Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Make a To-Go Box for Your Small GMing Essentials

Fri. January 20, 2006 

I use a Rook Endura Pro to store all of my small stuff: pens, pencils, enough dice for nearly any RPG (10d10, 30+d6, 3+ full polyhedral sets and more), highlighter, index cards, paper clips and counters (to flip).

I have plenty of dice to give to players who forget theirs, and the box saves me from having to scramble to get all this together at this last minute — I just grab it and go. This is easily my single favorite gaming tool.

More posts about: Products for GMs

Comments

4 Responses to “Make a To-Go Box for Your Small GMing Essentials”

  1. psychoph on January 20th, 2006 12:57 pm

    Do you have a picture of what it looks like inside? The website just shows the outside and dimensions which doesn’t give me much of an idea of the organizational potential.

  2. Frank on January 20th, 2006 4:45 pm

    My file box organization derrived from this idea of a to-go box. Currently, my dice don’t fit in it, but back in the past, when I did use it as a to go box, my dice bag would fit in (along with my balsa cigar tray that I used for dice rolling). With counters only, it’s quite possible for me to have everything I need for a Cold Iron run except the battlemat in the box.

    Of course these days, my preference runs to running games at home.

    But I keep thinking about running one shots at my FLGS. The box would be very handy for that.

    Frank

  3. hellibrarian on January 22nd, 2006 9:05 am

    I’ve also used something similar in the past.

    I used a fairly common type of small toolbox that has a compartment built into the top for small parts like screws, in which I put my dice. There is also a removable tray for pencils, pens, markers, etc. Under the tray is a larger space. Large enough for a 3×5 notecard box and some minis. To keep the minis in place during transport I hot-glued small magnets to the bottom of the toolbox. I have washers glued to the bottom of my minis for stability on the table anyway, so they stay on the magnets. I could grab this box and a couple of books I needed and I was ready to go.

  4. Martin on January 22nd, 2006 9:48 am

    psychoph: Do you want an empty picture or a full one (to see what I did with mine)? It sounds like you want an empty one, which might not be necessary: The Endura Pro has no partitions, dividers or anything else inside. It’s just a box.

    It’s actually designed to hold four of Rook’s steel CCG deck cases side by side, and they can be pretty useful for organizing small RPG stuff. I don’t use them myself, though.

    Frank: Convention games were actually my inspiration for putting this box together. I hated having to assemble a “kit” of stuff (like specific sets of dice) every morning for each day’s events, and this was my solution.

    hellibrarian: I know exactly what you mean — those toolboxes rock. If I needed more widgets for every session, I’d probably use one of those instead. :)