Something I didn't get into in the last post about our weekly gaming sessions was our use of props. We don't often use miniatures or grids, as there's too many rules going on there. I rather enjoy ignoring any rule that slows down play (if you have to look it up it isn't worth using) to keep the action going. I do make liberal use of maps and pictures though. Here are two of the white boards I used while we went through Rise of the Runelords, our first Pathfinder campaign:



This one is contains some of the non-player characters the group met during their adventures in and around the sleepy little town of Sandpoint. Of particular note is the group at the middle labeled the "Company of the Black Banner," who were a rival adventuring party that tried to overtake the characters as the heroes of Sandpoint.



I also use a board specifically for important events that occur to paint a better picture in the player's heads. The three pictures on the left are from the very first adventure when the party was enjoying the yearly Swallowtail festival when goblins decided to try to burn down the newly rebuilt cathedral. The girl at the right (clearly more an event than an NPC...) ended up mistakenly married to Matt's character Valeros after a night of drunken revelry that involved a doppleganger and an evil cult.



This is a set of maps I made for our one-off Call of Cthulhu session. The one marked "Baker's Island" is actually based off a real location that I felt really exuded the feeling I wanted in the game of an isolated place where evil could lurk unnoticed. The small town on the right is also modeled on a real town in Massachusetts where the group, having escaped death at the hands of a tentacled monstrosity on Baker's Island, met their grisly ends as a horde of zombies rose from the dead to consume living flesh.




This one is a combination Events/NPCs/Handouts board from the Call of Cthulhu game. You can see two newspaper clippings the investigators found about a meteorite falling over Baker's Island and an entire family being massacred in their Massachusetts farm. There's also images of a journal entry, a piece of an ancient magical tome, and pictures of Shub-Niggurath, the nightmare thing that nearly messily devoured the group during their misadventures. It was a great time playing a game where the group knew ahead of time that none of their characters were likely to survive, as it led to some amazing scenarios. Reporter Mac Hartley was the first to fall, fighting naked when the cultists broke into the group's hotel rooms. Whether devoured, driven insane, smashed to bits during a crazed high speed chase, or consumed by the hungry dead, each character eventually met an unpleasant end - and it was a total blast.

That's all for now, as I need to start getting set up for tonight's game. The anti-heroes of Korvosa are going to have to finally leave their burgeoning criminal empire behind and head out into the open plains. Who knows what trouble they will get into with the various Shoanti tribes who roam the plains?