Connected D&D accessories are great, but pricey
Go Dice Connected RPG Dice
Dungeons & Dragons, known worldwide as D&D, is the most famous and beloved tabletop role-playing game in existence today. For nearly 50 years, people have gathered around a table and dreamed up tales of magic, monsters, and daring, rolling shiny mathematical stones (dice) to determine the fate of their adventuring party.
D&D 5th edition tells us that it can be played purely in the “theater of the mind” with nothing but the best D&D books and some dice, but if you’ve played the game before, you know that the game is made more fun with some cool accessories. Not all of the products listed here are strictly necessary for playing, but in my 30 years of casting spells, I’ve found that these are some of the best accessories to have on hand.
What is the best D&D accessory?
Some people think that you only need one set of dice to play Dungeons & Dragons. These people are wrong and maybe a little crazy. You can never have too many dice and luckily there are thousands of dice to choose from. Whether you are looking for your first set of polyhedral dice for less than 10 dollars, or a giant bag of dice So that all your players can borrow them, dice are the best accessory you can have at your gaming table.
The best Dungeons & Dragons accessories
Chessex has been making D&D accessories for a long time, and the Pound ‘o’ Dice is probably the best deal. For just $20, you can get 100 dice to start your collection. These are considered factory seconds and don’t come in full-color sets, but they are great dice to use in any game, especially at this price.
If you’re looking for something a little more chic, you can always go for the Wiz Dice Cup of Wondera set of 35 dice (seven sets of five), including dice spreader and simulation box.
D&D Beyond is a companion app for playing the game in the physical world, and our top pick for the best online D&D tools. It lets you create up to six characters for your Fifth Edition games and purchase digital copies of your favorite companion books. You’ll also have free access to most of the core rules and spells to get you started playing.
There are also different subscription levels, if you want to up your game. The Master Tier — $5 a month ($30 for six months or $55 a year) — lets you share features from sourcebooks and adventure books with your entire group, rather than everyone having to buy their own copy, and it’s the one we recommend.
D&D is a traveling game. Unless you’re the eternal DM (sorry if you are), you’re probably going to be going to different people’s houses to play, and you need to take your stuff with you. Like its D&D namesake, the Bag of Holding can carry a lot more than it looks, and makes traveling to your game a whole lot easier.
There was enough room for six books, my laptop, minis, and a bunch of dice. There was even room for a bottle of water and a gaming mat on the side. The bag is full of little pockets and hidden holes to keep everything organized. It’s not the cheapest addition to your gaming experience, but it’s an excellent one.
If you’re the type of D&D player who enjoys writing in-depth backstory, taking careful notes during each session, and enjoys a well-organized character sheet, then the Field Notes 5E Journal was made for you. These little notebooks include everything that makes a regular Field Notes journal great, with a simple yet portable design, and they add character sheets and designated pages for inventory and notes that you can keep as a single campaign journal.
As someone who plays multiple games with different groups of friends, I find these journals super helpful for keeping my character organized. There’s even a Game Masters journal with extra details to make the game easier too.
Let me start by saying that this is a treat, but one that I have fallen in love with. These connected dice come in two parts; you need both to make them work. First, there is the Go Dice ($100), a set of D6s that can be controlled by an app on your phone. The second is the RPG Bundle listed here . With it, you can put five of the dice in a polyhedral housing — the last D6 doesn’t need a housing; it’s already a D6 — and the app will recognize it as a D20, D8, and so on.
The coolest part about this is that the APP connects directly to Discord, Roll 20, and FoundryVT, so you can roll the physical dice and see the results in your digital game. One of the things I miss most about virtual tabletop gaming is the physicality of rolling the dice, and these dice bring all of that back.
Theater of the mind is a fun concept, but it’s a tough sell when your spells require you to know exactly how many feet a target is in a certain direction. A good battle mat can make imagining a battle or the layout of a city much easier. This set comes with several picture cards to help set the scene, and some handy clips to keep the mat from rolling up. It also comes with dry-erase markers so you can draw on them.
The set includes three cards, each with a scene or blank space on either side and a grid pattern that allows you to easily measure the 1.5 meter distance between the characters.
Any resin 3D printer will give you excellent miniatures for your D&D game. The detail is fantastic and it takes very little time to print six to eight minis at a time. If you don’t know where to find models, I would recommend MZ4250’s patreon page where for just $1 a month you can access hundreds of 3D printable mini files or, if you want something a little more custom, you can try Hero Forge, an online mini generator. Hero Forge lets you buy the physical minis or print the STL yourself.
If you’re looking to build larger sets, check out our best 3D printers for even more choices.
As you reach higher levels in a campaign, your characters and monsters’ conditions begin to stack up. Sleeping, being blind, and “on fire” are just a few of the conditions that can occur regularly. These color-coded rings are placed around a standard mini base and make it easy to see which condition each character is suffering from.
I really like this set because it comes with blank rings and a white marker so you can create your own terms and the box has a color key so you can see at a glance what each term is. This is especially helpful if you are stacking rings on top of each other.
If your games are more traditional and you don’t play D&D, you may need a case to take with you to your GM’s house. This neat folio case has room for your dice, minis, a Player’s Handbook, and your character sheet. The character sheet storage space is especially handy because it has a clear plastic sleeve that you can mark with a whiteboard marker. This makes it easy to mark temporary hit point losses and other non-permanent conditions.
Got questions? We have answers.
Playing D&D can get complicated, and you’ll likely have a lot of books, dice, and other accessories with you. To get started, you’ll need these six things:
- A character sheet from the D&D website
- A pencil (not a pen, because you need to adjust your stats)
- A set of polyhedral dice with 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20 sides.
- At least some of the rules. We propose a starter packthe D&D Beyond rules, or the Players Manual.
- An idea of what kind of game you want to play.
- A group of friends who also want to play.
With just these supplies you can start playing D&D, and you’ll probably have a lot of fun doing it.
You don’t have to. As a player, all you need is the things listed above. Or, if you’re the Game Master, you can pay $5 a month for D&D beyond and your players can share the books for free, making it an even cheaper proposition. Most of D&D takes place in the head, with dice rolling thrown in for good measure. It can be as budget-friendly as you want it to be.
Most D&D games are divided into two different types: campaigns and sessions. A session typically lasts anywhere from 2 to 8 hours, depending on everyone’s schedule, and is the normal benchmark for a game. A campaign is a collection of multiple sessions strung together. When your story reaches its conclusion, a campaign ends and it’s time to start a new one.
