My Stupid Bag of Gaming

32 days ago by luvasgg

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TTRPGs are a hobby with a lot of friction, so lately I've been on the lookout for removing as many sources of said friction so I can get to play more. While some of that means making chargen faster, simpler and more grokkable, and even adopting a Black Box GM'ing style (so I don't need to explain too many rules before we start playing), there's also the question of what is the bare minimum I need to non-metaphorically bring to the table to start a game.

Unrelated to that, a few weeks ago I bought this stupid dice bag to bring my dice to a friends' game:

a black bag with the words "All of My D&D Shit" written in white — it didn't arrive on time, sadly

Wasn't I positively surprised, however, when my copy of The Littlest Brown Book by idraluna-archives later arrived from Lulu and I realized it could fit inside the bag!

The Littlest Brown Book fiting inside my black bag

it is indeed the littlest brown book I've ever seen

So I decided to convert this bag from Just A Stupid Dice Bag into a Stupid Bag of Gaming, containing:

1. A bunch of dice.

a brown fake leather bag with a few dice coming out of it, three complete sets of dice (one blue, one red and one black) and six sets of six d6, each set with a different color (white, black, red, green, blue and yellow)

The fake leather bag fits three sets of dice, so alongside the other three plastic bags that's six sets of dice ready to play. Plus an unbearable amount of d6s. I really like d6s, and if I need to put something down on a surface to represent peoples/buildings/terrain features I can just put them down wherever. Speaking of which...

2. A small bag of meeples, a few of which are RPG themed, to serve as makeshift minis.

a plastic bag and multiple meeples, each with a different color, six of which have different forms: a wizard, a barbarian, a duel-wielder, a lancer, a bowman, and a swordsman with a shield

3. The Littlest Brown Book, a few index cards to use as character sheets or write GM notes and a pen.

an animated gif showing The Little Brown Book being open showing a pile of index cards inside, with a pen at the side of the book

4. This cute mini Deck of Many Things I bought alongide the Supid Bag, to use as an oracle.

a small plastic case with the name "Deck of Many Things" alongside all the cards in the deck fanned, with the Idiot on top

That's what's in the bag. Other than that, I have one of those collapsable dice trays that I will bring alognside as well.

a purple collapsible dice tray, open flat on top of a desk

That's all I need to play. It's technically more, as I could get away with less dice and no meeples, but I like having my options. Having this minimal setup allows me to just throw everything inside my backpack for easy carrying. Having TLLB also allows me to do so without needing any digital tools if I don't have them available.

Do I need more? Not really. I'm big on theater of the mind, and if I need to represent distances between combatants or other features I can just plop down the meeples and/or dice on any surface and have a go at it.

Here's the full setup: