#tabletop gamers

[darkelfdice]

Our latest Kickstarter is now live!

Magic Potion Dice

Shimmering Liquid Core Dice Sets -- Bring Amazing Dice to Your Gaming Table

[mrkapao]

Loved shopping board games and checking out all those miniatures at Strategicon: Gateway 2024!

[runicdiceusa]

The Art of Dice Maintenance for Tabletop Gamers

In tabletop gaming, dice are more than just tools - they hold the power to determine outcomes and create immersive adventures. But over time, dice can wear down, become unbalanced, or lose their original luster. Proper dice maintenance is essential to ensure fairness and consistency during gameplay. In this guide, we’ll walk you through effective cleaning, storage, and inspection techniques to keep your dice in top shape, ensuring that every roll is as true as the first.

Understanding the Importance of Dice Maintenance

Dice are more than just gaming accessories; they are the conduits through which players interact with the game world. Understanding the importance of dice maintenance is the first step toward ensuring fair and enjoyable gameplay. Regular maintenance helps preserve the integrity of your dice, ensuring that they remain balanced and free from wear and tear. Well-maintained dice contribute to consistent gameplay, reducing the likelihood of skewed rolls or unfair outcomes. Dice are often cherished possessions, and proper maintenance prolongs their lifespan, protecting your investment in quality gaming accessories.

Cleaning Your Dice: A Step-by-Step Guide

Cleaning your dice is a simple yet essential aspect of dice maintenance. This chapter provides a step-by-step guide to keeping your dice free from dirt, grime, and debris. Cleaning Techniques:

Fill a bowl with warm water and a small amount of mild dish soap. Gently agitate the water to create suds, then immerse your dice in the solution. Use a soft-bristled brush or cloth to gently scrub each die, especially to the crevices and corners where dirt may accumulate.

After cleaning, rinse your dice thoroughly under running water to remove any soap residue. Pat them dry with a clean towel or allow them to air dry completely before returning them to storage.

Avoid using harsh chemicals or abrasive cleaners on your dice, as these may damage the surface or alter the balance of the dice.

Storing Your Dice: Best Practices for Long-Term Preservation

Proper storage is essential for maintaining the integrity and longevity of your dice collection. This chapter offers guidance on selecting suitable storage solutions and minimizing potential damage during storage. Storage Tips:

Invest in high-quality dice bags or pouches to protect your dice from dust, moisture, and impact damage. Look for options made from durable materials like velvet, suede, or leather.

Consider using dedicated dice cases or boxes for organizing and storing your dice collection. Opt for options with compartments or dividers to prevent dice from rolling around and causing damage to each other.

Store your dice in a cool, dry environment away from direct sunlight and humidity. Extreme temperatures or moisture can warp or degrade the material of the dice over time.

Checking for Damage and Wear

Regularly inspecting your dice for signs of damage or wear allows you to identify potential issues early and take preventive measures to preserve their integrity. Inspection Checklist: Carefully examine each die for cracks, chips, or other visible damage. Even minor imperfections can affect the balance and fairness of the dice rolls. Check the edges of your dice for signs of wear or rounding. Over time, repeated use may cause the edges to become uneven, leading to biased rolls. Roll each die multiple times on a flat surface to check for balance. If a die consistently favors certain numbers or sides, it may be imbalanced and require replacement or repair.

Maintaining Balance and Fairness

Ensuring that your dice are balanced and fair is essential for maintaining the integrity of your gaming sessions. This chapter explores techniques for testing and restoring balance to your dice. Balance Restoration:

Saltwater Test: Fill a container with lukewarm water and add a few tablespoons of salt. Stir the solution until the salt is dissolved, then gently place your dice in the water. If a die consistently floats or sinks, it may be imbalanced and require further testing or adjustment.

Precision Tools: Invest in precision tools like micrometers or calipers to measure the dimensions and weight distribution of your dice. Identifying discrepancies allows you to take corrective measures, such as sanding or polishing, to restore balance.

Professional Services: If you're unsure about the balance of your dice or lack the tools and expertise for restoration, consider seeking professional services from experienced artisans or dice technicians.

Conclusion

Dice maintenance is an essential aspect of tabletop gaming, ensuring that your dice roll true and enhance the overall gaming experience. By following the tips and techniques outlined in this guide, you can preserve the integrity of your dice collection, minimize potential damage, and cultivate a spirit of fairness and camaraderie at the gaming table. Whether you're a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the world of tabletop gaming, remember that the roll of the dice holds the power to shape destinies and create unforgettable adventures. So, roll true, embrace the spirit of adventure, and may fortune favor your next roll!

[fantastictalesofadventure]

𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞! 👀 👀 👀

[vintagerpg]

Once Little Soldier and Phoenix went belly up in 1981, Lou Zocchi’s Gamescience bought the “Book of” series. I believe either dead stock or reprints of Monsters and Demons came out with Gamescience branding. Later, all six were collected in this, The Fantasy Gamer’s Compendium (1983).

I have seen the digest versions of three of these in the wild (for frankly bonkers prices): Book of Shamans, Book of Treasure and Book of Sorcery. Shamans is a whole new class, complete with a custom spell list, that is framed around accessing the spirit world in a way that reflects I guess broad assumptions about tribal magical systems. Its OK! Treasure is what you’d expect, a collection of magic items pulled from myth and legend in the first part and from genre fiction in the second. It is pretty good! Sorcery is an interesting, if slightly unwieldy reconfiguration of the magic user class, explicitly arranged around demonology and pulp notions of Western occult traditions. Basically, it’s intended to provide mechanics that allow a class to summon all the folks listed out in Book of Demons. It also has a collection of occult-themed magic items, like the Hand of Glory, that I find delightful. That’s probably the most useful thing for me, personally, in the whole “Book of” series.

The last Book collected here is the Book of Mystery, which I am not sure ever saw print as a standalone Little Soldier product. It presents a new class (Lord of Mystery), the new skill system those characters use, and an organization they belong to, which safeguards high science for a time when humanity is ready for it (the Lords of Mystery are descended from the original humans, who crashed here [wherever that is] in a colony ship millennia ago). Many of the classes skills are trained and require quests. They seem to get access to a lot of abilities. It seems like a pain in the butt, but an interesting one, almost like a more monastic version of Dave Hargrave’s Techno class from Arduin.

[just-here-with-my-thoughts]

by the way i also paint dragons :)

Steamforged Games Epic Encounters: Lair of the Red Dragon box set Supplied partially assembled and unpainted

more stills below the cut

[raakdos-battlemap]

Phyrexia encounter #004 Path to the Norn's Palace

The Fair Basilica, a white-aligned sphere built in the image of Elesh Norn, decorated with statues and monuments to her. It contains Norn's throne room, though she now resides in the plane's second layer and designates the unification of the plane to Atraxa in her stead. Though no light from the plane's suns can reach this layer, its structures generate their light; the layer's walls, composed of ossified Phyrexian corpses of those Norn deemed perfect, glow white, while crimson capillaries etched into its marble-esque floor glow blood-red.

More variations of this map:

[openstorygames]

Kids Play TTRPGs

There are plenty of people who started playing D&D or other TTRPGs as kids. Heck, imaginative play (which all kids engage in on some level and in some manner) is central to what TTRPGs do. Roleplaying is a critical part of developing your child self as a person!

So what's the benefit of giving kids a rule-bound system like D&D, Quest, or Kids on Bikes? Why should kids play TTRPGs and not just make-believe?

TTRPGs teach boundaries.

Some of this depends on how a particular group runs, but a healthy TTRPG group teaches kids where boundaries are and how to respect them.

This can show up in lots of ways.

letting dice determine success

working within the limitations of a class, feature, or spell description

avoiding upsetting or scary topics, as requested by a player

offering trigger warnings and safety tools

accepting when a GM says no

respecting when another player says no

Some of those things are organic to telling a story together. Some of them are brought in to keep the game fun for everyone, like safety tools. All of these examples—and more!—help kids practice boundaries one step removed from real life, where things are a bit harder.

TTRPGS provide escape.

As adults, we think of TTRPGs as escape from the crushing reality we live in. We can free ourselves from the news cycle or our social media feeds for a few hours and pretend we live in a world where our actions are world-changing (and I'm talking saving-the-world-from-evil-powers world-changing).

Kids need escape too! Not so that they're living outside of the world, but so they can practice the skills they need to live within it.

It's way easier to advocate for your PC who's scared of creepy crawlies than it is to admit your skin crawls around your buddy's pet snake.

Kids can practice all sorts of social skills in the freedom of TTRPGs because those games provide escape and distance from the world they actually inhabit. For example:

admitting fears

facing conflict

handling disagreement

learning about themselves

experimenting with consequences (from stealing a loaf of bread to going full murderhobo at times)

setting goals and making plans

Games are low stakes ways for all of us to practice tough conversations or new social skills. Why not let kids get a leg up by teaching them to role play?

TTRPGs build confidence.

Practice makes perfect, and TTRPGs are a great place to practice your sense of self (while inhabiting a character).

As kids get more confident roleplaying their PC, they learn gain confidence in who they are and speaking from that place.

This doesn't look like adults might expect though. We think of the bard suddenly offering a grand speech, or the shy loner forging bonds with the rest of the party.

Kids gaining confidence might not look like what you expect (more on that another time), but TTRPGs help clear the path for confident, empowered kids. And that's something worth making space for!

[junipermoonlite]

*First time playing DND* ... I'm all in

DM: that's not-

*Pushing all my chips into the middle of the table*

DM: where did you get those

[tabletopresources]

white wizard Raven by macarious

Check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

[axolotldice]

FIREHEART - 8 piece set

This set is inspired by Aelin Ashryver Galathynius from the book series Throne of Glass

[prodigyduck]

Continuing with the Transformers Contact Builds, here is another NPC from my current campaign: Brainstorm!

This is unofficial, fan-made content using the #Transformers #Essence20 #rpg by Renegade Games Renegade Game Studios

[mrkapao]

The Kickstarter for my copy of 'HENSHIN! A Sentai RPG: Guest Star Expansion' from Cave of Monsters Games came in last week!

Also picked up the main TTRPG book with the 'Rider Konchu' (Kamen Rider) and '3 Minutes' (Ultra Man) books.

[fanonical]

a good thing to remember as a dm: try not to punish your players, just give them the consequences of their actions, whether those consequences are good or bad

[fantastictalesofadventure]

When those PCs have low perception scores...

[vintagerpg]

From the back cover of The Ultimate Powers Book (1986): “Two-hundred and ninety-three powers times five ranges times eighteen power lives equals—26,370 discrete powers!” Now, TSR products, particularly for the Marvel Super Heroes line, are prone to exaggerating, and it is true that the claim of nearly 27,000 discrete powers is a bit much, but that doesn’t really diminish the monstrous utility of the book.

The core box for Marvel Super Heroes didn’t have character creation at all. The idea was that players would just take the roles of established Marvel characters. The Advanced box introduced character creation, but the list of powers was limited and the system generally produced characters that were underpowered compared to those from the comics. Ultimate Powers hopes to change that, with a brand new creation system that aims to be flexible enough to create characters from the cosmic level on down to regular folks. It builds off a robust pool of “form” templates — cyborg, induced mutant, demon, etc — and then builds up, next with the origin of powers, abilities, weaknesses, the actual powers (arranged by type) and so on. The powers themselves allow for a good amount of detail and fine tuning — not so much as Champions, but enough to feel bespoke.

Its rare, I think, for this kind of sourcebook to totally transform its game, but that is exactly what Ultimate Powers does — playing these characters is its own sort of experience, different from the basic or advanced game. Not bad for a 96-page book! Well, a 96-page book with three columns, small text and no pictures. Dense!