The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => RPGs => : Tadanori Oyama May 28, 2009, 01:55:36 PM
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This last episode reminded me of something I've been meaning to bring up:
What do you have at the table during your games?
With me, different games require different equipment since I'm nearly always the GM. But players bring things or the owner of the table leaves things there and that stuff mixes with your stuff and you end up with this strange geography of stuff in your gaming space.
I think knowing what gamers have at the table with them will tell you alot about them. Like, if they have manuals for games that your not currently playing, they might be bored or disinterested. Did they bring their own dice? What drinks and snacks do they have, if any?
Consider it another entry in our gamer sociology discussions.
So, a typical game of Dungeons and Dragons with my main group has the following:
- Massive battle mat laid out first so everybody doesn't have to move everthing later.
- Players Hand Book and relivent source books.
- Monster manual securely in the hands of the GM and the GM only.
- My big pile of seperate dice I only use when I GM.
- The big blue bag of assorted dice I keep on hand for players who need them to play or who needs to throw down extra dice for a big attack.
- My printed notes and monster modifications, normally tucked into the monster manual.
- The dice piles of players A, B, and Y (when he's there).
- The few dice taken from the big blue bag by players C and D (and any others who might be gaming that day) because even after eight years, Player C has never bought a single die.
- The Player's minitures.
- Box of character minis for NPCs.
- Box of monster minis for NPCs.
- Second box of monster minis.
- Box of wooden pieces used for terrain effects and structures.
- Bowl of whatever snack is being eaten this week.
- Water bottles.
- Ice tea bottles.
- My cell phone, on silent.
- Pencils, paper, character sheets.
- The pile of unsorted, mismatched note cards that pass for Player B's power cards.
- My sheets, printed from the Character Creator listing stats and powers in neat block lettering.
- Player A's 'spell book' with all of her powers, the flavor text, mechanics text, and a chart of attack and damage bonus based on common circumstances and projected out for several levels.
- Player C's seething contempt for all things that I create and whatever paper he happens to be sketching things on at the moment.
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Well, my group has two situations~~At my apartment, or at my friend Jo's house.
At my Apartment~ I have a small dining room table, which sits directly across from the kitchen breakfast bar (gotta love 1 bedroom apts), so I set up my GM screen and equipment on the breakfast bar and let the players take their places at the table.
My equipment~
Laptop for PDF's and notes.
Notepad of paper.
Dice box and dice.
GM Screen.
Rulebooks and reference material.
Mechanical Pencil and/or pen.
The Players equipment~
Scratch paper and pens.
Their copies of the rulebooks.
Character Sheets.
Octagonal dice rolling dish Jo picked up for cheap at a Game Daze shop at the Chandler Mall.
At Jo's place, we play on her pool table, because it's size is sufficient for dice rolling and has enough room for her group.
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- Player C's seething contempt for all things that I create and whatever paper he happens to be sketching things on at the moment.
Wow, it sounds like that takes up a lot of space...can you see the battlemat underneath it?
Do you use a privacy screen? Are your wooden terrain effects just blocks for elevation and such, or did you raid the HO-scale terrain section at the hobby store?
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- Player C's seething contempt for all things that I create and whatever paper he happens to be sketching things on at the moment.
Wow, it sounds like that takes up a lot of space...can you see the battlemat underneath it?
Do you use a privacy screen? Are your wooden terrain effects just blocks for elevation and such, or did you raid the HO-scale terrain section at the hobby store?
Player C is my younger brother. He ridicules me as a matter of course and I ignore him. We work well together and he gets along amazing well with anyone who isn't me so he makes for a good team player.
I generally go screenless and make my rolls in the open.
The blocks are from different arts and crafts shops around town that I've gone to. One inch wooden cubes, flat squares of different sizes (1/2, 1, 1.5, and 2 inches), cylander shapes, balls, orbs, sticks, and a dozen other little shapes.
They where ment to be used in wood shaping projects but I find them to be amazingly effective and versital. I've spent somewhere around thirty dollars on wood bits and I use them nearly every game, especially for big battles.
I have a few specialized pieces, like leaves, trees, and snow flakes for special fights or situations.[/list]
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Giant poster of Comrade Lenin
Slide Rule
Lineman's pliers
Trimming plough
FP-45 Liberator
Depth gauge
Loupe
Urumi
Astrolabe
Stereoscope
Harrow (Prussian tine)
Millwall brick
Apple Box
Universal Work Holder
Hoop Dog
Scarificator
Gunpowder tester
Travelure
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Giant poster of Comrade Lenin
Cheers, Comrade! Together we will smash the bourgeois game companies that keep the gamers from seizing the means of production!
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Wow, that's pretty hardcore. All I have is the rulebooks, whatever notes I've taken about the adventure, and dice.
Oh, and no table.
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Wow, that's pretty hardcore. All I have is the rulebooks, whatever notes I've taken about the adventure, and dice.
Oh, and no table.
So how do you play without a table? Use an alternative central location or something "outside the box"?
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At games I'm playing, I personally have:
Any and all rulebooks for the game that I own.
A large notebook for notes/HP tracking (also holds my character sheets, printed reference sheets, etc)
My character sheet(s) and background/history sheets
My dice and plenty of them
A pencil
A set of wet erase markers
A calculator
My drink and/or food
Whatever item I'm using to represent my character on a battlemat (usually my 40K artillery dice)
If I'm playing D&D4e, I also have my power cards and other 3.5" cards that I store information on.
If I'm GMing, there's bunches more stuff. There's at the very least:
My GM screen
My large battlemat
Figures for enemies (either miniatures, pennies with numbers/letters on them, glass beads, or paper markers)
My stick for beating players (sadly, only kidding)
Any props that I may need/want.
Audio CDs or USB drives with music for the game mood
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So how do you play without a table? Use an alternative central location or something "outside the box"?
Not sure what you mean by "alternative central location" here. We sit around the lounge room, roll dice on the floor. It's pretty casual. No, I don't use miniatures of any kind. No need, and I have always found that they slow down the game.
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I keep it simple: relevant game books, pencils, notebook, session notes, any reference pictures or handouts I have for the players, a GM screen and fistfuls of dice to rattle threateningly.
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Giant poster of Comrade Lenin
Cheers, Comrade! Together we will smash the bourgeois game companies that keep the gamers from seizing the means of production!
I actually have that hanging next to the gaming table. Lenin watches all of our games. I also have a few signed original Horribleville strips next to it (the zombie and silent hill ones)