The Christmas RPG Gift Guide

RPG enthusiasts are a hard group to buy for. Our games are intimate things that exist more in the bonds between each other than in the merchandise. To the uninitiated, RPG products can be an impenetrable quagmire of polyhedrons and overpriced books. Somehow, we divine that one book with a goblin on it is better than the one with the vampire on it, who knows? Add the high cost of entry to the RPG hobby and you have a gift giving nightmare. To help those on the outside, I’ve put together a few affordable and sure-to-hit choices for table-top fans across the price spectrum.

Most of these gifts are for the game master, as they tend to be the ones with the books.

Polyhedra Dice – Set of 150 ($20)

If you’re looking for a set of “house dice” for your gaming group to share, the Polyhedra Dice set from EAI Education is the best deal you’ll find. You get a screw-top plastic container filled with 25 of each die type: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. While Chessex puts up a good fight with the classic Pound of Dice, this set is the same price, comes with about 50% more dice, guarantees and even spread of die types, and all of the die types are the same color to make finding them in the pile easier. Unless you’re looking for the raw quirkiness that Chessex offers with their big bag of factory rejects, the Polyhedra Dice set is the better great purchase. (I purchased this set and received exactly 25 of each type with the exception of a single extra d4.)

Og: Unearthed Edition ($8)

My love for Og is well established. It’s one of those rare comedy games that actually succeeds at being funny. It places the players in the roles of cavemen that have a limited vocabulary chosen from a word bank of 18 caveman words. By turning the players’ own use of language against them they will be forced to hoot, gesture, and grunt their way through ideas that their vocab won’t allow them to say. The book has been long out of print, but the PDF is available for a paltry $8. If playing an astonishingly funny game sounds like fun, you should gift this to your GM. And a bottle of strong alcohol for everyone else.

Fiasco ($12 or $25)

Fiasco is one of my favorite games and makes for a great gift. It’s a one-shot story game that allows you and your friends to play morally reprehensible people making the worst possible decisions. The game is more of a toolset than it is a “traditional RPG”: you sit down with zero prep and create a setting and characters that are all on the edge of a swirling catastrophe. From suburban kids starting out in the drug trade to a West Wild boom town gone to pot, a session of Fiasco will weave a story you’ll want to repeat later to your friends. At $12 for the PDF and $25 for the PDF + Book, you can’t beat this.

Burning Wheel Gold ($25)

Burning Wheel is considered the flagship of the indie game design. It’s the game that most RPG enthusiasts I know either want to play or love to play, and you can get the latest beautiful hardcover edition for just $25. Luke Crane’s genius is an amazing gift for the GM that wants to push both their limits and their players’. Perfect for a traditional GM looking to branch out into a well-designed game that has built in shared narrative control.

Savage Worlds: Deluxe Edition ($10 or $30)

I’d be remiss to not mention my pet system in this gift guide. Savage Worlds is a setting neutral system that is made to be as easy, quick, and fast to play while keeping a level of tactical crunch that traditional games enjoy and expect out of gaming. If you like D&D adventures but don’t like that fights take longer than 25 minutes, then Savage Worlds will please. The value also can’t be beat: the 6″x9″ softcover is just $10, the hardcover is $30. Savage Worlds is a rock-solid game that’s a fast and furious alternative for traditional gamers and should be on every GM’s bookshelf.