D&D General Favorite Accessories to play D&D and RPGs from the past 52 years

[sevenbastard]

View attachment 440808
Since we're sharing minis photos, here is my brute squad. A little out of date (I've added a bunch of Ral Partha D&D trolls, an ettin, and an umber hulk among others). I've had a lot of fun collecting and painting vintage minis the past few years. I play mostly online, but when we do get together it's fun to break them out.

I have some of those minis I painted as a kid back in the 80s. The bald dude on the far left with the pole arm and the guy next to him holding up the disk, probably some of the others but hard to tell. Because they are lead I have them stored so my kids dont play with them.

Just last night I was also flipping through the old Battle System Skirmish from the 90s and a lot of the minatures in your picture are the sculpts used in that book. Classics!

 

[thullgrim]

This.

I used to use a magnetic initiative and condition tracker (and I've used a big one on a dry erase whiteboard on an easel with a big group and/or room), and of course notepads and mechanical pencils and dice are always essential.

But for accessories nothing beats a wet-erase battle mat. Years of service. Ability to draw whatever scene I need to, albeit usually with low artistic merit.



Actually, do they make a 6x4? I have a roughly 3x4, and I've played on their 4x8, but I've never seen a 4x6 and I don't see one on their website.

Maybe mine is 4x8. It’s the biggest one they do.

I used to use mine for initiative tracking, mapping, spell duration, anything I needed to jot rapid notes on. So handy.

We moved online during the pandemic but my daughter has it now for her group so it still gets use.

 

[MNblockhead]

Graph paper and precision mechanical pencils pilfered/borrowed from my dad's office.

 

[Thierry-Advent]

A larger pencil leather case wide enough to hold my D&D dice. It cost a whooping $12 in 1980. My father said I was crazy to spend so much money on that. Still have it in perfect conditions 46 years later! It survived all my RPGs games since then.

 

[Kobold Stew]

The WOTC pre-painted plastic miniatures that started with 3.5 in 2003 were excellent, and for those of us who had no desire to paint, they were inexpensive, but didn't look cheap. I had a FLGS that had a case of opened boxed so you only needed to buy what you wanted. The tooth fairy would bring my son at the time $1-2 and a bunch of kobolds. "Hey dad, these are your favorites, aren't they?" the innocent and unquestioning child would ask me. That and the Chessex mat made gaming with minis accessible and relatively inexpensive.

My second choice would be a Crown Royal bag.

 

[Wolfram stout]

Jenga blocks: quick affordable way to outline play space and even build height differences.

 

[Marc17]

My forms clipboard that I found in a truck stop on some road trip. Sturdy aluminium and can hold a lot of papers and even spiral notepads. Has a flip board to go under the papers you are using to form a hard writing surface. Has a storage space for all your other papers, pencils, erasers, etc. Typically, I'd just keep the character sheets, notes, and other papers for all the games I was playing with pencil and erasers in the storage. It was everything I typically would need, except for books, for all my games ready to go. I think I even found dice that would fit in the storage compartment but they were a little small for this one. There are models with larger storage compartments that could hold regular dice set, as well as half sheet size. I've been using this one for 20+ years.

Graph paper and precision mechanical pencils pilfered/borrowed from my dad's office.

I don't use it much these days, but in college and soem time afterwards I would use engineering pads. They are graph paper with the graphing lines on the back but can be seen through the paper on the front, along with proper spaces for titles dates, etc.

 

[Stormonu]

This one is for the old timers...

What are some of your favorite first- or third-party accessories that you bought, or saw for sale, to help people play D&D and other RPGs? What were some of the weirdest you remember seeing? What parts of the game did they shore up? Do you have any stories about the companies who made them?

I loved my 1E DM screen to death - that thing was so helpful back in the day; and I loved that it had the weapon chart facing the players.

Gamescience dice changed the way I looked at dice, and which ones I bought thereafter (and had Lou's speech just about memorized for all the times I bought Coastcon dice from him ).

On the computer side, I have to give a big shout out to Profantasy Campaign Cartographer. I used it for many years to design campaign maps and dungeon maps that could be rescaled as needed - I even printed a few out as battlemats. It was a nightmare to learn, though.

The switch from metal minis to prepainted plastics had a huge impact for me; I've still got metal minis back from the day that are still just primed white and kept in padded drawers of a bit box bin (y'know, the type most folks keep screws, nails and whatnot in).

Likewise, going from battlemats & dwarven forge pieces to the die-cut dungeon tiles made on-the-go DMing so much easier for me. Didn't take up as much space and as long as I planned ahead, looked a lot better than a scribbled-on battlemat (especially the three I ruined with red wet-dry markers*).

Come 5E, buying a set of condition tokens was so helpful - I can just hand out a poker-sized token that has the details on it so players are reminded of any conditions that effect them - no more forgetting they've been Blessed, or if they've received a bardic inspiration.

The one item I remember seeing from way back when that wrinkled my nose was the (TSR?) Combat Wheel. It was just too nerdy - in a slide rule sort of way - that I just wanted to stay far, far away from it. That and Dragonstrike and it's cringeworthy VHS tape.

* Though years later, when Mr. Clean magic erasers came into being, I was finally able to clean those mats to make them no longer be an eyesore - though I did end up needing to re-ink some of the lines.

 

[billd91]

Mega mats from Chessex with overhead markers, ideally in blue which seems to clean off the easiest (red is the worst)

Paper and card stock tokens from Fiery Dragon, particularly their CD collection of them

GM screens for any game as long as they concentrate on the right info like the 5e D&D one does

Small dry erase boards, about the size of a letter-sized sheet of paper bought from a school supply store - great as an initiative tracker

 

[Nightfly]

Meeples!

30 or so meeples in a rainbow of colors costs like three bucks on eBay. And then you're set for monster miniatures for life.