I think I'm kinda spoiled in how I like to run tabletop D&D.  But my quest for the ultimate tabletop experience continues onward!

Today I received my Canon IP6000D photoprinter.  What does a photoprinter have to do with D&D supplements?  Well, I'm playing a swordsage in Scott's campaign and it has various stances and maneuvers which are used up or switched out constantly through a battle.  The concept is cool and makes battles interactive, really a lot of fun, but would be a little complex to remember or keep track of just via pen and paper. 

They recommended cards, so then I started thinking about how I wish I could print individual cards.  I mean, I can print card shaped things and cut them out, I could even buy business cards that have been pre-perforated for easy tearing.  But what I really want is something with a bit of finesse, a bit more quality, and I want to be able to do it without wasting extra paper.

So I started wondering why they hadn't made cardstock printers that could print smaller paper, like index cards.  I began searching the net, and eventually found that many photo printers can print on common index cards like what you'd get from a drug store.

So thus I did some more research, and the canon ip6000D seems very efficient in it's ink use (important, going to be going through these cards quite a bit probably), prints quickly, and, best of all, I found it on Amazon for less than one hundred! 

So its sitting here next to me, and I'm kinda poking at my desk hoping a space large enough opens up for it without me sacrificing too much of my very necessary and valuable clutter, and wishing I had already made up some templates in MSWord or even better, had programmed something up in Visual Studio. 

Maybe I can work up something with dndorks.com and a pdf generator.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to playing with my shiny new cards, and have lots of other ideas.  Like TSR's old products with spell cards and equipment cards.  Nifty ideas, but you ended up with lots of junk that you'd never use, and not enough of what you did use, further, if anything happened with the cards you were basically ruining the set, where as these will be disposable and easily reprinted as necessary. :)

Hmm, what other gadgets do we have?

Battlemaps: Well, I picked up four 4'x5' battlemaps for cheap by calling and asking for industry misprints (very small errors, it means there is nothing wrong with folding them up with maps and using a blank one if we want to reuse one).

Miniatures: We went through many different miniature ideas over the years.  We tried magenight, but the bases were too large and none of the creatures were really D&D.  Then we tried cardboard counters, which were ok, but hard to keep track of or find.  Of course we started with metal miniatures, but its hard to cart around dozens and dozens of metal miniatures without damaging them (especially the little swords in foam cases and whatnot).  Finally we've found what looks to be our permanent solution, the D&D plastic miniatures, probably 9-10 boxes so far, easily stored, cheap enough I don't feel too bad when one of our animals eats one (still annoying, I just don't feel "too" bad).  These are great, especially the new clear plastic, something that easily exceeds what metal could ever do, check out the large fire elemental, one of my favorites from the recent set.

Laptops:  We have 3 laptops at the table right now. My dream is to have 1 laptop and all tablet pcs for the players, but we're not quite there yet.  Still, my campaign manager on dndorks.com is coming along, and we're using it more and more at the gaming table.

What I'm still hoping for.

I have yet to come up with a good solution to providing sound effects at the gaming table.  I'd love to be able to click a couple buttons and have a loud growl, wolf howl, crashing waves, rumbling stone, etc.  I was kinda thinking radio DJ's must use something good for this because it seems like they use sound effects pretty effortlessly.  Of course niche software like that is probably pretty pricey...

A projector:  I've seen those setups where you have a projector above the gaming table and have it projecting the battlemap onto the table, and I have hope for it.  Its a big reason why I'm practicing my campaign cartographer and dundjinni skills, so that I can maybe use them with a projector.