The other day I was searching online for generic colored pawns to use for a Maid RPG scenario (and whatever else they might come in handy for), and I stumbled across all kinds of neat stuff for board game supplies.

I wound up ordering not only pawns, but a whole bunch of other stuff from Great Hall Games. I also came across the website of a company called Rolco, that does all kinds of molded plastics, albeit mainly in bulk. However, they have a “Kits & Bits” page where you can order, amongst other things, a “Game Inventor Kit” ($19.99) that includes a blank board and box, and zillions (well, about 170) of different plastic pieces. eBay also has a category for “Game Pieces, Parts,” where you can find stuff like this as well as replacement parts for mainstream board games.

Anyway, here are some specific game components, and thoughts on how they might be useful:

• Pawns: Pawns are a very generic way to keep track of location. I decided to buy some because of the Maidenrangers of Love and Justice scenario for Maid RPG, in which you build up a “board” out of playing cards that represent both a room and the random event that happens there when the PCs enter (which also has the benefit of making sure random events are never repeated). Pawns also come in different varieties, and there are little plastic stands for cardstock figures as seen in many commercial board games. There’s also stuff like the Icehouse pyramids, which are colored, vary in size, and are stackable.
• Boards: Boards might be a little harder to make, though I think it would be relatively easy to, say, print our two pieces of cardstock and tape them together to form a decent-sized board. Boards can contain a crapload of information, and can provide locations (physical or otherwise) and information on them. Also, boards can be modular, either used at different times (like how there are wargames with a strategic-level main board and a tactical-level “battle board”) or assembled together to form a map. I’m thinking of putting together a Maid RPG scenario that involves a board representing the mansion, and my concept for that “Black Hole Girls” game involved making a board representing a neighborhood, which would affect certain things in the game.
• Cards: I’ve posted about cards before, and I’m working on three different games that use them in different ways, so I won’t retread all of that here. Regular playing cards are even more readily available than six-sided dice, and cards in general can contain all kinds of information, including text, colors, and pictures. On top of that you can do all kinds of things with placing, stacking, holding, and shuffling them. Also, apparently Guild of Blades has indeed launched their POD cards service (while I wasn’t looking).
• Spinners: The only RPG I know of that used spinners was TSR’s Bullwinkle game (and I have a copy I got off eBay for about $12 BTW). The thing about a spinner is that as a game designer you can use it as a random generator for pretty much anything. You can throw together a template in Illustrator in minutes, print it out, paste it to cardstock, and attach a spinner that costs 50 cents or less, and you’re good to go. You can put numbers, symbols, colors, pictures, and so on, and you can put more than one kind of thing in the same spaces or in concentric circles.
• Play Money/Poker Chips: I’ve never seen an RPG that uses Monopoly money (or a Cheapass equivalent), but there are games like DeadLands that have used poker chips to keep track of certain things in a game. Play money feels more like you’re dealing with actual money, while poker chips have the advantage of being available everywhere. When I went into a drugstore the other day looking for something I might be able to salvage for generic pawns, I saw packs of poker chips.
• Sand Timers: Using real-time stuff in an RPG is tricky, but if you do it for the right reasons it could be neat. I’ve noticed that for whatever reason FLGSs often stock small sand timers.
• Scrabble Tiles: The wooden chips from Scrabble are like playing cards in that they contain multiple kinds of information (letters and the frequency numbers), and on top of that you can form them into words. One of /tg/’s flashes of brilliance was the idea to make a superhero game where you form scrabble tiles into “POW” and whatnot for extra power.

Using this kind of stuff in an RPG would be a turn-off to some people, but sufficiently creative uses would more than justify the effort. Some of these are things where it’s a toss-up whether gamers would have them on hand, and they’re just enough out of the way to be a little annoying to get a hold of. I know I don’t have a roulette wheel or a Jenga set on hand, and with spinners you have to either order from a specialty shop or raid a very kiddy board game for parts. Looking at boardgamegeek.com, I stumbled across Piecepack, a sort of public domain standardized collection of parts, made by a few different manufacturers. It’s meant to be a board game set similar to a pack of playing cards in that you can buy it and use it for tons of different games, and along with the aforementioned Icehouse pyramids and Stonehenge (which looks like it’s a good deal more elaborate).

Although it’s almost certainly impossible to change the hobby in such a way as to make more board game components a standard in RPGs, there’s a lot of unexplored territory here, and apparently if you know where to look it’s dirt cheap to explore it. (Manufacturing might be another matter entirely, but still). There’s always going to be the risk of people calling the game a “gimmick.” Of course, you’re going to get that just for doing anything remotely interesting with dice anyway, but it is good to ask the question, “Does this do something that more conventional materials can’t?”

Lastly, some other places that sell neat stuff:

• Spielmaterial
• PlainCards
• PerforatedPaper.com
• Koplow Games
• Gameparts
• Chessex
• Wholesalers USA
• Meeple People

Update: Some more nifty things.

• Blank Dice With Labels. Only $4.95 for a set of 12.
• Spinners. These give the equivalent of a 2d6 roll.
• Poker Dice.
• Sparks Dice. S. John Ross’ free PDF some assembly required dice. Includes 6-sided, Fudge, and blank dice.

I have a confession to make: I don’t like board or card games.

There are some very, very rare exceptions, like Uno and certain kinds of solitaire, but for the most part I just plain don’t derive any particular enjoyment out of them. That’s kind of a shame, considering that (1) some of my friends do like them, and (2) my awesome brother-in-law has a wall of such games, and regularly buys new ones. Some of it is simple burnout from the wrong kinds of games; Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly each went a long way towards ruining their respective genres for me. I’m also not all that good at such games, but a lot of that no doubt comes down to not feeling any desire to invest in them enough to develop such skills. Still, that doesn’t really explain it, especially since I like RPGs so much.

I think the real problem is that I don’t enjoy competition. I don’t like losing, and I don’t enjoy winning at my friends’ expense, but I’ve yet to encounter such a game that can really be fun even when I don’t play to win. It’s not a warm-fuzzy-hippie things either; it’s not “everyone should win,” but rather a dull irritation that rises up after a while until it becomes unbearable. Video games can be an exception at times. Even in multiplayer I can find ways to enjoy Halo (the glaring exception to my dislike of most FPS games) without worrying too much about winning, but I still prefer co-op, single-player, or even anonymous online multiplayer matches.

When I read or translate the part of an RPG’s text where it says that there are no winners or losers per se, unlike other kinds of games, my eyes usually glaze over from having read it so many times, but it really is an important distinguishing characteristic of the genre. On the other hand, I enjoy storytelling in pretty much any form—creative, passive, or interactive—and while some methods work better for me than others, there aren’t any I’ve dismissed outright. (Although there are some genres that don’t do it for me, and some combinations of genre and medium that I don’t care for. I only really like horror in prose form, and I have no particular interest in sexuality in tabletop role-playing).

That said, I do think that one of the ways we might innovate in and revitalize RPGs is by drawing inspiration from card and board games. Raspberry Heaven is a perfect example of that, considering it was Uno that helped redeem the game from oblivion, but that’s only one of a zillion different possible games to look at.

The other day I had the opportunity to look through my brother-in-law’s copy of SPANC (Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls) from Steve Jackson Games. It very much looks like the result of that approach in reverse. You create a crew of three characters, who are defined by four attributes (Space Pirate, Amazon, Ninja, and Catgirl, naturally). You can give them equipment cards to modify the attributes, and you basically throw them at challenge cards, picking a catgirl who tries to roll under the requisite skill (often with a modifier). You could turn it into a very simple RPG with no modification at all. Just let each player pick a character card, and have the GM use challenge cards or make up new ones on the fly, and you’re golden.

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a game that in many ways straddles the divide, and the one time my group played it (I do want to play again some time) it was surprisingly successful and won over the skeptics among us. Its basic structure is competitive, based as it is around accumulating influence tokens, but depending on how one choses to play it can be little more than a framing device. It surely has a good number of players who are interested in exploring the setting’s inherent perversity, and can do so to their heart’s content rather than worrying about “winning” the game according to the rules. The use of customized cards to keep things interesting is a definite board game touch, and it’s vital to the overall experience.

Then there’s Once Upon A Time, a “storytelling card game” that is more of a group storytelling exercise. It’s not an RPG per se (no one self-identifies with any of the characters, after all), and its use of cards is more of a way to introduce memes into the story being told and provide a way to win/end then game. Like the Roach, it shows how customized cards can be a vector for introducing information into the game’s fictional world. That’s one of the key concepts of that Moonsick game I’ve been neglecting. It also allows for a level of simplicity and abstraction not often seen in RPGs, and since (as the last post on Adventures of the Space Patrol illustrates) I’m interested in short, pick-up RPGs, this is something I think worth exploring.

Although of course there have been any number of RPGs that make good use of miniatures and maps in the style of the wargames from which the hobby originally arose, I haven’t yet seen any that take a cue from boardgames per se. If an RPG takes place in a limited geographic area, it could have a board, and the effects of different locations could be encoded into that board (this seems ridiculously common in board games). If the locations need to vary more, we could use mapping tiles (like in Zombies!!!), either randomly placed or set out according to someone’s wishes.

On a similar line of thought, a friend of mine was working on a kind of “limit break” mechanism for an RPG, which involved a 3×3 grid on the character sheet. Making use of location as a determining factor is possible even without an elaborate board, and it can accomplish all kinds of interesting things.

This is why I wish I did like board and card games more than I do (and it’s not like I haven’t given them a chance either). I really wonder what other neat things someone who’s actually familiar with a wide variety of of games could come up with.

Anyway. In another day or two I’ll hopefully be posting up the next installment of Role-Play This!, dealing with Fighting Shonen Manga.