'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'

-Robert E. Howard
Beyond The Black River

Corrupt Cliffs

Corrupt Cliffs
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Wednesday, April 25, 2018

RPG Accessories. Tokens, Trackers and Coins! Oh My!

Tabletop roleplaying games need very little in the way of supplies to play; Some dice, Some paper and a pen or pencil. Of course you need a set of rules as well. Apart from that though? Nothing.

BUT! There is always a but. Sometimes accessories can help take your game from cool to COOL. Most players like rolling dice. The physical aspect of touching and using an object adds to the fun. This idea can be applied to many other things we need to track!

Many of these accessories can be made. DM Scotty has some videos on building things like this. Things like little quivers to track arrows instead of erasing 10 and writing 9 can be simple and add another element of fun to the game.

Some games have a set number of Hero points, Bennies, Fortune or similar mechanic that could also benefit from this idea. Having a player toss in a coin of some description is more fun than just changing that number of the page.

If you are busy like me, sometimes you don't have time to craft everything, or sometimes you just need so many tokens it's just not feasible to craft them.

Below is a list of things that I have found on aliexpress, amazon and a few other places where you can simply drop some cash and grab your supplies. I personally use a far number of these in my Conan 2d20 games. Remember, AliExpress will generally be less expensive, but you will need to wait longer for shipping.

Skull Beads! White! - AliExrpess
Black! - Amazon.ca
Flat Beads! White Acrylic - AliExpress
Transparent glass cabochon - Amazon.ca
Plastic chips AliExpress
Amazon.ca
Coins! Plastic Pirate Coins - AliExpress
Fortune Coins - AliExpress
Fortune Coins - Amazon.ca
Metal Phoenix beads - AlieExpress
Bowls for your Tokens AliExpress
Amazon.ca
Wound Trackers AliExpress

Hopefully you will find something you can find useful, or it sparks your imagination!

2 comments:

  1. thanks for sharing. this is very relevant to my interests.

    ali express is new to me. you may have just ruined my productivity for the rest of the day. ;)

    i've ordered stuff similar to the skulls and coins from https://firemountaingems.com/ but that is specifically for beading supplies. nothing like the bowls or wound trackers available there.

    i'm a savage worlds GM. i can sink a ton of time into tracking down affordable themed bennies and playing card decks for my games. i use http://www.aleatools.com/ markers for minis on the table, transparent plastic chips like you link to here to mark terrain states, and i'm trying to sort out a paper minis process i'm happy with. but honestly that's such a time sink, and i'm such a bad crafter, it's getting more and more tempting to just order sets from https://jpscreations.com/.

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    1. Aliexpress is hit and miss shipping wise, but always slow compared to Amazon Prime. That being said, there are plenty of Chinese retailers on Amazon. I always say, I have no issue ordering from China, but I want to know that I am.

      I am familiar with Fire Mountain as well. Aleatools looks interesting. the stuff from JPScreations is cool, I need to get a set to review. I found them after I started my series on paper minis.

      Anyhow! Glad you found the post interesting!

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