We’ve all been there, sometimes you want to bring something new to your role playing game experience to give it that extra bit of special. Whether it’s improving your miniatures game, giving your players tools to make their game more enjoyable, or technology and organizational tools we’ve got something for you. Join us this week as John and Felicia talk about gadgets and tools that you might not know about that will help make your tabletop RPG even more excellent than it already is!
Did we miss something in our discussion that you use to amp up your game? Let is know by clicking contact! Here are links for several of the items discussed during the episode, scroll through the episode transcription for pictures of some items:
Source for 3D printed things like the hit point tracker, dice box, minis, landscape and more: https://thingiverse.com
For Arkenforge Tabletop: https://arkenfoge.com
For Trello: https://trello.com
For Combat Manager: http://combatmanager.com/
J: Hi, everyone, this is John. And this is Felicia. And as you heard this time, we are talking about the tools and gadgets that you can use to really amp up your gaming experience. And I think the good place to start is those really basic standard equipment that are beyond those things that you have to have. So we all know that you need to have players handbook need to have dice, preferably extra dice. But what are some of those other things that you consider standard equipment for making your game better?
F: Well, I really enjoy using miniatures and like my game, so for me having a grid map and the wet erase markers are like an absolute must for my games. In addition, extra pencils, paper, things like that, miniatures, you know, you want from for yourself and for others.
J: Yeah, and on that miniatures topic. As the dungeon master you kind of have to have a little bit of a surplus of miniatures not just characters that are being played because you have to have something to represent the monsters. Now, you could go out to the store and buy them out and have every single monster in your collection, but you’re going to spend a lot of money. I think that what probably most experienced DMs do, myself included, we just have a pool of miniatures and we choose whichever we’re going to use for this instance.
F: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I may have like a dragon in the actual campaign but my figurine, my miniature that I use could be something completely different I’ve gone off the beaten path and even tried like Funko Pops as my larger monsters just because I just wanted something that was representative of the size of the monster that my characters were coming across.
J: Yeah, as long as the as long as the players know what it represents when you set it down and you stick to that like it doesn’t change from this is a dragon to this is a Bugbear, or whatever.
F: Besides all that, for me, a good old fashioned bag of holding box of holding, container of holding, something to put all your stuff in.
J: Yeah, and with the number of things that you start carrying around as the dungeon master, you really have to think about what’s going to be appropriate. Because you’ve got your dice and depending upon what kind of dice person you are, you could have a horde of dice, which which you’re going to maybe even have a separate bag for. And if you have a bunch of miniatures, and then you’ve got character sheets and all this other stuff, it’s going to really dictate where you have to put that stuff in.
F: That’s true. Yeah.
J: So I mean, that’s kind of the standards. I mean, I think that anybody could probably look at the game and come to come to those standards. But let’s talk about the fun extras, because we’re really here to enhance the game not just talk about things that people should have. What are some of those fun extras that are out there?
F: Yeah, definitely want to exceed those those gaming standards. Back to the grid map portion like I was saying, I enjoy working with miniatures and the grid map. And there are just so many options now out there of artistically creative designs for forests and dungeons and caves that your characters can walk on in grid map fashion. Those are really great, but you can take it up to the next level and go completely 3d and have actual structures and walls and buildings, fortresses and things that you’re like your miniatures can actually come across, and actually walk up climb, go into. It’s crazy, like I think the the actual small models for grid maps are really fun addition to any gaming experience.
J: You kind of hit on something there when you talked about some of the different maps that are available. I know that my artistic abilities are really poor. When it comes to drawing on the mat, having something that I can have at least a start with and then draw poorly drawn squares on top of that is helpful. But the thing is a dungeon master, I’ll say that you kind of have to be careful of, if you’ve got, if you’ve got four or five different standard maps, and one is maybe the inside of a temple, if you use that room for everything that that that is inside of a room that’s rectangular, it’s going to start to be like, “Oh, it’s another temple. How many temples to these people have?”
F: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That’s why I like my just plain old simple grid map that I can just change to any scenario. If it’s a forest, if it’s a cave, it’s a building, and it’s circular at square, it’s whatever. It’s really versatile.
J: Yeah. And moving on, some of the other things that you can have. Some of the things we’re going to talk about are actually a little bit more player focused. But as the dungeon master, it’s kind of nice to let your players know that they’re out there.
F: Yeah, for sure.
J: But you have a really cool personalized dice box. It’s engraved on the outside. It’s got slots for your dice. Where did you actually get that?
F: Whenever I kind of delve into anything and when I first delved into Dungeons and Dragons, my go to for almost everything is Etsy. You find just the most fun, creative, beautiful things on Etsy. And my husband and I, who both wanted to try something new at the same time had both decided that we really wanted something personalized for ourselves when we started playing. So we got these really beautiful, handcrafted, engraved dice boxes that split open and one side has the space to hold the dice and your figurines and then the other side is actually the spot where you can roll your dice on. It’s lined in velvet it and it looks just gorgeous. He had his engraved with some Nordic runes, and I had mine engraved with some like floral designs. And we absolutely love it. We throw into our bag of holding for our next campaign session that we’re going to have somewhere else and it’s it’s great. I love it.
J: Another way to go with those dice boxes, I have, and if you’re listening at home we’re going to have pictures of a lot of the things that we’re talking about. So please make sure to go to becomingDM.com so you can see what it is that we’re talking about. I also 3d printed a box. It’s definitely not as pretty as the box you have. But but it holds three sets of dice and, and some spell trackers and stuff like that, which is one of the other things that’s on our fun extras list is spell trackers, right?
J: You have a way to do that. And I have a little bit different way to do this. Why don’t you talk about yours first.
F: Yeah.
F: It’s honestly, cheap. straightforward, and to the point I just have a little collection of 
gemstones that I distribute to each of my spell casters in the game and however many spells they have. That’s how many gemstones they get. Whenever they use one, they throw it back into the pot and so it’s just easy for them to keep track of their spells when they’re playing.
J: What I have is, in my dice holder I have these little chip tokens that each have a number on them one through nine for the different levels of spells that it could be. The lid of the tracker has slots that those go in. So if you get to first level spells a day you put two little chips in the in the one spot and you pull them out as you use them.
F: Above and beyond for sure.
J: Another kind of player focus thing that that I know you have because I gave you one is is a hit point tracker. There’s a lot of ways to track hit points. There’s obviously the good old fashioned pencil and paper where your erase every time and you write it or you just have a piece of paper just for scribbling down your point changes. But what this is, it’s a little I don’t know what the shape would be called because it’s 10 sided.
F: It’s like a tiny miniature scroll.
J: Our Public Education failing us. Anyway, tt’s a it’s a 10 sided little object and it has numbers on each of the faces, you twist them. So you can set where your current hit points are, as you lose them, you just twist it to adjust that. It’s even got a plus and minus symbol for those unfortunate times when you’re when your character goes unconscious and possibly dead.
F: Yeah, it’s actually a really convenient thing to use. I really enjoy that, especially when you’re playing and you’ve got a lot going on and you’re writing one thing or another, it’s the hit point tracker, it’s just really convenient. You just twist it to what you need it to be and and you can move on with the rest of your campaign. So I really enjoy it and I love that mine’s colorful.
J: If you’re interested in that will also have a link to where you can where you can make one make one
F: Other ways to make, you know, combat and gaming more convenient. I’m a really big fan of like the stencils and the templates for spells. You know, when you’re doing a spell and it’s like, “oh, your spell has to be in a cone of, you know, x y&z or it’s a radius of, you know, blah, blah blah feet,” and you have this grid in front of you this grid map, at least in my case, and I’m over here trying to count the squares to see which characters are going to be actually impacted. So the templates and little stencils are really, really for me, honestly, like, they’re a godsend. They’re so convenient, I don’t count squares don’t have to waste time. And you can get some really cool ones that have a lot of very cool detailing on them, you know, fire or water or like, you know, just all sorts of great elemental types. it’s really great to just kind of have those sort of small details when you’re doing that kind of engagement with your players. So those are for me are absolutely great, great, great thing to have.
J: The ones that you were showing me with, with the different special effects on them. I thought those was really cool just because, yeah, you can lay down a triangle on the table or whatever, but it’s really nice to be able to have that visual representation of what exactly is going on here. Yeah, it’s a cone but it’s a cone of fire burning down everything in it’s path. I like those I think I’m going to actually look at getting those are for the game that I’m running right now.
J: Another kind of like fun extra it applies to the the miniatures side again, are stands for when you’re I mean they’re they’re pretty much used for when your characters flying but also if you have the thing that I like using them for is if you’ve got a an enemy that’s on a different levels, for instance, archers that are up a level and you don’t have necessarily your structures and walls game going on. You can put them on the pedestal so that people know ,”hey, this guy is not a ground level. I can’t just rush and hit him with a sword.”
F: Exactly. Yeah, I think those are really fun and I’ve had it were a lot of my players have familiars that can fly. That’s really convenient to have in your back to like the, you know, it’s using for flying status, but I like it for familiars as well. Just to be able to allow them to move about like they need to be. Then of course, you know, see your characters jumping on a roof to get down into a building. So it’s fun, it helps make it a little more of that engaging experience. I think that you know, your, your characters can see, you know, the height and the depth of what their characters are doing.
J: A lot of fun stuff that people can can use. And I’m sure that somebody’s listening is going What about this? What about this? And we’d love to hear about whatever it is that we’ve missed in this podcast. Yes. So please feel free to come and comment on it. And and and we’ll we’ll read your comment on the next podcast that comes out. And love to hear from you.
F: Yeah, I’d love to maybe even use it on our next game. Yeah.
J: Next, we’re getting into technology. People talk about tabletop role playing games, and oftentimes you think, “Oh, it’s just pencils and paper and, and dice.” But there are so many different technology options out there anymore that you just, you can inundate your players with it or if you use it strategically, can really enhance your game. Is there anything out there that you’ve used or heard about using that you’re you’re wanting to check out?
F: One thing I am just Uber excited to try out, I was doing some research on just once again, amping up the gaming experience. And I discovered that there were a few programs, different types that you can download on to either your Amazon Echo or your Google home. So you can download them on to either one of those. I think a couple of them are like ask the DM or dungeon assistant. And they’re really great because not only can you have them roll your dice for you, let’s say you’re creating characters and you need to have them roll dice to see what your abilities are, or you’re in combat and you’re like, Ah, you know, I need to roll, you know, 2d six, you can be Hey, Alexa, roll to the six and then they’ll make the sound of like the dice rolling, and she’ll tell you like, what the results were. I thought that was really fun. And then it kind of saves you from having to roll multiple dice or doing it yourself. I thought that was a really fun thing. And for spell casters, it’s really great if you’re trying to think of what a spell is, or you wrote down, I’m going to use the spell, but you don’t want to sift through the book, you can actually ask, Alexa, tell me what this spell is. And she’ll tell you what the spell is and all the requirements for it. I kind of like that auditory aspect of it where you don’t have to worry about sifting through the book. You don’t have to worry about looking at this or that you can just ask her and she can tell you.
J: The question is, is when you start using that if you have an Alexa and Google in the room can players say, I want Google to roll this one for me instead of Alexa? I don’t trust that. Oh, I want it. I want to see what Alexa says.
F: Alexa’s is not on my side. I haven’t tested out how good of a roler or Alexa is. My money’s on Alexa.
J: Kind of in that same sort of realm of rolling dice and enhancing the player experience. There’s a lot of different programs on your computer or phone that can roll dice for you for the same sorts of purposes. But also, as a DM, there’s things that do things like track initiative, which I always struggled with, before I started using technology. I would write initiative order down and always something would get transposed wrong and it’s getting players in the initiative and your players notice that stuff. So having something to really keep you on the ball with who goes next. The the application I use is called combat manager and they’ve got a Windows application as well as a as well as an iPhone/iPad application. They may have it for other systems, those are just the ones I know about. And in addition to being able to roll dice to be able to track initiative, it also has a pretty extensive monster integration. So you can search for monsters, I’m using it in my Pathfinder game. I not sure if it’s if it’s d&d enabled, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I can search for monsters through various bestiaries. I can add those to combat very quickly and it’ll roll all their initiative for me so that it places them in the appropriate order. I can do quick rules look up spell look ups, it’s really handy. Now I will say that the Windows application works better than the iPad application, the iPad application has a tendency to sometimes crash at inopportune times. So if you have the option of one or the other, I would say look into the into the windows experience for that.
F: I think along the same notes, you know, when we’re talking about programs that you know, you can use for looking at monsters and characters tracking initiative and all that kind of stuff. I mean, because we can all admit, Dungeons and Dragons, or those types of tabletop gaming, there’s a lot of numbers involved. It’s a big numbers game. And when I first started d&d, I was so overwhelmed by just the amount of numbers that I had to calculate and add and take away and include and, now it seems pretty straightforward, but it really was like a very, you know, daunting thing to take on and so when we first started Pathfinder, we weren’t really sure exactly how to go about creating characters. I didn’t want to go and buy like the basic players handbook and like do it from scratch like that. So I actually went online and found a lot of really helpful programs that just helped to build the character for me.
F: I was, this type of class, this type of race, I had a familiar and these are my traits and then it just kind of did all the numbers for me print off my character sheet went to my first game. So I think along the same lines, you have programs that can help you build those characters as well, which I’m sure most of you guys are familiar with.
J: Yeah, so there’s things like like hero lab, the one I used when I created a d&d character recently was something called orc pub too. I’m sure that there’s a lot of different websites out there. And what did you use to create your characters?
F: You know, I would love to tell you, but my memory doesn’t serve me too well, right now.
J: Google Search away.
F: There are literally just tons and tons of programs out there. You just got to find the ones that work best for you. I had to to sift through quite a few before I found the one I think that kind of just worked for my particular needs. But yeah, technology is great and just helping you with that.
J: Next on the technology front is something that I have gotten really interested in. And it’s it’s the virtual tabletop experience. Even if you’re in person, you can have a virtual tabletop experience. And this is this was the thing that got me into using miniatures in my entire role playing experience. Up until about six months ago, I had never used miniatures in a role playing game.
F: That’s a shame.
J: I know and, and part of it was the whole I’m poor at drawing. So I didn’t want my maps to be in front of players for them to look at. I came across this, this thing on the internet and I was like, Wow, that is cool. And the application I use is something called Arkenforge. I took a TV and I built the table around the TV, and you can display these digital maps on the TV. So you still are having a tabletop experience. People still have their miniatures that they can move around and stuff. But it’s all on the TV. And the maps look beautiful. And they can be animated, they have fog of war and cast shadows and all these cool things. And for an in person experience, it’s an awesome platform. It’s a really affordable piece of software. And there’s no recurring subscription. Now, if your players can’t all get in the same room, there are different options. There’s things like roll20 Fantasy Grounds, there are several others out there that give you an experience like that. And then the nice thing about about those applications is they also do things like have rule books built into them. You can buy modules in there and it’ll bring the module maps into the application so you don’t have to draw the maps that are in pre published adventure modules.
F: Yeah, which can be a time consuming process. I’ve discovered.
J:For me it’s been a great addition to the game to have this tabletop software that I’ve been using to run my players through through dungeons and stuff like that.
F: As a player I’ve actually experienced playing in one of your campaigns and using Arkenforge tabletop and, it’s so cool. It is so cool. I’m obsessed with like the little flickering flames, it gets dark and and I particularly like the function where you can use your mouse to sort of open up and reveal items, if you’re walking into a room you don’t have to like see the entire room you can have part of it’s still dark and and as the players move forward, you can open up the room some more so I really liked that that function is there and you’re like, Oh, I haven’t gone through the doorway yet. I have no idea what’s in there. Which is something that you kind of lose out on what your whole thing is hand drawn maps. So I thought that was a pretty cool function. Cool.
J: Also on the technology front is organization and as you well know, being a dungeon master being organized is really important. And I know that you and I both, at least to some extent still use the good old fashioned standby: pencil and paper or pen and paper. But since we’re talking about organization, is there any anything that you do specific to organization that helps you out as a dungeon master.
F: I mean, we’re going along the technological route, you know, one program that you actually introduced to me recently was Evernote. And that was really great for you know, taking the note sharing stories. Know You can add in small amounts of like media images, things like that. So that’s a really fun way I think to share the notes in the storyline with your characters, and it’s good for me to keep organization. Personally, anything on a program to use if you’re like, good old fashioned Microsoft Word, and you just want to write out on that. You can. Google Docs you can. We have a Facebook page so you know where you update storylines and things like that to keep you know your your players abreast of situations. And then you know, honestly as much as I love technology, I always seem to find myself constantly reverting back to pen and paper. I may be like a newer dm, but I guess sometimes I just prefer old fashioned methods.
J: A lot of times, what I do is I will jot down my initial notes, my initial thoughts on on a little notepad I carry around with me with that travel. If I have an idea that comes to me, I just pull it out and jot down a few things. And then once it’s more fleshed out and I’m ready to start putting it in front of players, I’ll transfer that over to OneNote or Evernote, both both great note taking apps. Recently, I’ve been using an application called Trello. And Trello is really a task management to do kind of app and it’s very versatile. You can you can build out kind of categories with it, build out cards. And so I use Trello. And I put all of my adventure in there, I put locations and NPC I put monsters that I’m going to use, story arcs and all sorts of stuff in there. And it’s, it’s really, it’s affordable because it’s free and it really is is useful for what I do. I’ll try to include some screenshots on our website of how I kind of structure my Trello.
J: But if you’re not cheap like me, there there are applications out there on the web for purchase or for subscription. The one that I’ve seen most mentioned is called RealmWorks. We were looking at RealmWorks earlier.
F: Yes, that is a bougie program.
J: So you could add maps, you can have all your storyline plotted out in there. So similar to what I’m doing with Trello, but definitely more full feature geared towards doing that task.
F: Yeah, it looks, it looks like a very comprehensive and really useful program to have. And if you’ve got the money to spend and you don’t mind, I think it’s definitely a benefit to have in like your campaign.
J: Any other sort of like tech gadgets that you’ve seen here that you like?
F: I think I think I’ve come across your pride and joy, which is your 3d printer. It’s actually really cool, because when we first started with your campaign, you were able to actually make our figurines for us our miniatures, which I thought was just awesome. And then of course, you made the hit tracker with your 3d printer. And both of those were just such cool things that you can just make on your own. How you like it, the color that you want, the type of character that you have, it can be representative of who your player actually is. So I that’s a really fun little thing, and I don’t think you told me they weren’t that expensive, right?
J: If you’re getting a low end printer you can get it for sub $200 and and of course they they go up the more you spend potentially the better quality you get. When I bought mine I had I had a gift card this and they gave me that happened to cover the cost of the low end one. So that’s what I did.
F: It’s been really cool thing to see like you create the little, you know, you said the miniatures and hit tracker. It’s a really cool thing to see if you’ve got that income and you want to make something completely tailored to your players. 3d printers the way to go.
J: And if you get one, there’s a lot of the things that we talked about earlier in the show. You can print those with a 3d printer. So, we talked about structures and terrain for your grid map. You can find if you go to a place like thingiverse, you can find 3d files to print those out. The hit point tracker I took a file from Thingiverse and I modified it to fit my needs and printed those out. The dice holder, same thing. So all sorts of stuff that you can do with those. If you’ve got the money, probably one of the better investments that you can make to really amp up your your tabletop game just because there’s so many things that you could make that you might not spend money on otherwise.
F: Yeah, and then they can add up quick.
J: I think that’s primarily what we want to talk about with our tools and gadgets episode. As we said before, if if you’ve got stuff that you just find, is completely useful for your campaign, and we didn’t talk about it, we’d love to hear about it. Additionally, as we said before, if you have ideas for something that we should talk about in the future, an episode idea, we’re definitely open to suggestions, just go to becomingDM.com. Click on contact, fill out the form we’re ready to go. You can also reach out to us on facebook.com/becomingDM and twitter.com/becomingDM. So, thanks for joining us again and until next time,
J and F: Stay nerdy friends.