By: Culliope (Maryanne Cullinan)
It’s that time again! Last minute shopping for your favorite TTRPG-loving teen? As the director of Heroes Hall, a 40+ kid DnD group, I’m happy to give you the help action to let you roll advantage on your insight check on what makes a great gift for your legendary adventurer.
There are thousands of TTRPG-related products out there of all shapes and sizes. Our list is going to focus on items under $40. Most of the items here can be found on Amazon or another large retailer, but if you can, check out your local game store or specialty dealers. Adventurers always need friendly merchants on their quests, so let’s return the favor.
Teens Love Swag
Our first set of suggestions takes a little sleuthing. If you know a little something about your player’s character or their sense of humor, there is a lot of TTRPG swag out there that can help your player rep their favorite class, be funny, or be better organized with their spells!
In Dungeons and Dragons, every player has both a race and a class. The character’s class is their job/talent. Common classes are fighter, wizard, barbarian, sorcerer, etc. If you can sleuth out the class of the character, there are lots of useful and useless items you can buy.
| Culliope Suggests: If you want to know about your teen’s character- ask! Most players will be DELIGHTED to tell you all about them. Bonus points if you learn the tragic backstory – TTRPGs are full of orphans and family tragedy, but don’t worry! It’s (probably) not a look into your child’s true feelings about you! |
Spell Cards
If your teen plays a character with magic, they have a variety of spells to choose from and remember the details of. No one wants to stop play to look up the specifics of Cone of Cold, but the fate of many campaigns has been sealed via a loophole. We have found these class-based spell cards from Wizards of the Coast to be really helpful for beginning and veteran players alike! Plus, they just look cool!
DnD/ Specific Class Swag
There is an almost endless amount of swag on Etsy and all over. My teen players love to rep their love for TTRPGs, and their character’s class and they love swag. Big hits include pins and funny t-shirts. There are also stuffed animals of some of the most famous monsters and cute jewelry!
| Culliope Suggests…Don’t know anything about TTRPGs? Is your teen’s humor a mystery to you? You Can’t Go Wrong with Dice and Dice Accessories – It’s a safe bet! |
Dice Sets
I think all players love dice. If you’ve never played with dice that are not six-sided, Dungeons and Dragons is based off of a set of seven dice with various numbers of sides, which are sold together as a set.
The shiny click-clack math rocks used by DnD and most other systems come in a wide variety of colors, materials, sizes – you name it. There are resin dice, metal dice, very tiny and huge dice, and dice made of semi-precious gems. They come in a huge variety of price points. If your adventurer is new to TTRPGs, you will probably want to get a set of resin dice based on their favorite color! Even if they already have dice, or use digital dice to play most of the time, dice are a safe bet!
Awesomedice.com has a great run-down on some of the popular manufacturers and lots of examples. https://dnddice.com/ also has some neat items. There are also many smaller dice makers who hand-make dice on Etsy.
An oversized or undersized set of dice – even one big d20 is always a safe bet.
……And, okay, I was curious and I couldn’t help but include a link to these $2000 Bone Dice from Real Human Bones And these $4000 Tungsten Dice from Norse Foundry. Pretty cool, but strongly do not recommend for your average 12-year-old!
| Culliope Suggests: Liquid Core Dice are always a popular hit with teens. As described, they have a liquid core, and often have a floating eye inside. I have a set of dragon eye dice and they are very rad. Teens also really like dice with small figurines inside. Popular items are hamburgers, penguins, cats, cows, etc. It is hard to go wrong with a set of dice with rubber duckies in them. |
Dice Accessories – Dice Bags, Rolling Trays, Dice Jails
If you do not play TTRPGs regularly, you may not know that there is a very large number of accessories to go with dice. These include dice bags for holding and transporting dice, and dice trays, so that when your teen rolls their dice, they do not roll off the table and disappear. This site has some very cute 20-sided-dice-shaped bags. Here is another site with all sorts of dice bags from chainmail to leather to cloth. It needs to be sturdy and able to be closed well enough that it can bang around in the bottom of that backpack without spilling!
Our DnD Club meets in a cafeteria or outdoors, and a frequent problem for our players is dice rolling off of the table. There are a variety of types of dice rolling trays – this one from Forged Gaming is neat, as it doubles as a dice holder. There are leather trays that fold flat, wooden trays, 3D printed trays – you name it. Etsy has an ever-changing variety that can be personalized and come in a large variety of price points.
| Culliope Suggests:A dice bag or a dice roller tray is an easy project for an auntie, uncle, or grandparent who loves to craft. This is something they could make for your teen in lieu of another pair of socks! |
Although dice are random in their rolls, every player sometimes feels like their dice are out to get them! There is a genre of TTRPG accessories called Dice Jails, where naughty dice go to be punished! This one is classically jail-shaped. There are also dunce caps and chairs, gelatinous cubes to consume your dice, this dice jail/dice popper (think the board game Trouble), and all sorts of funny and thematic 3d printed jails.
There are thousands and thousands of great TTRPG gifts out there, but with our teen gift guide, you can be sure to find some things that are practical, inexpensive, and a critical hit with your kiddos.
About the Author
Maryanne Cullinan is a middle school teacher, PhD student and Academic RPG Researcher. She multi classes as cleric/bard/cat herder. You can check out some of her work on http://www.culliopescauldron.com or say hello @culliope on Discord and Twitter.
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