This is RPG-ology #92: Props, for July 2025.
Our thanks to Regis Pannier and the team at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition for locating a copy of this and a number of other lost Game Ideas Unlimited articles. This was originally Game Ideas Unlimited: Props, and is reposted here with minor editing [bracketed].
[Last September Many years ago], in unrelated incidents, I was given a hat and a pager.
The interesting thing about the pager is that it can be set to play any of several themes when activated, one of which is that John Williams Indiana Jones theme I mentioned in Derivative some months back. It’s the theme that most appeals to me, so whenever anyone pages me that’s what plays.
The hat happens to be a light brown fedora. We were birthday shopping for Tristan, and my wife thought he’d like the hat and tossed it on my head to put in the cart; but she liked the look of it on me so much she tossed a second one in the cart for him. If you don’t know, the fedora is the weather beaten chapeau donned by Indiana Jones.
Somehow, when I’m wearing the fedora and the pager goes off, I find something of the rakish professor of archaeology within myself.
It reminds me of another hat I wore years ago. This bright purple artist’s beret with matching four foot plume came from a Renaissance faire, where I also acquired a tin whistle. Compulsive musician that I am, by the time we’d left the faire I’d taught myself the basics of the instrument and composed a bit of a medieval fanfare for it. That Halloween the eldest boys dressed as knights, with hand-painted wooden swords and shields, while their fourth as a baby dragon rode in the stroller and I in beret walked with them playing the fanfare on the tin whistle, feeling every bit the minstrel I portrayed.
I have always encouraged props and set decor at my games, but never really considered why. I would have said that these pieces helped set the mood for the game. I once had the colorful cardboard dragon that had hung over many TSR displays dangling over the gaming table. Some of my players were collectors who brought period (or sometimes out of period) weapons with them. One group bought me a full sized kau sin ke, which I still take with me to games (and with which I have practiced a bit, primarily to understand what it is that my character does). There’s also a toy ray gun, complete with sounds and lights, that has traveled with my gaming supplies more than once. I’ve had people come in costume. When I play wizards, I often bring a decorative cord, such as would be used on a Christmas tree, as these often look so magical themselves. I’ve looked at lawn ornaments which would make wonderful props–magic wands, crystal balls. Once we made a T-shirt as a surprise gift for one of our players–in a red metallic font designed to be alien yet legible over a black background, it says Kiss me, I’m Drowish. I often wore a T-shirt on which I had used heat-sensitive paint to create an image of a castle which would shift from night to day as it warmed; on hot summer days I kept it in the freezer until just before the game started, so it would be the cold night scene when I donned it, and at winter games I took breaks outside without a coat so it would shift back to the dark. These bits of brick-a-brack help the mood, I have said, and set the stage on which we performed. At the early games, I had a dragon, two-headed, about ten inches tall. A small plastic sword had somehow been found, scaled just right for a knight opposing the creature. From game to game, the sword would appear sometimes clenched in the teeth of one of the dragon’s mouths, and other times jabbed into its belly, through a crack in the plastic. It was joked that the position of the sword foretold the fate of the characters, and the players would periodically move it to match their expectations–or their hopes.
But finding Indiana Jones within me, and remembering the minstrel who was once released by hat and pipe, makes me examine another function of props. It seems that they awaken something of the character within me. The kau sin ke wrapped belt-like around my waist doesn’t merely make me look the part a bit more (if you’ve seen me, you know I don’t much look the part of a martial arts master); it also causes me to feel the part to some degree. That reminder puts me in character and helps me stay there. I don’t have to touch it, or use it, or in any obvious way interact with it. The mere presence of the prop puts me a bit more in the mind of who I am.
They say your mileage may vary; yet I suspect that no matter how much or how little of the thespian there may be in you, a prop or bit of set dressing that puts you in the mind of your character will go a long way to helping you bring that character to life. Whether you wrap yourself in a bolt of brightly colored cloth, as did the player whose wu jen had the taboo that he could not wear drab clothing, or print calling cards by which to introduce your character to others as did the illusionist who had discovered a way to write his name such that it read the same right side up or upside down; whether the sword you have at your side is a fine replica katana or a civil war saber or a plastic toy; whether the helmet on your head is anything at all like those in the game world; the presence of a prop that reminds you of who you are and where you are can make a tremendous difference in finding the character within you.
[Next week, something different.]
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