Tools of the trade

tl;dr: good adventures, simple maps and meeples help cut the weight you carry to a game

I have been doing a bunch of gaming recently that has been my local games group testing out new locations after our old one asked us to shove off because they had better customers. This has meant that I've been going into places I have never seen before and setting up games to run - and I've refined down my kit to that end.

Last time I was running stuff a lot out of a bag was college gaming and the kit was an A4 pad, bag of dice, 3.5e core books and the Planewalkers Handbook - everything theater of the mind since the option was have the comfy seats or the table and we chose the seats.

This time around I've refined things. A handful of years as a consultant has made me very aggro about hauling around weight I do not have to - and I've brought that to my gaming kit too. My beautiful custom DM's screen is gorgeous, probably bullet proof since it has sheet metal in it but too heavy for this kind of thing. This kit is all about weight reduction.

My go kit has:
5e PHB
Rules supplement - ship combat rules from Tales from the Glass Guarded World
Bestiary (Boos Astral Menagerie)
Adventure Module (Spelljammer Academy in this case)
Card in plastic pocket as sketching surface / battlemap
Dry erase markers
Bags of meeples
Handouts, rosters of players
DM Screen (from Spelljammer Adventures (5e))
Dice bag
Pencils

First action was to cut down the rulebooks I was carrying round - PHB is the reference, DMG I've dumped - traps, treasure, etc. gets rolled up at home, its not needed at table.

Second action was dumping the Astral Adventurers Guide for the Spelljammer Academy adventure - handily formatted by some hero on Reddit - which has *more* useful rules about running spelljamming games than the actual box set. Ship combat rules from Tales from the Glass Guarded world are also lighter and more comprehensive, though I am mostly using them for the critical hit tables. Working off an Adventurers League adventure is often helpful because it will have all your stat blocks in the back and they're laid out the same way, for better or worse it is a setup I am familiar with now.

Third action was dump the monster manual and just take the Spelljammer Bestiary (Boo's Astral Menagerie). Base stat blocks for bandits, etc are in the back of the Spelljammer Academy adventure, no reason to haul around the Monster Manual too.

Scaling down. I use an A4 piece of card (back of an old legal pad) inside a plastic pocket for small battlemaps, scaled to use meeples with. Sure, people don't get to use their 30mm mini's but I don't have to haul around a war-gamers case worth of monsters either. Meeples and a quick sketch of a battlemap is getting me 80% of the juice with 20% of the squeeze.

Card in a plastic sleeve + erasable markers

Meeples, assorted

This last is particularly relevant for operating in strange environments - chairs are in weird positions, tables are at odd heights, sticky, unstable - lots of ways a full scale battlemap and miniatures can come a cropper or be awkward to use. If someone spills a beer and soaks up this dirt cheap solution, who cares?

Aftermath of a brutal forest fight against cattle rustling hill giants

Most useful handouts have proven to be the ship deck plans - with boarding actions being a big feature, these get used a lot. I am getting to bring my original '90s ship cards to the table, at last. Plastic pockets to give them some durability.

DM Screen is from the Spelljammer slip case - I could use my 90s one but I don't want it trashed in a beer spill so I am using my modern one.

Dice bag and pencils round out the fully analogue set up - again this is tuned to unknown locations, we get back rooms and basements in old buildings with this walls - connection out to D&D Beyond or the likes is not guaranteed. More often than not it is fine, but while we can tolerate a player having a ropy connection, if I'm trying to run over a poor connection that is a bad time for everyone.

Things that have gotten stripped out over time - the 5e DMG, the 5e Monster Manual, the rest of the Spelljammer boxed set.

In comparison to my home-game set up, where I just have to go down some stairs, I'll throw in a bunch of hex-crawling tools and take all the books since its 3.5e. For that it will be:
3.5e PHB
3.5e DMG
3.5e Monster Manual
d30 Sandbox Companion
d30 DMs Companion
The Kontext Spiel Collection
Campaign folder (big wedge of A4 paper)
Big DM Screen

And the rest of the stuff is the same:
Card in plastic pocket as sketching surface / battlemap
Dry erase markers
Bags of meeples
Dice bag
Pencils

Whether going light or heavy, a last tip is to have a check-list; spare yourself thinking through 'have I got everything' each time and just have a list to check off as each thing goes into the bag. Saves the stress and cuts down time you need to get out the door and to the game.

As a sidebar for other cool tools of the trade - my brother in law worked up this d20 magnet to stick on the door of the room where we game so people know not to come in for stuff while we are in there. Things you did not know you needed til you got them.