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"Feelies" with your tabletop games
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<blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5714103" data-attributes="member: 14159"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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)</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>So, have other GM's done things like this for tabletop games?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="wingsandsword, post: 5714103, member: 14159"] 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? [/QUOTE]
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