What are the coolest props you've used?

[JesterPoet]

1) Nope. Why do you ask?

I feel that it is important to get to know my fellow ENWorlders.

 

[Lu Wei Fong]

1) Yep yep!
2) Hrmm... so far the most I've done aside from miniatures and battle-mats is draw some pictures of particular scenes in the adventure (and then drawing maps of course). However, I've been planning to introduce props for a while now, and I'm happy to say this thread has given me some nice ideas, thanks

 

[eris404]

I feel that it is important to get to know my fellow ENWorlders.

LOL! I saw a fox in downtown Chicago once. That's not close to a reindeer, but at the time it was much more surprising.

 

[Zander]

1. I've seen an elk in the wild in Norway. I don't think I've seen a reindeer but I have eaten part of one. Reindeer steak is yummy BTW.

2. During a CoC game at a con, I was assigned a character who wears a monocle. To portray the character, I took my keys off my keyring and used the keyring as a monocle.

 

[Morpheus]

1) Yes. Growing up in Maine (so close to Canada), you get to see pretty much everything nature-related.

2) I made a telegram for a CoC adventure using a real telegram template found on the net.

 

[howandwhy99]

1. I spent most of my childhood camping in northern Wisconsin and Canada. I've seen plenty of reindeer in real life, but never in the wild.

2. I find maps, a grid board, and a white board almost indispensable. I've never used miniatures so much, but the new group has more than enough. They are also mighty handy.

I don't want to give away all my good props, but a good crystal ball is fairly easy to find and pretty decorative to boot.

Most any knicknack can double for an unusual magic item depending.

Bell's are nice and I used a handheld one for "Of Sound Mind". It just seemed logical.

Playing cards and Tarot cards are pretty standard.

Puzzle box, glow rods, smoke effects, even costuming can be nice when their importance is directly relevant to the game. (for example, that dice bag tied to your reoccuring NPC's belt is actually a bag of holding a character is questing for)

If you're an artist / sculptor you can just create your own. I remember in Piratecat's game some parchment fireballed the PC's when a player touched or asked about certain markings. Trapping items like this could be done with anything, really.

One really fun use of the example above is to 'trap' the room the players game in. As they play, they discover that fiddling with certain real-life objects can lead to good or bad consequences. I shudder to think how this might work in a game of Paranoia.

 

[Janx]

I've done wax sealed paper (and now I found a source of real parchment paper....)

wooden sailing ships ($2 from Michael's) with nice sails even

miniature campfire pit and log pile for mini camp scene.

MK 3d Dungeons layout of the entire dungeon the party explored

MK Castles pieces for a battle scene in the game

3d 3 level bandit's fort that went up, not down. The fort was over a small cove on 4 pillars (TP tubes), with 2 floors stacked on top of it. The players entered the structure from beneath, and I added layers as they went up.

1.5" to 5' scale paper ship deck plans. The ship was 156' long, so the paper version was almost 5' long on the table.

website of the entire campaign world materials (maps, history, fiction, NPCs, art, etc).

Just to name a few...


And no, I haven't seen a Reindeer, but I have seen a moose on the schoolbus (I was on the bus, the moose was in the field). We also almost hit a bear on the way back from Prom at 3am. And I almost ran over a skunk with my bike. And my friend raises deer.
Janx

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

I love gimmicks I've become a big fan of Play-doh (thanks Rel!) to represent oozes, slimes, or other oddly shaped enemies. I think my crowning achievement was using K'Nex to make the party build a rube-goldberg machine to capture a fox. They built a cart that moved under its own power and dropped a cage.

I'm also a fan of photoshop and www.deviantart.com. I can whip up almost any illustration using a combination of those two.

NCSUCodeMonkey

 

[LGodamus]

I think my crowning achievement was using K'Nex to make the party build a rube-goldberg machine to capture a fox. They built a cart that moved under its own power and dropped a cage.


NCSUCodeMonkey

Yes , Yes, we were quite clever ,eh?

on a more serious note...that was a wonderful gaming experience partly due to the unexpectedness of it, and partly cause its just too cool to play make beleive and play with toys at the same time.

 

[pogre]

1. Yep - there's a reindeer farm just northeast of my house - Xmas tourist trap.

2. Props - I assume you are not counting painted miniatures, miles of master maze, and hirst arts buildings?

I made a fake basilisk skull out of a hog's skull.