"The Most Useless Gaming Accessory" Topic

I was wondering what everyone thinks is the most useless, most superfluous bit of gaming tat that you can buy. My nominations are:

1. Dice Towers. Don't trust dice rolling abilities or shakers? Just drop 'em down the tower!

2. Start Player. For when chosing who goes first is too difficult.

3. AD&D Player screens. Why should only the GM operate in secret?

When I saw your title, "Dice Tower" was my first thought.

I agree on points 1 and 2, though sometimes a player token can come in handy!

3. AD&D Player screens. Why should only the GM operate in secret?

Because my players never cared about the rule mechanics, only the story and being in character. I handled the rest. (That's before we had storyteller systems of today.)

Yep, my first thought too, dice towers.

Terry

Rivet and button counters. I've never actually seen one, but I am quite sure some people have them ;-)

I'll add the single "golf ball" style percentage die. Have fun chasing that baby around the floor.

Bolt Action order dice – mainly due to the expense :)

"Rivet and button counters."

Steve, that actually is a gene. Many gamers have it, especially historical ones. I have heard beer surprises the urge to use it.

A "beer surprise" is when you run out, right?

I did buy a D3 the other week and still feel a little silly about it. I am in fact quite capable of using a D6 for this purpose. It was the only item I bought at a show – perhaps I just didn't want to go home empty handed.

If you've ever played with my son, you'll know a dice tower is not superfluous.

Unless, of course, you like collecting the dice from all over the room, under the table, behind the curtain, next to scattered figures/playing pieces, etc., etc..
Kid's got a scattergun for a dice hand.

(And yes, *even* if he's rolling in a box or a dice tray. Heck, he's achieved ballistic bounces just dropping the dice into a dice tower!)

I'll vote for dice towers too. But I think they're cool. I'm trying to decide if I want to buy one, or make my own.

Official SAGA dice.

Strongly Dis-Agree on Dice Towers: with bucket-o-dice games, rolling a handful of dice, across the tabletop, can wreak havoc on the figures. I've also watched players who always want to roll their dice a very specific way -- my guess is to try to achieve a singular result. They rarely succeed, but waiting for them to put the dice into the palm of their hand, just so, and then roll them, just so, onto the tabletop… "Ahhh!!!" Fortunately, this issue is very rare. "Time for my medication already, Nurse? Thank you." ;-)

I am always wondering how few board gamers use dice cups to roll, preferring instead to throw them across the table there they either fall down the edge or knock over chits and other small components :D

Also, related:

link

Dice with the flag on it for the country on your side. Not critical to the game, but fun. Dice tower is more useful.

I'd say dice towers, but I've yet to see anyone use one. Failing that, dice cups. I've played against a few people that use them (mostly Scandinavians, for some reason) and they always seem strangely obsessive when it comes to using them…

Sorry, OP, but dice towers are essential! We have limited table space, and our towers help keep dice from knocking over minis or falling down to where the puppies wait to devour them.

Tower/Cup – really handy if boardgaming, one bad roll could knock out a whole army (almost as badly as loose cat).

Start Player – never seen one. I've seen some fairly over-descriptive rules written for it though.

GM Screen – essential, the charts all being in one place is worth it right there. The paranioa one can generate in players just by rolling dice behind the screen and pretending to look at a chart is priceless too.

Can't think of anything actually useless, I'm sure they are out there.

My choice is the electric "dice" number generator. They were available once but I haven't seen them in years. This should tell you something.A friend who consistently rolls bad numbers bought one and used it in a game, but it generated bad numbers for him.

A wheeling measuring device you lay down on the path of the wheel. Great concept but you end up having to pick the base up to slide the wheeling device out from under it, thereby negating the accuracy of the measure.

I have to agree that dice towers are quite useful, both for keeping the dice from going everywhere and wreaking havoc, and to discourage those players who think they can engineer their rolls.

The round percentile die always struck me as particularly useless invention, more of a "we did it to prove we could" than "we did it because it's useful" thing.

Paper game templates (for wheeling, determining flanks or arcs of fire, etc.) tend towards useless because you have to hold them over the unit, which you then can't see because of the template. I one had a huge argument with a friend during a Napoleon's Battles game about whether I could shoot at him or not. Using the paper template that came with the game obscured the firing unit so much you couldn't tell what was going on. Immediately after that incident I had all those paper templates copied onto clear acetate, and the problem never arose again. Now if I'm serious about playing a game, I copy all such implements onto clear plastic sheets before I play the first game.

I would suggest this solution to Bob from Edmonton. I have an original RAFM "Wheelm" template from the 1980s, which was useless until I copied it to clear plastic, after which it worked a charm.

Mark

Dice towers come in very handy at convention games. Since using them I've not lost a single dice.

I think I'm just gonna measure wheels on the outside edge rather than try to get the GF9 wood template somehow copied onto acetate.

My choice is the electric "dice" number generator.

Hah, I still have my Dragonbone, but I haven't used it in years.

Ditto,
Start player is a phone app that randomly determines the starting player; I don't personally understand the draw, but there are probably worse ways to decide who goes first.

My vote for most useless has got to be those red, bendy measuring sticks that games workshop used to pack with every game: they're floppy, hard to read, akward to store, and tend to be hugely inaccurate.
Although the inevitable whippy stick fights are usually good fun.

An empty beer glass?

A dice tower is that big ugly thing that sits on the side of the table which people ignore and roll on the table anyway. Dito for box tops. that's why I lock my dice up in shaker boxes (and another reason I dislike buckets o'dice game mechanics).

I have never used a Dice Tower. So, I guess I shouldn't comment on their usefulness. Or, maybe that IS a comment on their uselessness??

I find that any dice that have symbols on them in place of a number (usually 6's or 1's) are enough of an annoyance that we just toss them out in favor of standard dice.

Anything I had to make for games I no longer play, like an artillery stick or wheel measuring device.

Given the amount of unpainted / unplayed figures on the shelf, I've got to say miniatures…

At least the rulebooks got read (usually).

The caltrop D4….

The clix dial… Maybe if it was detached from the figure but why do I have to pickup my miniature every single time I need to know a stat or add a "click" of damage.

Maybe not the most useless but it is ill-conceived and poorly executed.

An empty beer glass?

I think that's actually a sin more than anything else.

I made this dice tower out of Robogear Hexagon parts -- there is no glue involved! -- and it has a very small footprint, maybe 6" by 3":

I disagree about the official Saga dice – I like that they have the cool runes on them. Well, that is I like the red Saga dice with the gold letters. They are nice. The other ones less so.

The Saga movement sticks, however, I don't have much use for.

The COMMAND CALIPER !!'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Warhammer 40K rulebook.

Just to clarify, I didn't say GM Screen for D&D…I said PLAYER screen. That's right, the players can get their own screens to erect around their character sheet and presumably roll dice that always hit and cause maximum damage.

"They're floppy… akward to store, and tend to be hugely inaccurate"

Oh, behave!

First time I've see a Dragonbone – read the ad in an old issue of Dragon Magazine.

Love the Robogear dice tower – will have to make one myself…

My vote will have to be the dice tray – my friends never roll their dice inside one. :(

> The round percentile die always struck me as particularly useless invention, more of a "we did it to prove we could" than "we did it because it's useful" thing.

I have one of those, and I agree! We tried using it once and it took forever to stop rolling. Mine was a Zochihedron, so not totally round, but the edges were so small it might as well have been round. Reading the result was bad enough 20 years ago, with my eyesight now it would be impossible.

Dragonbone, but I haven't used it in years

Well, now there is an app for that.

I also think Saga and Bolt Action dice are mission critical pieces of equipment.

Well . . .

Dice towers seem like they could be useful, though I've never built or bought one.

Dice cups are useful at controlling the dice as well as organizing them; I have several.

Dice trays or boxes, very useful to control dice, although it's hard to make everyone use them.

Player's screen . . . surely no one makes such a silly item? But if gameplay involves lots of rulebook lookups, perhaps having all the charts printed out would be useful.

Start Player . . . never heard of it.

Golfball D100 . . . yes that is ridiculous, too big to work in the dice cup so it goes everywhere.

GW red pointers that are 1-2 mm short per inch . . . as long as everyone uses one they are just as useful as any other consistent measuring device. Never seen a "whippy stick fight" yet.

I would say the most useless gaming accessory is a D6 numbered oddly. The so called "average die", the dice for HeroScape with a blank, 3 shields and 2 skulls, only useful for one game.

I would say the most useless gaming accessory is a D6 numbered oddly. The so called "average die"…

Ironically, I just added this term to the glossary. I like the math of two averaging dice added together. It is very similar to a d5 on a slight bell curve with two 1/36 outliers for quirky results. I may start a game design thread on this topic in a few days. I've been mulling it over.

An empty beer glass

Actually very useful. It's somewhere to put beer.

Most useless thing? My dice.

Dice towers have their uses. The club I go to has this one kid who lines all the dice up with the 6s on top and then slides them across the table.

Actually, given that he's also the kid who picks up other folks' miniatures and bashes them together to make them 'fight', I take it back; dice towers may indeed be useless, but I can think of a use for a can of mace.

My dice tower (an Official Dice Tower Podcast one, even) is the most important part of my gaming set-up at home since the kitchen table is rather limited in size.

Showers.

VR
James Mattes

D2 dice

D1 dice.

I use D2 dice to convert an empty beer glass into a full beer glass.

I like the idea of D1 dice, but I'm just trying to think what statistical test I should apply to ensure that they are fair.

All the best,

John.