7 Things You’ll Likely Forget for an In-Person Game Night
Written by Dave McTingley
We’ve all been there. You just walked up to your Game Master’s door. You knocked out the rhythm of the 90’s X-Men theme song (I was late because of work and totally not because I was watching cartoons, I swear). You realize you don’t have that one crucial item that you need to play your RPG of choice. You look down and realize you aren’t wearing any pants… wait, has no one else had this nightmare replace the one where you show up to class without your homework?
Pants or no, we all forget things sometimes. Fortunately, we nerds have put together this checklist so you can finally prove to those snobs who always manage to remember everything that they aren’t nearly as special as they think!
YOUR DICE
Dice are THE most essential tool when playing a tabletop RPG. I guess your group could be using a block tower to play Dread once in a while, but let’s be honest with ourselves. You’re playing a game that at least requires some dice. Sure, the odds are that you can borrow from that person at the table who has more dice than they can carry without slipping a disk. You know, the one who for some reason still doesn’t understand why they have bad posture. Regardless of their delusions, don’t be that person who shows up begging to borrow dice. The rest of us have carefully curated our collections, and a little part of us dies whenever we see our children separated from the flock, even if it’s only for a night. A good way to prevent this is to stash your least favorite set as a backup and keep them in your car, backpack, or whatever you can’t possibly be without once you’ve made it to your GM’s place. I say least favorite because the good ones deserve better treatment than getting hot-boxed when you have to park your car in the sun throughout the week.
2. YOUR CHARACTER SHEET
Character sheets are arguably as essential to most RPGs as the dice. They are an answer key to any question you may have about what your character can do. How else will you know how many hit points you have left? Do you have enough gold to pay off your tab from all the binge drinking the party did last night? Have you burned through all your low level slots forcing you to use a 4th level slot on Animal Friendship, finally allowing you to convince that random rat to accept your moldy cheese present? These are things you need to know.
3. YOUR NOTES
Taking notes while playing an RPG is a great thing and they can be incredibly helpful when you’re trying to stay in character. Forgetting those precious notes can be like leaving half your character’s brain behind. It especially helps when your character is supposed to have a higher intelligence than you do in real life. I’m playing a wizard at the time of writing, and having my character’s memory written out on paper has been invaluable when solving the mysteries thrown at our party and keeping track of personal quests. We all laugh when one PC can’t remember the name of a fellow PC’s sister, despite having slept with her on multiple occasions, but I don’t want to be the butt of that particular joke. It helps keep the game flowing and lets you more fully embrace your roleplay when you don’t have to ask the GM if your character remembers their own mentor’s name. Not to mention that your GM will appreciate that you are actually paying attention to the world they have painstakingly created for you. If you regularly forget to bring whatever you are keeping notes in, you can back up your notes digitally in a note taking app. The practice of copying your notes is a great way to help you remember things anyway so you get to win on multiple fronts by backing up.
4. YOUR PENCILS
They don’t call them pen and paper RPGs for nothing. Even if you remember #2 on this list, it'll do you as much good as a bow does a Ranger without arrows if you don’t have a pencil. You could use any kind of writing utensil; pencil for the reasonable people, pen for the overly confident, or maybe even crayons if you’re feeling the need to let your inner child out. Be careful with that last one, you might look like a serial killer if you start writing about how you smashed a goblin’s head in with your warhammer in burnt sienna wax. Fortunately, the standard pencil doesn’t take up much space so just stash a few in your bag and you will be good to go. There’s a decent chance that someone else at the table has extras, but they’ll probably just loan you that golf pencil with no eraser. Some say it is a fate worse than death.
5. YOUR RULE BOOKS
Admittedly, this one is less essential than the four above items. The GM or another player will likely have the book you need at the table, but it is good to have your own copy. Especially if you are using features found outside of the core rules. If you are using a GM approved homebrew class you found online for instance, print it out. It will be a lot faster to answer any questions about your character that come up during play when you don’t have to pull out your phone and try to find that url you sent to the GM months ago. It is also nice to be able to grab your own book to look up rules rather than having to interrupt the GM while they are in the middle of running combat.
6. YOUR CONSUMABLES
This covers anything you’re going to eat or drink. The big takeaway here is to not be a mooch. Either plan to bring at least as many flavored beverages as you personally plan on drinking in a night or work out a system where everyone takes turns bringing the party juice. Bring extra if you have the financial means and get joy from giving gifts to your friends. Everyone is allowed to forget to bring drinks a few times, but your friends will notice if you’re the person who only takes a penny and never puts one in the dish. It gets old real quick. Also, just drink more water, your kidneys and liver will thank you.
Food tends to take up way more space so you might want to establish a rotation amongst the group. The calories help keep you energized for long play sessions and eating gives you something to do when it isn’t your turn that isn’t interrupting the other player’s time in the spotlight. We have found that a weekly rotation works best for us. Everyone gets a turn to bring the type of food that they like and you can ensure that at least one week will feature a pizza with pineapple. Sweet and salty are a delicious combo. Fight me.
7. YOUR PANTS
Look, I’m not here to judge whatever your group does behind closed doors. There is a good reason why every 0 session worth its salt includes time to talk about safety tools and boundaries. Your group should do what everyone at the table feels comfortable with doing. But please, don’t show up to your friend’s house with nothing covering up your nethers. Pants, shorts, skirts, underwear, really anything that guarantees that your bits don’t come into direct contact with the host’s furniture will suffice. It just isn’t sanitary and there’s a high chance that you will get arrested for indecent exposure before you even make it to the front door.
There are your 7 essentials to make sure you have when showing up for game night as a player. The best way to remember everything is to keep it all in one place between game nights. I keep mine in my backpack that I bring with me everywhere I go so my gear is never far away. Give this checklist a rundown before heading out the door and you’ll always be prepared. Of course, a lot of this is pointless if you play digitally. You could do most of this on your phone, but gaming is more fun when you roll real math rocks. Our connected devices give you access to too much anyway and tend to take your attention away from the stories you are telling with your friends.
Another workaround is if your GM is generous enough to let you store everything at their place. I guess you can do that if you don’t like giving each of your dice a goodnight kiss before bedtime between sessions, but I’m pretty sure that makes you the weird one here. Also, they’re busy enough with their last minute prep and having to remember where they stashed your things is just another distraction they don’t need.
To my GMs out there, sorry, but you know that you will always need to carry a wizard school sized trunk worth of things in order to be prepared. If only Hermione’s purse could be a real thing. **sigh** maybe one day…
