Vampire Challenge 5: Favourite Dice / Merchandise / Props

This was originally “Favourite Set Of Dice / Individual Die”. Which I have very little to say about. I don’t have many superstitions about dice, and only rarely buy them for the “ooh, pretty” factor. I got a set of original Vampire: The Masquerade dice (with a rose instead of a one) but never really used them, going for plain black with white lettering by default so I can generally tell which are mine.

So I’ll run off in a slightly different direction and talk about merchandise and props in general.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?

Batman 

The “ooh, pretty” factor mostly gets me with books. Only natural, this being a bookish kind of hobby. I like a good hardback cover, solid binding, nice art, shiny pages - when offered premium versus normal paper on DriveThru Now In Print I go for them. And yes, I own a deluxe limited edition of V20, brought back heavily signed from the Grand Masquerade 2011.

I also have an original Tim Bradstreet T-shirt:

Which hasn’t fitted me since college, alas.

(My Grand Masquerade T-shirt fits just fine, but is reserved for special occasions.)

And some of the novels for both Worlds Of Darkness, and some of the Masquerade comics, and even some of the official Ral Partha miniatures and RAFM’s Fantastique Noire Vampyre line - despite not normally using miniatures, I sometimes buy some because their “ooh, pretty” is possibly the highest in games merchandising.

And I won the Lucita action figure in a raffle at my FLGS. They also made prototype Werewolf: The Apocalypse action figures, a game that seems much more action-figure friendly.

And a starter pack and a few boosters for Jyhad even though I avoided getting into Magic.

And both the computer games.

I am also tempted by the new DVD box set of the short Masquerade TV series Kindred: The Embraced. Despite having seen the show. Ha ha.

As for props, I mostly restrict myself to handouts because I’m not generally involved in LARPs and I am instead generally involved in games running at universities and pubs and other places I can’t decorate as I see fit and have to travel to with a minimal amount of things to carry.

I’d sometimes use music if I could, as I usually have a soundtrack in mind and might mention it at the table but am rarely in a position to actually play it. Nor can I generally control the lighting. Except to schedule the game for the evening...

One prop I do sometimes make, if I can show it on a mobile device or at least by emailing the link to the players, is to video edit together a trailer. See the results here mixed in with Buffy and Doctor Who and homebrew games and such. I’m still rather proud of the first Requiem trailer, which only features two shots from actual vampire media, one of which does not show a vampire (and one from the “vampire” episode of Alias...) while getting the mood I wanted across. I considered editing together a live-action “cover version” of the World Of Darkness MMO trailer before it was released for general viewing... although I had no idea what to use for the guy turning into mist to go through the chain link fence.