NPCs on a fairly regular basis. I try to print out the letters whenever possible. Also, when they are trying to get past some sort of arcane trap or lock, I do my best to draw out the runes and images, so there is some sort of visual clue.

But, yeah, "feelies" is not a very good term for this. The word you're looking for is "prop."

-KS

 

[ExploderWizard]

Ok players you DO realize this game will be played in feel-around right?

 

[Stormonu]

I love using props/player handouts whenever I can manage it, such as the map for the Lost campaign I did. I often write up "journals" for the players to find and read through, and have even made up mock spellbooks for the wizard characters that includes their spells in them.

I think my favorite was the one I used a few years back for our Halloween Ravenloft adventure. For those familiar with the I6 Ravenloft module, when the party was investigating the woods they ran across the remains of a messenger who bore the real letter from the Burgomaster. Upon finding the messenger, I threw a fake, bloodied stump of a hand onto the table that was grasping the letter, telling them that was what they found as my sound system was playing the howl of nearby "wolves". It was a moment or two before they dared to reach out and try to take the letter.

 

[wingsandsword]

But, yeah, "feelies" is not a very good term for this. The word you're looking for is "prop."

I do a fair amount of larping (don't talk about it much on ENWorld since this is generally a tabletop board), and calling something a "prop" makes me think of larping instead of just adding some items to add flavor and feel of a tabletop game, which made me think of the old Infocom games and the pack-in "feelies" used to add atmosphere to a text-only game in lieu of graphics.

Then again, that is just me and my quirks and the fact I tabletop and larp regularly.

 

[the Jester]

A couple months ago, I constructed an outdoor battlemap-scale version of part of P1. It was awsome, about 10'x8' using broken concrete, some digging, cinderblocks, etc.