Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a blast. You get to sit around with your friends and tell stories to each other about epic battles, powerful magic, exploring dungeons, and perhaps even encountering some dragons. But if there’s one thing that makes D&D awesome, it’s all the cool stuff that you get to have.
Whether it’s a cool set of dice or a hand-painted mini, D&D offers a plethora of trinkets for you and your friends to ooh and ahh over. So many of them can turn a cool game into an awesome game – the kind of game where you forget what reality is until the session ends.
Updated December 24th, 2020 by Lee Juckiewicz: Last month, the creators of Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards of the Coast, released a D&D Play Activity Survey in eight languages. Pretty exciting news, for those of us looking for something new to bring to our games that’s more tailored to our interests.
With five editions of Dungeons and Dragons and a range of other, similar games out there, where your adventure can take you is utterly limitless. Why not kit yourself out for the ride? In no particular order, here are the coolest roleplaying accessories that will make you forget about real life.
15 Dice Trays
Nobody likes to lose dice, or lose a good roll to an angle that declares it invalid. If you keep rolling your dice off the table, under chairs, or into your friends’ laps during the session, it might be time to invest in a dice tray.
Whether you’re making it yourself out of an old shoebox, or willing to spend the $80+ for a hand-carved tray from Wyrmwood, you’ll never have to worry about losing your dice to the whims of gravity again. Plus, it’ll make you look professional and put-together for your next session.
14 Dice Bags
Most people have something basic to carry around their dice in. Something plain or reused, like a Crown Royal bag or the container that the dice came in. But if you really want to step up your dice-holding game, there are plenty of cool looking bags to flaunt your style with. Plush dragons sleeping on their dice hoard, mimics that eat your dice collection, or even bags made from metallic “dragon” scales, you’re sure to find at least one that suits your fancy, and keep your dice warm, cozy, and protected.
13 Dice Boxes & Vaults
If you’re the fancier type, don’t have enough dice to warrant a bag, or if you have a favorite set of dice you have to give special treatment, you might be in the market for a dice box or vault. Show everyone at your session whose dice can afford to live in high luxury, by getting them their own special container to live in. Or you can make one yourself, and let your dice know how much you love them by giving them the gift of hard work. It’s not weird, promise.
12 Condition Markers
Have you ever forgotten which enemy is poisoned? Or forget you were hasted? Or forget you were invisible? Or forget any of D&D’s umpteen status effects while they’re active in the battle? Signs point to probably, at least once. Lucky thing is, there’s a solution for that!
It’s as easy as pulling the plastic rings of your carton of milk before you throw it away, taping little strips of paper in a circle, or buying little specialty rings that tell you exactly what each one means. Convenient, right?
11 Flight Stands
Flying enemies are a nuisance to fight, and an even bigger nuisance to position properly. Instead of stacking books on your battle mat to make sure the dragon looks like its flying, too, an easier solution is to invest in some flight stands.
They’re see-through for your convenience, and can be raised and lowered to different levels so that everyone knows if that attack is within range. They’re much lighter than books, too, and not nearly as hard to find space for.
10 Dice Towers
Though it technically isn’t much more than flipping a cup upside down and letting gravity shake your dice around, how awesome do dice towers look? It’s an easy way to roll up to the next session in style, and it lets you roll a whole handful of dice at once. This way, you can roll the 18d10 “submerged in lava” damage without wearing your hands out. You can even make it more dramatic by calling out each of the fated damage points as they roll out, one at a time.
9 Spell Effect Markers
One of the most annoying things about D&D is math. You have to count out squares when you move in battle, you have to make sure your attack is within range, you have to make sure you’re out of range from an attack. Here’s an idea: get something to do all that math for you,
Cones, lines, cubes, and spheres – spell effect markers can do it all, and do it a lot faster than you can. While it might take a little (or a lot) more math than you’d like to make them yourself, you’ll save your future self from having to calculate the reach of a sixty-foot-cone again.
8 Battle Maps
This might feel like a no-brainer, but how about trading that plain old dry-erase mat for something that actually looks like a dungeon. Whether that’s buying a starter pack from Dwarven Forge, getting some cool looking terrain tiles, or making a map all by yourself, you’re never going to want to draw another box with an Expo marker again. A good setting can make a great game, and really help your players get into the mood of the scene instead of drawing all over the battlefield. Again.
7 Character Folios
Everyone has a favorite character they’ve played – even if they won’t admit it. If you’re one of those people who can, why not show that special warlock in your life how much they mean to you by giving them their very own character folio! With places to store backstory notes, character sheets, spells, art, just about anything else your heart desires. It’s a great way to keep all your ideas organized, and keep your character a single page-turn away for the next session. And hey – no one said you could only have one favorite.
6 A Cool Journal
Taking notes during sessions is helpful – but only if you remember where you put them, what that word says, and why you wrote it on the back of a cocktail napkin. Instead of looking for a loose scrap of paper every time you hear the DM say something that might be important, really get yourself in the D&D mood by getting yourself a leather-bound journal that looks like it was engraved on the Celestial plane. Or the Nine Hells. Depends on what the cover looks like. But rest assured, you’ll never have to worry about losing your notes again.
5 Adventurer’s Backpack
We’ve all been there — lugging a mountain of things in from the car, making several trips before you can sit down and get going. Why not make it easier on yourself and feel more like a hero at the same time with an adventurer’s backpack?
Lots of sites sell custom made bags for roleplaying now, made up to look like your typical adventurer’s pack. With pockets to hold the essentials so that your hands don’t have to, what do you have to lose? And if you ever decide to dress up as your character for a con, you’ve got a useful bag and your first accessory bundled into one.
4 Customized Minis
There are very few things more exciting than rolling up to your weekly Dungeons and Dragons game, digging out your gear and putting your own personalized mini down on the map. Sure, you could sift through the Monster Manual cardboard standees for something that looks close enough. But you’re probably not going to find your dual-wielding, flame-haired barbarian half-elf with that specific magical item that really makes them.
There are plenty of websites that make custom plastic or metal minis. You could also commission some art, shrink it and cut it down to size, or head to your nearby makerspace and 3D print the perfect design. But it’ll really give your next campaign a little buzz.
3 Fancy Dice
Chances are when you first started role playing, you inherited all of the dice you needed piecemeal, or picked up the cheapest set in your local gaming store. But when you really get to understand your character, you might want a set of dice that matches them, or stands out on the table.
2 Dice Jails
Now, everybody knows that there is actual science behind what you’re most likely to roll on a given die. Everybody who’s been up against at least one dire bear too many also knows that sometimes, this fact is fundamentally false. But that’s why we have dice jail.
Some people lock their exiled ‘unlucky’ dice away in a bag or chest. Other people have little prison cells or cages to really shame their dice into doing better, next time. But it can really boost morale if you can punish the equipment and not your character’s ego. And hey — maybe the new dice actually are luckier!
1 Magnetic Bases
A lot of DMs quickly get tired of asking “which bandit are you hitting?” or reminding players “that one’s dead already”. While some people get around this by marking the map or the minis, why not get crafty with some magnets and colored tokens? A quick trip to the dollar store is all you need.
By making removable bases that you can clip onto whatever monster you need to, gone will be the days of “is he dead?” Simply tell your DM that you’re hitting “green” (i.e. the one with the green base!) and speed up combat tenfold, so you can get back to flirting with the staff back at the tavern and rolling in platinum.
NEXT: 5 DM Tips And How Players Should Use Them Instead
