Just the other day, I received a package. It was an air filter replacement for my furnace. The filter was shipped in cardboard and packed with brown paper, so that is all stuff that I can recycle. However, the filer itself was encased within a plastic sheet. That cannot be recycled. I couldn't use it as a bag either because I ripped it to open it. So I wadded it up to throw it in the trash. Then I thought, "what if I used it like this?"
So I got out some duck tape and wrapped on the plastic. Just a little bit was enough to cover the circumference and keep it in an oval shape. So I had a clear plastic oval wrapped in black duck tape, and ideas for how I could use it in D&D spun themselves.
I could use it as a boulder, a really big boulder that had been marked for some special campaign-related reason. Perhaps it was a special boulder that served as the seal on some terrible entity, and the party had to storm its location to prevent an evil cult from removing it or otherwise guard it from such a cult.
I could use it to represent a construct creature, like a stone golem or maybe a huge ice elemental. Scaling it to typical D&D figures, it would certainly be a "huge" or maybe even "gargantuan" monster. This would be useful in any situation where a monster of great size is necessary but I didn't have a more appropriate figure for it.
I could use it to represent a structure by standing it upright (and it will stand upright because of the tape holding its shape). A building with a black band around its midsection could appear in any town that the party travels to. It could represent the residency of a wizard who blackened the middle section of their tower with an arcane experiment, or maybe it is the location of a campaign-relevant guild hall.
These are just three of the ways I came up with to use a wadded up piece of plastic compressed with tape. Sure, it doesn't look like anything more than a waded up piece of plastic compressed with tape, but it can be a lot of stuff if imagination is used with it. If someone is playing a roleplaying game such as Dungeons and Dragons, then I doubt they would have trouble suspending disbelief and using their imagination. That opens the door for the use of props like this and other ones.
This is far from the first bit of plastic that I decide to re-purpose. A couple months ago, I used a plastic bag (I think it was a cereal bag) to represent an oni hiding in a sphere of magical darkness. All I had to do was place the bag over the oni (and the structure the oni was standing on to represent flight). Granted, this wasn't a perfect match to show how far the sphere of darkness extended, but the campaign was taking place over a Discord chat, so the players couldn't see details like that. The bag was basically there to remind me that the oni was currently hiding in darkness. The point is that the plastic bag served its purpose, and now I plan to find ways to use plastic bags I can't recycle to represent other field effects.
Could bubble wrap be used to represent a magical mine field? Maybe it is difficult terrain of some kind? If a player wanted to lay down a Gust of Wind, perhaps I should lay down bubble wrap to chart its course.
It's not just plastic bags and wrapping either. The oatmeal I buy regularly has a plastic seal on top. I discovered that if I roll this tightly and affix transparent scotch tape to the mid section then I can create a spear-like D&D prop. This can be used for many things: outlining a corridor in a dungeon, marking off a campsite for an encounter, representing a palisade at a frontier town or maybe something else appropriate to the session at hand.
They're not much to look at. Other props definitely look better and add more atmosphere to the encounter. However, these plastic waste props don't cost me a cent. I use a small piece of tape to create them. That is it. Then I have functional tabletop game props without the hassle of looking for something specific or the expense of purchasing them. They also have a bonus of decreasing the amount of plastic I throw away.
Recently, I read an article about how plastic recycling is a lot more complicated than I previously thought. There are many kinds of plastics, and some of them aren't as viable long-term as others. These plastics break down until they enter a limbo where they are too broken-down to be used in new products but not broken down enough so that they are not an environmental hazard. They can even turn into "microplastics". These are really tiny plastic fragments that can get into the bloodstream and organs of humans, thereby making them sick.
So I've been looking for ways to repurpose the plastic that I cannot avoid. So far, I have three main options: 1.) turn them into D&D props and 2.) turn them bags for D&D props. 3.) Impromtu gloves for when I clean something with a chemical I'd rather not get on my hands. It's a creative exercise, so I enjoy it.
Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).
His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.
