If you need ideas for holiday gifts (or if your friends and family need ideas for you), our gift guide is here to help. We’ve gone beyond the usual advice of “buy the latest book or adventure that came out” to offer gifts that are new and novel.
While the items below are all available online, we ask that you please support your Friendly Local Game Store. Brick-and-mortar game stores are an irreplaceable part of the tabletop gaming hobby, and your business is irreplaceable. While they often can’t match the prices or inventory of online retailers, I still ask that you support your FLGS if you are able to do so. If you don’t know where to find your store, the store locators from Wizards of the Coast and Paizo are here to help.
Please keep in mind that most of the links below are affiliate links. While this doesn’t affect your shopping experience, it does mean that we at RPGBOT will get a small percentage of the purchase price, which helps us do cool things like run this site and the RPGBOT.Podcast. More information about affiliate links can be found on the RPGBOT FAQ.
Table of Contents
- RPGBOT Merch
- Themberchonk Enthusiasts and Honor Among Thieves Enjoyers
- Gifts for Newer Players
- Gifts for Long-Time Players
- Gifts for Dice Goblins
- Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything
- Gifts for Young Gamers
RPGBOT Merch
RPGBOT now has an official store! We’re selling shirts, mugs, stickers, sweatshirts, and a few other things via Teepublic. Since Teepublic handles all of the shipping, handling, returns, etc. the international shipping costs are very reasonable and the turnaround time on everything is very fast. It’s a great customer experience compared to waiting for me to emerge from my hidey-hole to mail you a shirt, and it also means that everything is available in a variety of sizes, styles, and colors.
Themberchonk Enthusiasts and Honor Among Thieves Enjoyers
This year we saw the long-awaited release of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and were all stunned and amazed that the movie was simulatenously good and effectively captured the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons. We’ve been very fortunate to see merchanise for the most important and iconic character in the film: Themberhcaud.
Among these delightful items are a christmas ornament, a diceling, a plushy, and inexplicably a nerf crossbow.
There are also some tie-in books and comics. I cannot guarantee that Themberchaud appears in any of them.
Gifts for Newer Players
Newer players are generally the easiest to shop for. TTRPGs have loads of fun accessories, but veteran players often forget that they’ve spent years accumulating books, dice, and nick-nacks. Newer players typically start small, so adding to their collection is an easy source of gift ideas.
Rulebooks, etc.
Dragons of Swormwreck Isle Starter Set
The most recent entry in 5e’s starter options (there are now three in total), Dragons of Stormwreck isle is updated to be even more accessible for newcomers to the hobby.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition Beginner Box
The Beginner Box is an excellent introduction the Pathfinder 2nd edition. We even have a Beginner Box Guide that will help you get up and running!
Pathfinder 2nd Edition Remastered Core Rulebooks
The remastered core rules are fresh from the printers! So fresh, in fact, that when you see this guide the Player Core and the GM Core may not have released yet (November 28th), so you may need to wait a bit for them to arrive if you’re shopping early in the season. The Monster Core releases early next year.
Gifts for Long-Time Players
Players who have been in the hobby for a while can often be difficult to shop for, but there are some really great options that might be “off the beaten path”.
3rd-Party DnD Supplements
Even long-time players are often nervous to explore 3rd-party content, which is unfortunate because a lot of it is very good.
AAW Games Mini-Dungeon Tome
130 one-shot adventures running the full level range all packed into a surprisingly compact book.
Tome of Beasts 1 2023 Edition
Kobold Press has updated one of their most popular titles for 5e, improving and refining what was already an excellent book.
Miniatures
Miniatures are a fantastic gift, and much like dice, people who enjoy them frequently have a bottomless appetite for them, which makes miniatures a perfect gift.
For minis, you have two great go-to options: pre-made minis and custom minis. If your recipient paints minis or wants to learn, you can also throw in some painting supplies to get them going.
Pre-Made Miniatures
My go-to option is Reaper’s “Bones” line. Inexpensive plastic miniatures, they come in a massive variety of designs and you can’t paint them without priming them (though better painters may recommend otherwise).
Custom Miniatures from Hero Forge
Hero Forge is the most popular provided of custom miniatures. Hero Forge lets you design custom miniatures online and either download the 3d printing file or order the miniature printed by Hero Forge and mailed to you. Miniatures can be printed in color or painted by a professional for an additional cost, so there are a lot of decision points here and guessing isn’t going to get you very far.
Instead, get them a gift card. Click this affiliate link to go to Hero Forge, make an account or sign into your existing account, then purchase a gift card through the site.
Miniature Painting Tools
If your giftee is an experienced painter, they’re likely very opinionated about their tools, so generally avoid buying them stuff that they haven’t already told you that they want.
If they’re new to painting or if you’re trying to get them started, a self-contained kit is a great choice.
Their New Favorite RPG
Most people know Dungeons and Dragons at this point. If you get past that surface layer of TTRPGs, you might know about Pathfinder. But there’s an enormous world of amazing games to play (or at least to steal ideas from for your DnD/Pathfinder games).
Imperium Maledictum
Mysteries, intrigue, and adventure in the world of Warhammer: 40k. Players take on the role of average citizens of the imperium raised from obscurity by a powerful patron to pursue their inscrutible goals.
Avatar: Legends
The official Avatar: The Last Airbender RPG from Magpie Games. Based on the Powered By The Apocalypse engine, Legends allows you play characters across several eras of the Avatar setting.
Pirate Borg
All the over-the-top horror and death of Mork Borg, but set in a fantastically horrifying version of the Carribean during the golden age of piracy.
Vaesen
A nordic horror RPG from Free League Publishing, Vaesen now has several excellent supplements and published adventures.
Books
How to Defend Your Lair
Another stunningly good entry from our friend Keith Ammann, How to Defend Your Lair teaches you everything you need to know in order to design secret bases, tombs, dungeons, and other lairs for enemies in your RPGs which will challenge and excite your players.
Honestly, anything from Keith Ammann is a great gift for your DM/GM, but How to Defend Your Lair is brand new so it’s unlikely that your lucky recipient already knows it.
Digital Gifts
DnDBeyond
For 5th edition DnD players, DnDBeyond is an irreplaceable digital tool and it’s the best place to get official digital copies of sourcebooks for 5th edition. Plus, with some clever social arrangements, DnDBeyond can be surprisingly affordable. I know that sounds insane, but read on.
First: pick someone in your gaming group to be the person who is going to own the books. We’ll refer to this person as the “Master Subscriber”. Usually your party’s “forever DM” is the best candidate, but if there’s someone in your group who compulsively buys every source book and adventure, they’re a good candidate too. This person must somehow have a Master subscription to DnDbeyond, so either sneak into their account and buy it for them or talk them into it by enticing them with gifts. Tragically there’s no way to gift subscriptions yet, so you’ll need to figure this one out on your own.
Next, buy them books on DnDBeyond. The Gifting System FAQ explains how, but it’s fairly simple.
Finally, have your Master Subscriber set up campaigns in DnDBeyond. With a Master subscription, you can have 5 campaigns with 12 people in them (that’s 60 people total), and every one of them gets access to the unlocked content. This means that if you buy your Master Subscriber a book, not only do they get it, but you can read it because they’re effectively “sharing” the book with you and the rest of your gaming group.
This probably sounds too good to be true, but I can definitively say that it works this way. I’m the “Master Subscriber” in my group, and we use my ability to share content constantly so that can cover newly-released materials.
Virtual Tabletop Gifts
In an increasingly digital word (to make no mention of COVID and its associated social challenges), virtual tabletops are becoming an increasingly central part of the tabletop RPG experience. While many virtual tabletops are free, many also have some premium features which your DM might enjoy, such as Roll20’s dynamic lighting feature.
- Fantasy Grounds
- Complete the purchase under your user account
- Go to your Store > Order History page and click the Gift Order button next to an order that qualifies
- Enter a valid username and click Confirm Gift
- Foundry VTT
- Purchase a license with your own account
- Once your friend has an account set up as well, use the Contact form on the Foundry site to ask for the transfer, including both of your usernames and the particular license you want to transfer.
- Roll20
- This one’s easy: Just use the linked form.
Accessories
Pathfinder Pawns
An inexpensive and extremely practical alternative to actual miniatures, Paizo’s collection of “pawns” allows you to provide tabletop representations of a huge number of creatures at very little cost and without taking up a ton of space. The Bestiary 1 collection contains many of the same creatures features in the 5e Monster Manual, so that’s a great starting point. If you want to print your own pawns, you can print on card stock and cut them to fit into Paizo’s bases, which they also sell in a standalone box if you didn’t get enough in the regular box of pawns.
Since these are just pictures, they don’t care what game you’re playing. They work equally well for D&D and for Pathfinder, and since creatures from the Cthulhu mythos appear in Paizo’s content, you could even use some of them for Call of Cthulhu games. The pawns from 1st edition Pathfinder are still in print, too, so there’s a huge number of options.
Gifts for Dice Goblins
“Dice Goblin” is an affectionate term for people who enjoy collecting dice more than your average player, and they’re probably the easiest sort of game to shop for because their appetite for dice and dice accessories is nearly infinite.
If you’re looking for options, check out our friends at Easy Roller Dice. They have everything you need. Bulk plastic dice, fancy and durable metal dice, storage boxes for transporting them, and portable dice trays so no one’s furniture gets wrecked.
I have two sets of their hollow metal dice, which make delightful chime noises when rolled. Randall has one of their octagonal dice trays. We’ve taken both to conventions, they’ve performed very nicely, and they all look fantastic after 2+ years of constant use. My dice had to spend a few weeks in Dice Jail before they were sufficiently reformed for use at a table, but it’s hard to argue with results.
Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything
Scented Candles
Gamers have come a long way from the dingy basement stereotypes of the 20th century, but sometimes you still want your play space to smell nice. Whether you’re playing in a poorly-ventilated dungeon like me or in a room intended for actual human occupation, Cantrip Candles and the Crafty Gamer have a variety of pleasant scents available as both candles and as wax melts.
Gifts for Young Gamers
Do you have a kid in your life? Maybe you’re looking to get your kid(s) (or someone else’s) into tabletop gaming and they’re not quite old enough for the Player’s Handbook. Many people got into the hobby with the help of a parent, a cool aunt or uncle, or a close family friend, and you might have a chance to be that person.
None of this is to say that the below gifts are only for kids. If you enjoying easy reading and plushies, maybe you need a displacer beast to make your house cat jealous.
Plushies and Figurines
Plushies and figurines are great gifts for kids of all ages. Your non-player friends and family don’t need to know that you’re giving their kids an owlbear.
