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Do you use props in your role playing games?
I'm not especially creative, but I love having props at the table for games. Some games seem like a better fit for props than others - for example, Call of Cthulhu's focus on investigation makes having prop newspaper clippings, diaries and journals, maps and other ephemera feel natural and rewarding. It's made that much easier when the publisher provides them with a scenario, which is what Chaosium does for Cthulhu - the starter set handouts are freely available at their site.
Recently, I've added a mix of etsy and more premium products to various games:
- a fun set of inn menus, maps and store price list handouts for Lost Mine of Phandelver (link)
- I'm waiting for the Silver edition of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist to release from Beadle and Grimm (link)
- For the introductory Cthulhu adventure 'The Haunting', I found some really nice non-combat maps on DTRPG (link) and added the handouts from the HPLHS Classic Game Prop Set (link)
I'm curious to know how other people use props at the table, if you make your own, or have found something on etsy or elsewhere that you'd recommend.
I'm a fairly new DM so i haven't made much, but staining paper with tea to make it look like parchment is super easy. I've made a few scrolls to be found on defeated henchmen as clues for my players.
Since Covid hit we've not as I made the switch to Foundry VTT for online play and I love it and won't use anything else, it's such a fantastic storytelling tool. I've gone into incredible depth using Foundry though, a library of hundreds of songs and effects for battles, ambience, background, situational themes and even character themes and leitmotifs. Tons of battlemaps and non-battlemaps (although is there such a thing as a non-battlemap in a TTRPG with some players haha)! Around 40 modules that make gameplay easier and more immersive without gamefying D&D too much and hundreds if not over a thousand custom tokens for monsters and NPC's that I pulled together myself in Photoshop over the course of months and months. My current campaign is a labour of love and my players definitely appreciate it.
However, that said, I have used props previously. One of my favourites was a puzzle box that the PC's found in game and I then presented the players with the puzzle box and told them the key to a door in the dungeon was located in the puzzle box.
When they eventually got it open (it wasn't too difficult) they found a little key along with some cool character class pins I'd bought for each player as IRL treasure.
I've also done the tea/coffee stained maps and letters from NPC's, we've dressed up as our characters (I dressed as the big bad), and I've used my painted minis as a way to easily show players what a given character or monster looks like.
You seem passionate about Foundry, mind going into a bit more detail? I've looked into VTTs in the past, and used Roll20 a few times and even the Divinity: Original Sin 2 GM mode. None of them really clicked, but always on the lookout for others and have eyed many of the Steam options. Foundry looks self-hostable which is great too.
Are there any pitfalls to avoid or tips you'd recommend?
edit: I watched this video and am sold! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d7k8ognC0w
To be honest, that Overview you've added is fantastic, it pretty much covers all of the points I could about why Foundry is so good.
As you said it can be self-hosted, my friend did for his campaign but I use the Forge to host Foundry for me and it's a great service and fairly cheap.
I'd say the one major pitfall is the modules that expand the system are community developed, so if the dev stops working on it and it's integral to your game then you're kind of stuffed. Generally big or really popular modules that are abandoned are picked up by other devs but I've had to say goodbye to some really cool modules over the years, nothing key to running my campaign though.
No props for me. In fact, i avoid maps and art, too, whenever i can. I like collaboration with my players, so if they beat the lich and find his phylactery, I want them to tell me what it looks like. If they find the wizard's horde and notebook, I want them to describe whether it's a stone tablet, leather bond tome, box of scrolls, etc.
Also, I I'm broke and don't have time to make props on top on adventure prep.
I've used props before, however i didn't have the luxury of playing in RL for the last 15 years T.T
It's all online props now, and these i use heavily. You can really quickly find a magic sword or a mysical ring to show your playes
No real props, but I've been playing around with Dall-E to generate pictures of the settings my PC's are going to be playing in. It's mostly just images of ruins, or cellars. I'll mount them to some thick cardstock, and I'll apply some adhesive shelf liner to the back, so it's not just a sheet of paper I'm handing out.
Also, for one of my groups, I've been building out the dungeons with foam core walls, alongside wood, and clay assets. It's a ton of work, but it scratches my creative itch.
There was one game we played for a while, I forget what it was called, but it was some post apocalyptic Fallout like game, I think based on GURPS. Any way. Our DM would bring in music and that was neat, as players we also contributed on some playlists. For our last game, we surprised the DM by cosplaying as our characters, he was so delightfully surprised.
Haven't played in several years, but I used to love dropping "teaser" prop images to players between sessions. Fake images of documents or photographs sent via email or MMS were my go-to.
During sessions themselves, I kept the props to a minimum except for the occasional sound cue that I'd sneak into the background music.
Years back I was planning on running the Machine Tractor Station Kharkov-37 one-off scenario for Call of Cthulhu. The scenario takes place in 1930s Soviet Russia.
I had a play list of old Russian songs and clips of radio announcements and a folder of Soviet propaganda posters to loop on the TV, to set the mood. I also planned to make the character sheets look like passports (red cardboard for the cover, inner pages have the character stats). Some of the characters are also secret KGB(?) agents, so they'd have an extra black passport for their true identity.
Also, I was planning on not telling the characters that the scenario is a Call of Cthulhu scenario, but instead handwaving something about a general d100 system. Only when the characters would first encounter something unnatural, I would hand them a separate sheet (medical records, maybe) to reveal and track their Sanity.
Alas, real life got in the way and I never got to run that scenario.
Back when I was a DM I would use grid maps (either a blank grid that I would annotate by hand with walls and terrain features, or pre-printed tiles laid out) with figurines for the combat portions of the game. Other props would simply be pieces of paper rolled up with the pertinent info on them; I like the idea that another poster mentioned above in using tea to stain the paper and make it look more like parchment, but I never went that far into details. The best prop I did unleash on the players, at least from their point of view, was an upside-down Jell-o cup that represented a gelatinous cube. Although one player, pedantic to a fault, made sure to only call it a gelatinous truncated cone.