Does he run his own games? If so, get him an old (as old as you can find at a reasonable cost) dungeon master’s screen. This satisfies the ‘owning a piece of gaming history’ condition while also being useful. I pick these up whenever I find them cheap at a used book sale and give them away as gifts to newer players. Always well received.
Cool dice are cool, but be aware that many of them are of limited practical use. Great for collecting, not always great for rolling. Heavier metal dice can’t be rolled on all surfaces and a lot of the more ornate sets can be difficult to read. I was once given an absolutely beautiful set of machined metal dice that get basically no play.
A lot of this boils down to what ‘likes Dungeon and Dragons’ means. Does he play occasionally or is it a bigger part of his nerd identity? Many of the gifts mentioned in this thread only really fit if it’s the latter case.
I knew I came to the right place. Thank you for the excellent advice.
Are the three books suggested by Jophiel edition-specific “rulebooks”? Or perhaps some other kind of book?
He’s 15, if that helps pigeon-hole an ‘edition.’ He likes books.
Speaking of screens, I like the look of this one. It’s not “history” but it allows you to customize it with what you need. More useful if you’re leading a game than as a player though.
I’ve never had trouble rolling my metal dice; I just use a pad of paper if I want to avoid rolling them directly on the table and, since I’m playing an RPG, I always have a pad of paper on me. That said, you can get a fairly nice tray for $20 and a set of nice dice for $2-$30 and be in budget. Dice trays are handy anyway just to avoid dice rolling into the miniatures or onto the floor.
They are all for 5th edition. That’s the most recent edition and (probably) what he’s playing but it might be worth it to ask his parents to take a peek or ask him if you were looking to go in that direction.
The other gifts are all equally usable regardless of edition/version or even roleplaying game, really.
In my particular group, rolling softly enough that the dice stay on a pad of paper would probably earn you a ribbing for not rolling ‘right.’ Soft rolls court misfortune! This is also why I bought a dice tray for my group, and also why we had to institute the “if you roll off the table three times in a row it’s an automatic critical failure” rule. The player who we named that rule doesn’t really like the tray. He likes to see the dice move. He should not use metal dice.
I’ve always found dice (both the objects themselves and the way they’re used) to be a pretty personal thing. Some people want to be able to chuck them across the table. Some people want to collect lots of different types. Some people like towers or trays and some people don’t. People carry them in Crown Royal bags, or in tiny clutches, or in special boxes, or in a ziploc baggy. Some people could not care less about any of it. It takes all kinds.
Great! Thanks again. I’ll have his mom ask or snoop for me. I think the books are the way to go for him. And since one is just released, I’ll get that one once I get 5th edition confirmation.
Does he like to DM? If so, planescape stuff for lore. If he likes to make house-rules and mix and match, it can also be fun for inspiration. Don’t know how expensive it is though, but a quick ebay search should reveal it.
Maybe another game? I personally like adaptable rules-light games, LotFP is a simple and fun dungeon-crawl-DnD-clone that is very adaptable. Might be too graphic though, depending on his age. Some strange illustration in that book.
You could also get him a bundle of games in digital format.
But yeah, it kinda depends on his priorities. But I’d def give him a book.
If you’re going to have his mom ask (that is, if you’re willing to not let it be a complete surprise that you’re getting him a D&D-related gift), you might also want to have her ask him if there are any particular books or items that he really wants.
That said, I’d generally agree that a newly-published sourcebook for the edition of the game that he plays is likely to be a good choice.
I’d suggest novelty gifts: fuzzy D20s, funny T-shirts, etc. You could also buy some Order of the Stick bound books. Or consider a really good fantasy novel. Things that are tangential to the hobby are paradoxically safer gifts.
Aye, but my post which actually linked a sale of the items in question (they sold for $52, by the way) had none of that language and my two follow up posts were clearly about collecting and gifting ‘historical’ D&D items.
Your excoriation was overly broad, and I was correcting the notion that the only reason for gifting older edition rulebooks was to diss the newer player somehow.
A little out of the box, but how about some of the older D&D computer games? They can pretty much all be picked up cheaply as downloads from either Steam or GoG. The two Neverwinter games, the Baldur’s Gate games, and Planescape Torment all come to mind. Any modern computer should run them and the different rule sets could be a fun change if he’s used to 5ed.
An interesting suggestion (though I have no idea of buying him a video game on an online portal like Steam will be easy or difficult for the OP).
However, I suspect that he’ll either be fascinated by the old-school D&Dishness of those, or turned off by the graphics that are much lower quality than even the inexpensive games he can play on his phone.
Oh, I agree. If I was making the purchase, I’d probably get something like both Neverwinter games (GOG has the complete editions of both for like $30 total) which would have the best graphics and closest rules. They do have “enhanced editions” of Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment, which would at least fix some of the resolution and graphics problems. And I’ll admit that I’m biased, having played those games 15+ years ago when the graphics weren’t dated.
