Our Tabletop Gaming Set Up ft. CozyGamer Shop
Written by Aesthel
So as some of you may know, the Cosplay Realm team recently started a Dungeons and Dragons campaign of our own! I (Aesthel) have been playing tabletop roleplaying games for the last four years, but this is Emily’s first ever experience with it! Our game is based on the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition mechanics, but our world is almost entirely homebrew. Our DM is incredibly talented when it comes to these things and we love the world he’s designed so much!
In the most recent episode of the Rebel Realm Podcast we talked a bit about our characters (and the other characters in our party). Emily’s character is named Xion and he’s an Ice Dragon warlock and my character is named Saki and she’s a Kyuubi Warlock! If you’d like to know more about our characters or our in game adventures, let us know because we’d love to share them if you guys are interested!
As this is Emily’s first Dungeons and Dragons campaign ever, she had a lot of work to do to get set up and learn how everything works. I had a lot of fun showing her the ways of tabletop gaming and building our gaming setup together! In this article we wanted to go over some of our favorite pieces to our gaming setup every week!
Dice with CozyGamer Shop
So the most essential part of the setup for ANY tabletop gamer is your dice! And of course Emily quickly got the dice addiction itch that all of us gamers eventually get. This month we had the really fun opportunity to work with CozyGamer for a feature in the Dungeons and Dragons issue of Cosplay Realm Magazine! This was the perfect way to start Em off with a fantastic first dice set! We were initially inspired by our favorite Critical Role characters when choosing each of our dice sets, but it turns out the sets each of us chose go perfectly with our own characters too! Emily picked out their Blood Witch dice set. She was inspired by Mollymauk Tealeaf, but these dice also completely match her character’s color scheme! Yes, I know, I said she was an Ice Dragon. For some reason her character is designed in a color scheme of all red and black though. None of us realized that until we were already playing. For my dice set I chose their Care Bear Stare, totally inspired by Jester Lavorre. My character is designed with mainly pastel colors, so these dice really matched her whole aesthetic too! And yes, when it comes to the perfect dice set we know what’s the most important thing when choosing your set besides color; all of these dice have been rolling really well!
Dice Trays
A dice tray is something I didn’t used to use much, but that I’ve come to love as a key part of my setup. Dice Trays are perfect for making sure your dice don’t roll off the table and get lost somewhere. It’s also super helpful for making sure that you’re rolling on a flat surface! There’s pretty much no way for your dice to get stuck in a crevice of a table or get cocked on the side of a book when you roll in one of these! The dice tray that I use is from Die Hard Dice and Emily’s dice tray is from Kraken Dice!
Character Sheets on D&D Beyond
Before you can start playing ANYTHING you’re gonna need your character sheet! We’ve found that using D&D Beyond has been incredibly helpful, especially when teaching someone new how to play! It’s really easy to find everything on your digital character sheet, and from a DM side you can create your own custom content and share your books with your group! One of my favorite features is the “actions” tab, where it lets you know all of the different things you can do on your character’s turn from using a weapon to casting a spell and more! It makes it super helpful and easy to plan your character’s move when you can see right there everything that you can do on your turn.
Paper and Pencils
Even though we like using a digital character sheet, it’s still important to have paper and pencils handy while you play! For us especially as we’re both artists, it’s really fun to bring your sketchbook along and draw little doodles or pictures of what’s happening in game! In my personal notebook I write all of our campaign notes, important facts like character names and places, and of course I fill every blank space I get with sketches of our group and what’s been going on that session!
Snacks and Drinks
Having some snacks and drinks around the gaming table is pretty much an essential for any group. For our first session of this group I made a HUGE batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies and homemade pizza! Usually games can last up to a few hours, and you’re probably going to get hungry and thirsty during that time. We’ve always found it’s best to gather your snacks and drinks at the table so you don’t have to get up or take breaks to go get that stuff!
Chopper
No game of ours is complete without Chopper the cat. We play our campaign at my house, and as soon as the tables come out Chopper is just READY. He never seems to purposely mess with our minis or any of that, he just likes to sprawl out and lay in the middle of the table.
We hope you guys found this little article helpful! Is there something that you think is essential to your D&D games that we missed? Let us know!