According to wikipedia, a “Feelie” is extra physical content that comes with a game (specifically Infocom’s text-based games) to help immerse the players in the virtual world. Sometimes they were crucial for deciphering the in-game puzzles, and sometimes they were just fun extras. The thing is: they’re super useful for dungeons and dragons.

You slip your hand into your pocket and tell your players: “you loot the corpse of the old, wrinkled wizard. You find an assortment of knucklebones and coins in his pocket, a couple of rusty daggers tucked into his boots, and around his neck you discover a strange amulet…”

Your hand comes out of your pocket, and you drop a necklace onto the table; a length of old chain with a huge gaudy pendant with an inscription. You spent $1 at a thrift shop on it, and two minutes of your time googling appropriately mysterious runes to sharpie onto it, and it’s probably the best moment of your players’ whole D&D career.

Or maybe they beat up a group of bandits, and you give them the actual note that one bandit is carrying. If they can decipher the code, they can discover the location of the bandit hideout.

Or how about this? The barbarian gets to level 3, and decides to follow the Path of the Totem Warrior. You tell them it’s fine – as long as they can find an appropriate token for the character and the player. Next session, the player’s wearing a bear hat, or a wolf ear headband, and they might feel a little silly at first, but you can bet they also feel awesome.

In fact, my Orcus in Nentir Vale campaign began because I had the bright idea to make a real “shattered relic” for the players to find one shard of. Now they’re obsessed with finding the rest of it and discovering what it means. Feelies work.