When I have been Dungeon Master or Game Master, responsible for shaping and creating a whole immersive experience for my intrepid band of player characters, the one thing I have found most enjoyable and engaging over the years has been the creation of props. I believe props can be anything that add to the experience of roleplaying, so minatures and maps, documents and music through to physical manifestations of monsters, treasure or weapons. All of this can add to such a roleplaying experience that is textured, that engages all the senses.

I recall the first time I experienced this when I was 15 and my friends and I usually went on dungeon crawls, but our DM at the time had created a game where we had banded together with a large army and were heading across a battlefield to meet our foes. As he did this, he began to descibe the dawn with his fingers on the light dimmer switch. As he spoke, he created more and more light in our darkened pool room where a big old piece of ply wood rested across the pool table. Next, he hit play on his cassette recorder and Carl Orff‘s Carmina Burana boomed out of the speakers he had placed in surround sound around the room. I still remember the rush and the enthusiasm in the room as we stood and surveyed the battlefield we were about to fight upon. (The battle field was simply our miniatures on large photocopied grid paper, but in that moment it could have been any medievals battlefield).

I have tended to books, I must admit, as my most treasured rolplaying props. And I would like to share them with you in the gallery below.

Just below the gallery, are the descriptions of the three props that are my favorite.

So, there are my favorite role-play props – books! I’m sure you all have many more and your own. Why not head over to the GeekDad Community and share with us your favourites (with pictures if you have them) in the forum.