Sponsored.  As game sales across the industry continue to climb, with the rapid expansion of tabletop roleplaying properties like Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, local game stores across the world have begun to embrace tabletop roleplaying games like few have before.  Now that the end of Covid-19 is finally in sight, game store employees are likely to see new faces as those who picked up the hobby digitally during the pandemic begin to venture into brick and mortars to find new people to play with, expand their physical collections, or just to see what all the fuss is about beyond D&D Beyond.

Whether you are seeing new customers now or soon, the question is a matter of when not if.  Nearly 10 million registered users took advantage of D&D Beyond during the pandemic, creating new profiles and joining games for the first time for social interaction while in quarantine.  Now that Hasbro has acquired D&D Beyond from Fandom and has begun to integrate it further into their official online platforms and companion apps, it is all but assured that at least a portion of the nearly 80% of all D&D players who played the game virtually will want a new experience now that they can safely return to playing around the kitchen table with family and friends.

We at Dragon Shield have always played a ton of tabletop roleplaying games, but like many, our private games ramped up during lock-down.  Born from our employees’ desire to create a product that we would want to buy and use ourselves, a product that would iterate on the best of what the industry has to offer while creating something truly unlike anything else on the market today, we began experimenting with a new line of products.  We wanted to create a line that would enhance the experience of playing all kinds of tabletop roleplaying games by giving players tools that they would not have access to online.  By extension, Dragon Shield wanted to provide stores with a new product to offer along with the traditional TTRPG books, dice, miniatures, and monster cards.

You may already know Dragon Shield for our top-of-the-line trading card game sleeve brand Dragon Shield.  But soon, we expect store owners and many of those 10 million registered D&D Beyond users, whether they be veterans of many tabletop adventures or are picking up their first character sheet, to know us for our line of tabletop roleplaying products.  We bring you Dragon Shield Roleplaying.

The Dragon Shield Roleplaying line has two fantastic products as part of the first wave.  The first product is aimed at making the life of a player easier.  We aptly call it the Player Companion.

Player Companion
The Player Companion started as a simple idea.  "What if you could put everything you need to play in a TTRPG campaign in a single box?"  What would that box need?  What should it feel like?  And where are areas we can add functionality to create meaningful quality of life improvements?

Firstly, the box must fit books.  The Player Companion, available in black and red with a black duchess satin interior, can fit up to two standard size TTRPG books.  This is perfect for the Player Handbook and another reference book.  The box has a strong magnetic enclosure designed to withstand shaking and rustling in a bag or in the back of a car.  Your books will stay safe and the box intact.

Any product claiming to let you travel with everything you need to play all in one simple package needs to have accommodation for dice.  We have that covered in spades with a separate compartment designed to fit loose dice or those kept in smaller storage boxes.  The Player Companion additionally has a separate compartment to keep up to two miniatures and pens.

We designed it with plastic overlays to keep your character sheet, notes, or other materials safe and in place during gameplay and travel. Users can write on the plastic with the included dry-erase marker and then easily wipe temporary hit points or spell slot uses away as the game progresses.

When gameplay starts, the Companion folds into a compact dice tray, both to conserve table space and to provide a surface with a built-in back panel to satisfyingly roll against.  Smartphone and tablet users will find that their devices fit upright at the perfect viewing angle in the miniature department, too.

The second item in the first wave of releases took a similar philosophy of providing a safe compartment for everything a TTRPG player needs but applied it to the heart and soul of any campaign: the game master.

Game Master Companion
Game Masters typically need to carry more books and other materials than a player.  That is why the Game Master Companion is physically larger, capable of holding up to four books, and comes with an attachable carrying handle.

The magnetic screen that keeps the books and other materials inside unfolds and stands upright as a GM screen, built to enhance the flow of gaming while stashing everything a GM needs.  The GM side of the screen has pockets for notes, bands for phones and pens, and several plastic overlays for maps, random tables, character sheets, or whatever your game requires.

That’s not all, though.  The GM screen has a built-in initiative tracker along the top of the product.  Use the included 18 reusable dry-erase cards to create monsters or player trackers and slide them along the ridge in the top to keep track of initiative during gameplay.

Inside the box are six foam trays for miniatures of varying sizes.  Two of the foam trays have slots for standard-sized sleeved or unsleeved cards.  Place one tray face-up and another face-down to safely fit taller or larger miniatures.

All our TTRPG products include a ready-to-play mini-adventure set in the fantasy world of Arcania, where the dragons of Dragon Shield live.  Ask your distributors about stocking up today.