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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Travelling DM Kit

Bored? Got some time on your hands? Want to make something with your hands? Ladies and gentlemen, make your own Travelling DM Kit in a matter of minutes.

Okay, this may not be generally useful. Keep in mind, I always DM at other people's places and I use scrabble tiles to represent PCs and Hirelings by the first letter of their names. Looking for the right letter when PCs are being generated (which, trust me, has been every session so far) can be an annoying time sink. So I was ruminating for a long time trying to come up with a solution. This is what I came up with. Simple and cheap.

First, you need some supplies. I got this rubbery, grip drawer liner and adhesive backed velcro strips at the 99 ¢ store. The little plastic baggies came from Walmart. The whole bunch was only about $5:


What do you do with it? I cut the liner into strips 2.5' x 7.5" then I cut the velcro into a bunch of little strips, stuck one on the liner and one on the back of the plastic baggie folded in half:


I don't think it will take a lot of abuse, it might be better made from canvas with the velcro sewed on, but think of it as a first draft. Here they are from above:


I use the darker Anniversary Edition Scrabble pieces for hirelings, the poker chips to track ammo, the glass accent beads to represent monsters and the Perquackey dice just in case I need another letter for something. You don't really need this fancy solution for the beads, you could easily just use bags. But it's good for anything with little details that you don't want to spend time hunting for.

So, all your junk in place, you roll the liner up and store it in a tote:


I also got it at the 99 ¢ store. Oddly enough it was holding hamster bedding. I bought it and tossed the bedding around the plants outside. And the brand name is auspicious for a gamer: Tengu!


If you're transporting just a few miniatures (say for the PCs) I've found doubling the drawer liner and just rolling them up in it evenly spaced is a good way to transport them safely. Hope this might be useful. Have fun!

10 comments:

  1. Oh, I roll that up in the excess drawer liner, ha ha.

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  2. I love it. Very, very clever. :)

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  3. > scrabble tiles to represent PCs and Hirelings by the first letter of their names.

    That is a freaking fantastic idea. The other stuff way too organized for me. But still cool!

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  4. @Norman: I read about using the tiles on a blog, but they didn't say to use the letters to represent names. It is really handy.

    But yeah, just throw them in a bowl and have players dig out one for their character :)

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  5. Telecanter -- just found this. I've got my own take on using Scrabble tiles posted on my blog (just today!) Very cool ideas for organization. Well done.

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  6. Thanks Jim, that post of yours is great! I'll comment over there.

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  7. This is great! Love the travelling kit idea done homebrew style.

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  8. Thanks, after months of using it, I find it isn't really needed for the poker chips and colored beads, those can be carried in a bag. But for pulling out tiles with letters to represent pcs, it can't be beat.

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