Benefits of Physical Props for TTRPGs

By Dean

- 5 minutes read - 854 words

Before we get into this months topic, I wanted to tell everyone I finished my next book! It can be found here: https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/514075/Lone-Star-Stories-Blood-Of-The-Lamb. I’m also only 2 purchases away from getting my first Copper Badge for https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/484834/Lone-Star-Stories-Blood-For-Money! If you ever wanted to support me, this would be a fantastic way to do so!

Now, onto the post!

Ever since I saw the original Dwarven Forge dungeons when I was a kid, I was blown away. It was a dream of mine to run some dungeons with a perfectly to scale model with these kinds of high end models. This of course didn’t happen (Only nerds with REAL money could take a swing at such expense for such things), but now in this new beautiful age of 3D Printing. We all can have some things we never thought we could.

I’ve shown you a few of our big builds and it really does make playing out those scenarios and such SO incredible. It gave me the bug to start trying to do more. I wanted to try to recapture some of the excitement I felt when I was seeing those dungeons for the first time. Along with some of those mind tingles, it also has a lot of good benefits in general. So let’s talk about them!

A prop in the hand, tells a story. Though, it can be very difficult to get it to be exactly what you want it to be, even making a good attempt has a lot of worthwhile benefits.

Tangible Connection

Physical props act as tangible reminders of key adventure elements, improving player recall and engagement. Some adventures revolve around a very specific item. Something like Eye Witness (Which revolves around a Cybereye) makes such a pivotal piece of lore and world building that physically handing your players the item really impresses upon them what is most importance of that one item. Handing your players that cybereye (Which i’d recommend this one if you want to do it! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2772496 ), they know instantly that the item is crucial enough to your story that you went out of your way to make one.

Memory Anchors

How many times have you handed your player a key or card or something of extreme importance to your story and by the time it comes to be used, they have completely and utterly forgotten it exists? I know its happened to me as both a GM and a player. Often times when things like this are written one just the one characters sheet (And it always seems like every table has the one person who tracks all of these things doesn’t it?), people tend to forget after the next session. This is a thorn in the side of many a GM who wanted to foreshadow something awesome and then the big reveal hits and wham, stoned silence.

This can beautifully be helped with having that item placed on the table at the start of every session. If the players pick it up, pass it around, etc it seems like it is burned deeper into their memories and it being out on the table is a constant reminder of not only that it exists but also when and where they got it. It’s a heck of a thing to do.

Increased Immersion

Being handed something from a world that is just words on the paper flips a switch for some players. It helps the story come to life in their hands. And when the game is over, that object can be put on display to remind you and everyone else who ever played with it what fun that story was. This kind of thing can help not only right in the moment, but also leaves you with a wall of trophies.

Collection of Useful Prop STLs

All Props listed here are downloadable for free from Thingiverse!

Library of STLS

As an archive centered site, i’ve been considering attempting to make a lot of collections of things to put everything at a GMs finger tips. This includes maps, minis, props, and anything else people can come up with that should be collected and put all in one place. If this is something you’d be interested in seeing or even helping collect. Reach out to me! I’d love to work with like minded people to make something wonderful for the new generation GMs to have at their fingertips.

Remember, build what you wish you had when you were first starting.

-D