Props for RPGs (lorem ipsum)

Role-playing games
1

I’ve never made much use of props in RPGs, not even distressed maps and documents.

Perhaps I ought to have bought this, which I saw in a office supplies shop this morning.

playmoney
playmoney3024×4032 894 KB

It’s perfect for role-play! Says so on the pack!

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I’ve made some use of props: the vast CoC scenario Beyond the Mountains of Madness has a lot to photocopy out of the book.

My most effective one was home-made, though: the label on a packing case where there was a conspicuous lack of tick-marks in the “checked” box, and the signature was from someone named “Illegible Squiggle.”

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When YSDC ran Horror on the Orient Express, which involves the PCs being given lots of money for expenses, they had envelopes full of photocopied period notes – of which one player immediately made herself the custodian.

I’ve also not been much of a prop user.

4

Play money is increasingly hard to get in the UK. Also, Monopoly sets come with a calculator these days for electronic banking. Honestly, what is the world coming to?

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So when you try another game and cast off Monopoly in disgust, at least you got a calculator out of it? :slight_smile:

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I still have the “spirit bundle” I made for a Werewolf campaign. It had various ‘magical’ things inside it (seashell, quartz crystal, rabbit thigh bone, etc) and the shaman player had fun scrabbling around in it to pull out the correct one for the given crisis.

There was also what was nicknamed The Laminated Index Card of Power. To represent who had the thang which gave them a bonus from the party’s Totem Spirit.

Apart from that, props have usually been letters, maps and handouts. And character portraits with dinner placeholder stands to hold them up (useful for con-games).

I’ve got a collection of perspex diamonds for heists/loot which are actually wedding tat (a.k.a. “table confetti”), but covid happened before I had a chance to use that in a game.

EDIT: I used to use miniatures, but stopped when we shifted to playing in a dimly lit pub with tiny tables. And I think I took my replica lion skull to a game once, but it is too big and delicate to do that often.

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