Places to buy cool props for your game that other people may not have thought of yet

[jbear]

I walked into a pet shop with my son the other day for a bit of fish gazing, when I noticed all the really cool ancient ruins and sunken treasure aquarium decorations that they were selling. They weren't exactly cheap, but I thought they could really add some character to an encounter if someone had money to burn.

I've seen a few people's awesome encounter set ups with the Dwarven Forge gear (is that what it is called), but I wondered if people who invested money in that kind of thing had thought about checking out aquarium decorations to add to their collections.

I decided to check out prices online and althoguh some of the stuff is expensive, other stuff seemed pretty cheap, like this water fall for $5, which would make a pretty awesome backdrop prop.

Mountain Cliff Aquarium Ornament w/Airstone Fish Decor - eBay (item 370363933484 end time Apr-18-10 18:14:50 PDT)

Does anyone else have any ideas where to find cool stuff to add flavour to the game that other people might not have thought about looking?

 

[Rechan]

If you look, there are quite a few scented oil/popuri bottles that if emptied would make great potion bottles/alchemist flasks/djinn bottles.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I always thought Mushrooms would be a great prop for a battlemat. It would really make a good fungus area.

 

[Nebulous]

i've had a lot success with wooden lego blocks. They can be painted black or tan or gray like castle walls, and i've linked them together with putty to create arches and turrets and such. Actual lego pieces work extremely well too, but cost more. Here's one i cobbled together for the finale of Thunderspire Labyrinth, it's the terrible machine of Paldemar. And a little photoshop too.

 

[Holy Bovine]

i've had a lot success with wooden lego blocks. They can be painted black or tan or gray like castle walls, and i've linked them together with putty to create arches and turrets and such. Actual lego pieces work extremely well too, but cost more. Here's one i cobbled together for the finale of Thunderspire Labyrinth, it's the terrible machine of Paldemar. And a little photoshop too.

Did you use that Brass Golem in the background to represent the Bronze Warders Paldemar used? My DM did the exact same thing! Ooooo we hated those things by the end!

 

[airwalkrr]

If you want some highly customizable miniatures for your game, LEGO figures are actually a great way to go. Their fantasy and medieval sets have a wide range of weapons, armor, and hats to choose from. And they are conveniently sized to fit perfectly on 1" battle mat squares. They even have dragons!

Okay that last image probably wouldn't fit on a battle mat, but there are actually LEGO dragons that would be usable on a battle mat if you want to. Not that LEGO stuff is any cheaper than pre-painted plastic minis mind you.

Engineer's drafting paper with 1" squares is also a great way to pre-draw your battle sites. Rather than drawing with vis-a-vis pens and wiping up the mat with papel towels, this relatively cheap paper is easy to use and has the advantage of allowing you to cut it up into room-sized pieces, allowing you to easily conceal the location of secret passages and the rooms beyond. It's kind of like having D&D dungeon tiles custom made for your dungeon.

You can also go to the grocery store and get a roll of pennies, then paint the pennies any color you want. My mage is the white penny.

 

[weem]

I made a post a while back about using free paint swatches from places like Home Depot to make condition markers etc. It's hard to beat "free"

 

[Janx]

I think legos are a little pricey.

Personally, I've used:

wooden tokens for each player (cut up scrap wood) for initiative or battlemat placement. 2 tokens for each PC works alright (one for the mat, and then one for the initiative conga line on the side of the mat)

wooden canoes for a river journey (easy to carve with a chisel), and the minis fit inside.

campfire and log pile. I used twigs, pebbles, and a wooden indian nickle, I glued and set up a campfire ring, and then a seperate firewood pile. Great for those camp site attacks (where's the fire/light source, relative to the PCs.

Bar for those tavern scenes (more scrapwood fun).

Most of my stuff, I make myselff, usually from scrap wood.

I like making stuff, and small game props are fun.

I've also done maps. I usually use old printer paper (from my old pile of fan-fold tractor feed paper). paper garbage bages also work. You can buy parchment, and papyrus from art supply stores, but that's a little pricier.

leather working can be fun, too.

Dice pouch:
Take the gauntlet off an old welding glove, so up the bottom (the part you cut off the glove), and then punch holes on the rim and run leather lace through it.

I also have a leather pencil case (kind of like a scroll case) for my gaming pencils, battlemat marker

I have a leather book cover, that holds 2 books, so I put the DMG, PH in it. looks like a big spell book.

I just got a bamboo scroll/map case from GreenMan Games at the Texas RenFair. It can hold all the game maps my PC has (thus being more "in character"). I need a longer version to hold my battlemat, then I'd be set.

I saw this at OwlCon a few years back during a FireFly LARP, it was a leather "documents" case, kind of like what you see on Pirates of the Caribeen II for the letter of marq that Will goes for. It's a cool way to hand over "orders" to the PC or other official document that a courier might be carrying. Very easy to make. Go get 3 screw in paper holder things (like for 3 hole punch, but meant to screw together. Then cut one sheet of leather bigger than the paper, and another thin strip to hold the paper with the screw things. Punch the holes, and the paper, screw it together, then use some leather lace or buttons to make it stay shut.

I bought a life-size puppet of a raven (from some company that makees really nice puppets) and used it to represent the familiar for my gnome Conjurer.

I once made a wizard's spell book/journal as a prop/clue for the players. I wrote up a bunch of journal entries, and interspersed all the spells the wizard knew (copied from the SRD) in word. I set the page layout to be landscape, and 2 pages per sheet. Then I set the fonts to be wierd stuff like Futhark runes for the journal entries and LotR elven for the spells. Then I adjusted the page breaks and layout. Then I printed it out into 8 page choruses, and sewed them to a spine made tagboard. I then glued the spine into a cover made of the same stuff (the same kind of material as cereal boxes, but unprinted on). Then I painted the cover, inside and out (so it would not look like cardboard). Basically, it was a simplified book making process. The hard part was producing the book content, namely the journal entries, as you want enough to seem normal, plus the special entries. As well as having enough to appear feasible.

 

[Obryn]

My wife's into her hobbies, which means I'm often at places like Hobby Lobby or JoAnn's Fabrics.

Seriously, it's a treasure trove for improvised gaming stuff. We can start on the obvious glass pebbles, and then expand into the even weirder stuff (like grabbing cheap resin "decorations" for Call of Cthulhu props).

-O

 

[Desdichado]

Hobby stores are great fun to browse for gaming adaptable paraphernalia.

Just the other day, I bought a pack of gold coins from a party favor store; about $2.99 for a 72 count bag. I probably won't actually use them as coins in-game, but rather as tokens for things like Action Points and stuff.