What to Pack for a Roleplaying Game

A couple of months ago, I turned up to run a game of Heart: the City Beneath, and realised I’d forgotten to bring dice. Not a problem – our host was able to provide what we needed – but a little annoying. I’d planned to bring fancy red and black and orange dice!

A few weeks later, in the midst of pretty severe burnout, I was packing to go run the next Heart game. This time I was determined not to forget something. So much so that I even when online to look for “How to pack for an RPG” guides, to make sure I had what I needed. I couldn’t find anything good; at least not on the first page of Google.

Long story short, I forgot the character sheets. That was a problem.

Anyway, here’s a list of everything you (might or might not) need when you attend an RPG session. It’s designed for you to start at the top and work down, with off-ramps when you hit something that doesn’t apply to you. I made this for me, but maybe you’ll find it useful too? I’ve no expectation this will reach the first page of Google, but at least I’ll know where it is.

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June 2022 Roundup

June was a very good month, because I got to go to the UK Games Expo and hang with my favourite nerds! My last multi-day convention was before the pandemic, and before switching to full-time RPG work, so this was a long overdue opportunity to catch up with clients and freelancers who I’ve barely interacted with offline. Didn’t play that many games though! But I did get to try Calico, Chai, and Catapult Feud, play Star Trek Adventures again in the Games on the Hour space. All-in-all, a great bank holiday weekend, that’s whet my appetite for GenCon in a month or so.

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Crying Wolf

This year I celebrated the rare intersection of Halloween and a full moon by releasing my first ever self-published, standalone, tabletop RPG. Crying Wolf is a short, sharp, violent survival horror game, about Cassandra truths and monsters hidden in plain sight, inspired by the Aesop fable. It’s my contribution to the “kids vs the horror” genre Stranger Things and It have popularised in recent years, with a specially designed simple system, perfect for one-shot online play as the nights grow darker sooner.

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