The Best D&D Accessories for Players and Dungeon Masters

What Counts as a D&D Accessory?

Rulebooks teach you the game. Miniatures populate the board. Accessories are everything else that makes the session actually run well — the dice you roll, the journal you write in, the tray that keeps those dice from bouncing off the table, the tracker that stops combat from grinding to a halt.

Most D&D accessories aren't required by any rule. But the right ones remove enough friction that you stop thinking about logistics and start thinking about the game. This guide covers the ones worth owning, broken down by whether you're a player, a DM, or both.

Best D&D Accessories for Players

Campaign Journal

After a few sessions, details blur together. Who gave the quest? What was the name of the town you left in session four? Why does the rogue owe money to that merchant guild? A purpose-built campaign journal solves this — the structure is already laid out for session notes, NPC tracking, quest logs, and character development, so you actually use it instead of scribbling in a random notebook.

The Record of Adventure is built for one character through one campaign. It's 5e compatible and walks you through everything from character creation to a full quest log. If you only buy one accessory as a player, this is the one that pays off the most over a long campaign.

Dice Sets

You need at least one set of polyhedral dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and a percentile die). Beyond that, collecting dice is half the hobby. A second set speeds up rolling multiple damage dice. A distinctive set becomes part of your character identity at the table.

If you want your collection to grow without effort, a Dice Arcana subscription delivers a new themed set every month — different aesthetic each time, no overlap with what you already own. For something fun and unexpected, a Mystery Potion Dice Bottle hides a full polyhedral set inside a potion bottle — opening it feels like drawing loot from a dungeon.

Dice Tray

Dice that roll off the table waste time and break immersion. A dice tray keeps your rolls contained, protects the table surface, and gives you a defined rolling area. Simple, but once you have one you never go back.

The D20 Round Dice Tray is compact enough to fit at a crowded table and has a D20 shape pressed into the rolling surface — functional and looks good sitting in front of you all session.

Spell Cards

Flipping through the Player's Handbook mid-combat to check what Thunderwave does is painful for everyone at the table. Spell cards — physical cards with one spell per card — let you fan out your prepared spells and reference them instantly. Especially useful for casters with large spell lists (looking at you, clerics and wizards).

Dice Bag or Carrying Case

Once your dice collection grows past one set, you need somewhere to keep them. A good dice bag protects your dice during transport and keeps them organized at the table. Leather drawstring bags are the classic choice, but structured cases with compartments work better if you're carrying multiple sets.

Best D&D Accessories for Dungeon Masters

Initiative Tracker Notepad

Combat tracking is where most DMs lose the most time. Initiative order gets scribbled on scratch paper, HP values live in the margin of your notes, and conditions get forgotten because there's nowhere consistent to write them down.

The Initiative Notepad is a tear-off pad with columns for initiative order, HP, AC, and conditions — all on one page. It sits open on the table while you run the fight, then you tear it off and start fresh for the next encounter. 5e compatible, no setup, no app to fiddle with.

DM Screen

A DM screen hides your notes and rolls while putting the most commonly referenced rules right in front of you — conditions, actions in combat, setting DCs. The official 5e screen works fine. Third-party screens with customizable inserts let you swap in your own reference sheets, which is more useful once you know which rules you actually look up during play.

Lorekeeper Notion Template

If your campaign notes live across three Google Docs, a Discord server, and a spreadsheet you forgot the name of, a dedicated campaign manager fixes that. The Lorekeeper 5e Notion Template organizes NPCs, locations, factions, session prep, and lore into one connected system. Everything links together — click an NPC and see which sessions they appeared in, which faction they belong to, and what quests they're connected to.

Subscription Boxes

Monthly subscription boxes are a DM accessory in disguise. The Dragon's Hoard delivers props, loot cards, and themed accessories every month — things you can hand to players when they open a chest or search a room, instead of just narrating it. It's a steady supply of table material without having to source it yourself.

Battle Maps and Dungeon Maps

Running theater-of-the-mind works until the party gets into a complex fight with positioning that matters. Pre-drawn maps save prep time and give players a concrete sense of the space. The 100 One-Page Dungeon Maps collection gives you a stack of system-agnostic maps in a vintage hand-drawn style — print what you need, leave the rest for later.

Condition Markers and Status Tokens

"Wait, who's poisoned again?" Condition markers — small rings or tokens that sit on miniatures or map squares — make status effects visible to everyone. Color-coded rings for conditions like stunned, poisoned, and concentrating mean the DM doesn't have to track everything mentally and players can see what's happening at a glance.

D&D Accessories That Work for Both Players and DMs

Some accessories don't care which side of the screen you're on.

Campaign journals work for DMs who want a physical record of what happened each session, not just what they planned. The Record of Adventure is structured for players, but plenty of DMs use one to log the actual events of each session alongside their prep notes.

Dice and dice trays are universal. The DM rolls just as much as the players — arguably more. A dice tray on the DM side of the screen keeps rolls contained without knocking over maps or minis.

Dice bags and carrying cases matter for anyone who brings their own dice to the table. A good case keeps multiple sets organized and protected during transport.

Cool D&D Accessories and Gift Ideas

If you're shopping for someone who plays D&D, accessories are the safest gift category. You don't need to know their character build or which books they own — a journal, dice tray, or subscription box is useful regardless.

We wrote a full guide on this: Best DnD Gifts for Players and Dungeon Masters. It breaks down the best picks by budget and by whether you're buying for a player or a DM.

Free D&D Tools and Generators

Not every useful accessory costs money. Digital tools and generators are the online equivalent of table accessories — they speed up prep and fill gaps on the fly.

We maintain a set of free TTRPG generators including name generators, backstory builders, loot randomizers, and more. There's also a dedicated 5e tools section for D&D-specific generators. Bookmark them — they're free, no account required, and useful mid-session when you need an NPC name or a random piece of loot on the spot.

Frequently Asked Questions