Visual aids

[Nathan P.]

Oh...good call. I've always done my best to have a player handout or two for each session, and my players seem to dig it. Also, people seem to remember things better if they have something tactile to remind them of it, like a note or piece of paper.

Some box sets involved player handouts/visual aids - I'm thinking here of the Bloodwars adventure for the Planescape campaign setting, for AD&D. It come with, not only a cool comic book explaining the backstory, but also a book of art and illustrations that the module would reference too (i.e. "There is a Glabrezu in the room. Show the players page 4 of the art book." or something like that). That was really cool.

Again, downloads of pics/illustrations of unique creatures, important NPCs and neat archictecture in your game world would be a cool support feature.

Thank you for your time,
Nathan P.

[Doctor Xero]

I've tried visual aids with players -- hand-out sheets, cards for weapons and/or spells, tokens, etc. -- and they always complained that it was too difficult hauling all these around.  Then I made each of them personalized envelopes in which to carry all the visual extras, and they soon craved more and more!

I recall one campaign in which my players had fun when each of them was given a not-drawn-to-scale FPRG map (imitating the inaccuracy of real world medieval mapping) which differed according to the culture and profession of the player.  They seemed to enjoy the chance to supplement their own PC knowledge with someone else's and to argue in character when their maps contradicted each other.

Doctor Xero

[Eric Provost]

Dr. X,

The conflicing maps idea sounds terrific.  But it also sounds like a lot of prep work.

I'm more about finding something odd... an unusual key, a faded out polaroid picture, a little statuette, etc, then writing a short story around them.

[Andrew Norris]

I've recently started running a modern-day game using the D20 system, and I had a large urge to get people to put their character sheets down and fiddle with things instead, perhaps because I wanted to draw attention away from the tactical side of the system. I thought back to the things that I thought were cool when I saw or read about them, such as the old Call of Cthulhu newspaper clippings or the use of Fudge points as seen in the Amber FUDGE game logs hosted by iago (who posts here, I believe).

The bits from that Amber FUDGE game I remembered very strongly (probably because one of his players put a lot of effort into writing wonderfully readable logs) was the way that Fudge points, an in-game resource, became tactile things. You didn't check something off your character sheet, rather you handed one of your glass beads back to the GM. The bit that really struck me was in their last session, when (and I'm paraphrasing) he took everyone's blue beads away, handed them one red bead, and said "This can be redeemed for guaranteed exceptional success, at the cost of guaranteed doom for your character after the game." I could just picture in my head the players tossing that little bead up and down in their hand, deciding if they should cash it in.

In any case, using glass beads as an in-game resource (the ability to narrate success for part of a scene) was warmed to by my players right away, and I had those things sliding back and forth across the table like coins in Universalis. I used a few LARP-style props as well, such as a sheaf of notes and a PDA containing a few image files as cryptic hints. (That thing certainly got passed around a lot.)

In the next session I decided to pander to the tactical bent of my players a bit, and printed out plans for the building they were infiltrating and gave them cheap plastic miniatures (from HeroClix, I think; apparently anybody who actually plays the game has tons of extra 'thug' or 'medic' figures). I know miniatures are so common that they hardly count as props, but again, the fact that they added a tactile element to the game helped to pull people in together around the coffee table rather than sit back and leisurely peruse their character sheets. I also used a small deck of cards from a CCG I once played to generate random results for the character's interaction with the spirit within the house. Sure, I could have rolled a die and looked on a chart, but handing someone a card with the name "Astral Parasite" and a suitably spooky picture on it drew the players together to look at it and hand it around.

I could easily be overstating the effect of props I've seen personally, since I spent an hour or two running around preparing these things, so I was hoping they'd be enjoyed. But I definately got the feeling that engaging as many of the players' senses as possible (a soundtrack CD, things to touch and move around the table) increased their involvement.

Finally, there's the http://rdushay.home.mindspring.com/Museum/Other/BandWrevw.html">Rocky and Bullwinkle Role-Playing Party Game, published in 1988, that uses cards, a spinner, and hand puppets as props. Maybe that means the idea of a prop-focused RPG has laid fallow long enough to be revived -- although I admit that Puppetland would have been a bit too expensive if it had come with actual puppets.

[Michael S. Miller]

Some ideas on nontraditional character sheets can be found in Character Sheets - Rubbish?

[Peter Hollinghurst]

For the game I am developing, Fortunes Wheel, I am thinking of using little polymer clay tokens to track 'bidding/experience points', along with add on cards to compliment tarot decks used for play. The add on cards would be story 'seeds' with elements to be discovered in the story on them, keyed to certain Tarot cards (so when a card comes up in play it can activate the 'seed'. There would also be adventure 'clues' much like those in CoC, but more in the way of creative 'hooks' to fire players imaginations, since the game can, in theory, be played without a fixed GM role and with quasi-random adventures. The other visual element I was thinking of was that character sheets are more like 'code wheels'-they are discs (one fixed atop another) not standard sheets.
Now, the idea is that these could all be printed out from pdfs and assembled/cut out by the players if they want, but I would also do limited runs (or to order runs) of fancier ones. The tokens are especially easy to do quickly in bulk from a mould.
Its all rather visual aid heavy, but then its something Im envisaging as sort of an art project for myself almost as much as it is a game.

[Mike Holmes]

I've tried visual aids with players -- hand-out sheets, cards for weapons and/or spells, tokens, etc. -- and they always complained that it was too difficult hauling all these around.  Then I made each of them personalized envelopes in which to carry all the visual extras, and they soon craved more and more!

It's been my experience, that one person, the GM in games with one, should handle all materials. If he doesn't show, or doesn't bring his notes, play isn't going to happen anyhow. If you leave it to players, then someone will forget or lose their character sheet. In any case, why burden more than one person?

Why the tradition of players holding on to their characters and stuff individually has developed, I can't say. But it doesn't work well.

That said, folders and such are, of course great for keeping character information separate if you have things like handouts, especially if the GM is going to handle everything.

Mike

[Green]

It's been my experience, that one person, the GM in games with one, should handle all materials. If he doesn't show, or doesn't bring his notes, play isn't going to happen anyhow. If you leave it to players, then someone will forget or lose their character sheet. In any case, why burden more than one person?

Why the tradition of players holding on to their characters and stuff individually has developed, I can't say. But it doesn't work well.

Actually, this is exactly what I do in Kathanaksaya.  We have a pretty big group (9 players, including me), and to be honest, most of them except for myself and the other Narrator would forget to bring little things like the tiny little snack bag that contains vital character information and the colored pebbles we use for Story Points.