GAMING TOOLS

In this aisle, you’ll find all kinds of useful gaming tools that can help with the more physical aspect of your gaming.  Since they come from different vendors, steal at your own risk!

Alea Tools - “Home of the Stackable Magnetic Markers.” Alea makes several (and I mean several) different colored markers for use with your miniatures.  Each color denotes a specific condition (decided by you) making it easy to remember a PC’s, NPC’s, or monster’s status.  Is he bloodied, slowed, dominated, flying, or what?  I think the price is a little high for a gaming accessory (there are cheaper options out there), but to be sure, they are made of quality materials, and are a quality product.

D20 Pro – Manage your home game from your computer! The features include: Quick dice, Initiative order, Measure distance, Area effect templates, Combat resolution, Hit point & effect tracking, Virtual tabletop, Maps drawn, tiled, or hi–resolution, Create & import creatures, Prepare encounters, Manage adventures, Record campaigns, Network multi player, Group & private chat Role, Upload creature, Share maps, creatures, and items.  I’ve heard good things about D20 Pro, plus it looks cool.

Dark-Platypus Studios – “I make cool things to help enhance the games I like to play, and I share them with you in the hopes you’ll like them too!” Dark-Platypus Studios has a few different tools to choose from.  The one I like the most is the Magna Map, a magnetic battle map.  Other things they offer are dice bags with art, gaming tokens, counters, condition tags, and jewelry.  One of the cool things is that their art is pretty original – you won’t see any art that is normally associated with the fantasy genre.

Dragon Avenue – Dragon Avenue is a great resource for any 4E Dungeons & Dragons game.  They have new, nicely laid out character sheets, an Initiative and Effects Tracker sheet, Encounter Builders, customizable Power Cards, and my favorite: Condition Cards.  The condition cards are laid out on the table when a condition affects a particular PC, NPC, or monster.  It’s great because it shows everything you need to know about a particular condition.  I use these in every D&D 4e game I run.

Fat Dragon Games- I love to build homemade 3D sets for my games using craft materials – Fat Dragon Games brings that to a whole new level.  Buy their downloads (cheap), print them out on cardstock paper, then cut and glue the best battle map you’ve ever had.  I have used several, and they’ve delivered each time.  Most of their stuff is fantasy based, but they have a smaller line of sci-fi, modern, and even western terrain maps.  It’s definitely one of the better tools for role playing games.

Gaming Paper – “Gaming Paper is the latest innovation in roleplaying and miniatures accessories and is a low-cost alternative to expensive battlemaps and tile sets. It’s an inexpensive, reusable and disposable product for gamers.  Gaming Paper is sold in convenient rolls that are 30 inches wide and 12’ long, for 30 square feet of playing surface. At only $4/roll, it is a fraction of the cost of other gaming mats on the market. Not only is it usable for miniatures games, but it is also ideal for roleplaying games. Anyone can use pens, markers, or other simple writing implements to create detailed terrain for campaigns or miniatures battles.”

Greywulf’s Lair – When it comes to running games, I love to use imagery.  Artwork of characters, monsters, locations, vehicles… you name it – I use a picture.  It simply adds to the overall effect of role playing in a way that words can’t always do.  In particular, Robin over at Greywulf’s Lair has devoted much time and skill in providing renderings for others to appreciate and use in their home games.  Most of his work consists of characters, NPC, and enemy images covering a variety of genres, though he writes about other things as well.  I can tell you that I’ve used some of his renderings to great effect, and will use many more.

Hirst Arts Fantasy Architecture Inc. “Cast Your Own Blocks – Build Your Own Castles.” Hirst makes and sells silicone rubber molds.  They’re made of high quality silicone and will last for years and hundreds of casts.   Castle molds, Egyptian, sci-fi, Gothic, and a few other genres are available to choose from.  My buddy has been using this stuff for a few years and has made some truly amazing 3D terrain battle maps.  I’m about to start my own projects, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Litko – I may have just found my new favorite store for gaming tools.  Wargaming supplies, bases, pirate dice tumblers, tokens, and oh yes, the Industrial Tower System – great for any 3D modern or sci-fi battlemap.  I could go on and on, but just know that they have a ton of cool stuff.  So I definitely recommend them – check em out.

“Obsidian Portal is the award winning, free to use, online platform for running and organizing your tabletop role-playing games. What’s more, you can build campaigns, find players, and utilize our tools, tips, and extensive gamer community to get the most out of your tabletop gaming experience. Obsidian Portal supports over 100 game systems, and it will work with your game. Creating an account is easy, and every campaign gets a shared blogwiki to showcase its story, as well as integrated tools to help track NPCs, locations, treasure, and all the other little things that make up an RPG.” I can tell you that I’ve used Obsidian Portal, and found it pretty darn useful.

Q-Workshop – Why have a standard, dull set of plain dice when you can have a rare set of game-specific vibrant dice?  Q-Workshop has a selection of over 1,500 products for you to personalize your gaming experience.   Choose dice relating to a specific game or more general genre: Elven, Celtic, Runic, Call of Cthulu, Battle, Steampunk, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Horror, etc.  As I’m writing these words, I’m counting the number of sets that I’ll be ordering (so far I’m up to four).

RPGNOW has a ton of electronic product at great prices (RPGs, 3D-maps, etc.). Nowadays, I don’t go anywhere else.

RPG Role playing Nite – This group of guys put together a large selection of electronic tools, useful for both GM and player.  The first one that I checked out was a Character Finder.  Select your character’s race, class, gender, and weapon,  hit FIND, and you’ll see a good selection of miniatures that are available, that might fit your character.  For instance, if your character is a sword-wielding dragonborn, and that’s what you select, you’ll see a wide selection of sword-wielding dragonborn minis.  This is just one of many tools they offer for free.

RPG SHOP - This is a large online store, but they have a category for gaming accessories.  Some of the stuff there you could find elsewhere, but they have some unique things as well, such as “Wall of Smoke.”  I don’t know where else to get that, so go to RPG SHOP to check it out.

rpg tools – This is one of those little gems that doesn’t look like much, until your creative well dries up.  rpg tools is a simple site that generates random names of fantasy towns, rolls your dice, conjures up traits of NPCs and worlds, and offers up some nice character nuances.  It’s free and easy to use.

Steel Sqwire – “Providing aids you deserve… to help make the game you play more enjoyable.” Steel Sqwire is cool because they have flip maps, area of effect templates, stat cards, and line of site indicators (you definitely have to see the indicator).  My favorite of the bunch is the flip mat.  Two feet by three feet, foldable, and laminated to allow for all kids of markers.  Draw that map ahead of time, put it into your binder, then unfold it later.  It’s great for any roving GM.

STUFFER SHACK – In our Store, you’ll find three very useful tools to help with your gaming.  As a GM, my personal favorite would be the SS Mini Counters.  They keep track of each enemy, so there’s no confusion about an enemy’s hit points, powers, or conditions.  Next we have Bloodied Markers, for indicating when a PC, NPC, or monster becomes bloodied.  And lastly we have my favorite (as a player): Horse Minis.  Stick your PC miniature to the base of the Horse Mini and you’re good to go!

The Roleplaying Assistant – The Roleplaying Assistant is a set of gamemaster tools available for your roleplaying game sessions. Some of the games currently supported are Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (2nd, 3rd and 3.5 edition), Cyberpunk, Star wars D6 (and also D20), Rolemaster (2nd edition), D20 Modern, In Nomine (french version)  Alternity RPGs, and others.  It’s kind of like the Character Builder from D&D 4E, but without all the graphics (not to mention it works for several different role playing games).  Another cool part about this gaming tool is that it has a one-time cost of $20 – and you don’t pay until after you’ve downloaded the software and tried it out.

The Weem – These cards (among a few other things) are offered from the Weem, a relatively new blogging site.  They’re condition cards for D&D 4e, and look really nice.  Not only that, they’re practical.  Spend just a few minutes on his site and you’ll see that he puts out some quality stuff.