Favorite non-book game aide.

[Angel Tarragon]

CDs with sound effects on them. My favorite is Echoes of Nature: The Natural Sounds of the Wilderness

Other than that, the only resources I use are books, but are not published by any roleplaying companies. I love the National Audubon Society books. I only have three of them so far (North American Trees Western Region, North American Weather, North American Rocks & Minerals), but I'll be getting more soon.

I also picked up The Almanac for Farmers & City Folk [2006 version] this year, and I think I'll be buying it on a yearly basis. It has a bunch of interesting, useful and funny pieces in it that can be applied to gaming sessions. The Grave Comment is my favorite. Her is one I used:

BENEATH THIS STONE
MY WIFE DOTH LIE
NOW SHE'S AT REST
AND SO AM I​

My parents gave me a copy of their [Golden] Birds of North America Book not that long ago too. They used to be bird watchers.

 

[Troll Wizard]

Initiative tracker (write-on magnetic backed board) I got at GENCON, works great
Minis
Dice
Battlemat
Laptop for character sheet (Heroforge)

 

[KB9JMQ]

Tac-Tiles for things I own. Followed closely by my minis.
The giant dry-erase table I made for gaming on. Everyone writes HPs and notes on it rather than erasing on paper all day.
As soon as get some Steel Sqwire Templates they will rank pretty high up there.

 

[grodog]

In no particular order:

• Graph and hex paper, in conjunction with mechanical pencils, colored pencils, etc.
• The Combat Computer (from Dragon 74; I wish they'd made one for saving throws too!)
• The Dragon Archive (this may be cheating, since it's just .pdf'd books )

 

[Kormydigar]

Battlemat- I use one with 1.5 inch squares because the wide stances and size increase on many miniatures these days won't fit on a 1" square.

Custom size templates for 1.5 inch battlemat- I made these out of black cardstock for all the size catagories and used a little sticky labels to number them. It comes in real handy when you have 12-15 of the same type of monster running all over the place.

 

[Brakkart]

1. Dice
2. Paper, pencil and pen.
3. Giant paperclips (for pinning things on the DM screen, usually the Order of Initiative sheet)
4. Chessex Battlemats
5. Miniatures
6. Bottle of drink

What I'd like to have is a laptop so I can bring that instead of a half dozen hardback books each week. Just can't afford one right now.

Also some of those wire templates for spell effects would be useful.

 

[Crothian]

My laminated map of the City of Sanctuary.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

>Quote: Originally Posted by Olaf the Stout

>sckeener, what do you use the laptop for as a player?


As the world's most expensive character sheet?

I actually had a player who did this. Then I learned he would sometimes be playing World of Warcraft when he got bored. He doesn't play with us anymore.

I actually had the opportunity to enjoy a brief stint with a group of players who all used laptops. I use DM Genie to run games, and each of them had a copy of DM Genie or Player Genie to manage their characters and run them during play. The room actually seemed kind of eerie without the sound of dice, so I started occasionally rolling thing the old-fashioned way just to add some atmosphere.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

#1 - Steel Sqwire templates

 

[the Jester]

The Battlebox.

It's no contest; it's better than minis and battlemat combined.

Hell, it's almost better than dice, but I think those are a little more fundamental to the game than a "game aide".