GAMING TOOLS

Alea Tools - "Home of the Stackable Magnetic Markers." Alea makes several different colored markers for use with your miniatures. The markers stack under your miniatures, and each color denotes a specific condition (decided by you) to help you remember a PC's, NPC's, or monster's status. Is he bloodied, slowed, dominated, flying, or what? The price is a little high for a gaming accessory, but Alea Tools are certainly a quality product.

Combat Manager - "Initiative and Combat Management for Pathfinder with searchable Monsters, Feats, Spells and Rules database, Monster Advancer and Treasure Generator." Damn. Why didn't I know about this when I ran that Pathfinder Adventure Path for two years?

d20 Pro - "d20pro is a virtual tabletop software for playing d20-based tabletop Roleplaying Games. You can play with others remotely or use it to replace your minis and battle maps." I have to admit... this looks really cool and I'd love to try it - I just have to get my group on board.

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 several different products to choose from - terrain, tokens, counters, jewelry, dice bags, and miniatures. I have not dealt with Dark-Platypus Studios, but their stuff looks cool and seems reasonably priced.

Fat Dragon Games - Print out their downloads 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 also have sci-fi, modern, and even western terrain maps. Browsing or purchasing through this affiliate link helps us provide free contests. Or, here is their homepage.

Gaming Paper - Gaming Paper 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. Recommended for use with permanent markers or erasable pencils.

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 several years and has made some truly amazing 3D terrain and maps.

Litko - 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. Unfortunately, I've heard they can take a long time to deliver orders, and many times don't respond to emails (I'm still waiting for MY response).

Lone Wolf Development - has two great electronic tools for your RPG game. One is for building and maintaining your character, and the other is for building and maintaining your campaign. I haven't used either, but I have heard good things about them. I believe you may even be able to download a free trial version.

Obsidian Portal is a free-to-use online platform for organizing your tabletop role-playing games. Obsidian Portal supports over 100 game systems, and it will work with your game. Every campaign gets a wiki to showcase its story, as well as tools to help track NPCs, locations, and treasure. Basically, it's a giant log of everything about your campaign that you can share with your group, or keep to yourself. 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? Choose dice relating to a specific game or more general genre: Elven, Celtic, Runic, Call of Cthulu, Battle, Steampunk, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Horror, etc. In my opinion, some of the dice are hard to read at the table, but many of them can be read just fine and are too beautiful to pass up.

RPG Sheets - This site has probably over 200 fan-created character sheets for various games. If you're looking for a new or unusual character sheet, this is probably the place to go. Submit your own while you're at it...

RPTools - I have not used these electronic accessories, but I have heard that they are cool and free. Their website lists Map Tool, Token Tool, Initiative Tool, Character Tool, and Dice Tool. However, I have no idea how they look or function.

STUFFER SHACK - Have you seen our 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 or wounded. And lastly we have my favorite: 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 character builder. Some of the games currently supported are earlier versions of Dungeons and Dragons (2nd, 3rd and 3.5 edition), Cyberpunk, Star wars D6 and D20, Rolemaster (2nd edition), D20 Modern, In Nomine (French version) Alternity RPGs, and others. One 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.

Weem's D&D 4E Condition Cards - 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.