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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7105455" data-attributes="member: 6796661">Quickleaf raises some good points about cultural and even individual player differences regarding color associations. I tend to play with fairly stable groups of the same people, though, so I'm not sure it is as important as if I were a Convention GM for example. Is does raise an interesting issues, are the status markers mostly for the players or the DM? Answer seems like it should be obvious—both. Well...If I'm running a pure pen-and-paper game with no digital tools, I NEED to look at the board and quickly ascertain the status of the different participants. I don't want to be noting that down on paper, especially for larger battles. Typically, however, I'm using Hero Lab's tactical console, which allows me to track status. In this case I could live with just having the numbered bases. It is the players that need the colored bases to known which participant is affected by which condition. That said, once I put these markers into use, I'll probably not even mark status in Hero Lab. Too many clicks. Still easier to use the physical markers. Another thing that I am having to give some thought to is tracking the time a status is in effect. For many combats, I know that they are going to be over before I have to worry about it, so I don't bother tracking. But now that the party is moving into Tier 3 play and encountering higher powered magic users and beasts, I could very likely have the same condition imposed on multiple participants but starting and ending on different time. I could use different shades of the same color to differentiate; e.g. first participant/group that is poisoned use dark green. Next time, use medium green.  I could use more numbered bases, but then I would have to have a lot more sets of numbered markers AND I don't like the idea of having two sets of numbers on the same miniature.  I've decided that I will just make a note on the paper where I'm tracking initiative and players can ask me when it will end—which may require a skill check, but more likely I'll just say something like "he's looking a little better now; he's stopped vomiting but still looks to be very uncomfortable" — based on how close the effect (in this case poison) is to wearing off. I could just leave it up to the players, but I'm inclined to go with Oofta's approach and prepare a chart. Partly because I had only played 1e before I started playing again after a very long hiatus and I love me some charts. But I'm also a fan of quick, efficient processes. If I have to rethink what the markers mean for each group of players I play with, I be needing to make multiple references. But if I just stick to one, I'll quickly have that memorized. That said, the player do ultimately end up choosing many of these things. If I'm playing with a group that has a strong preference one way or another I'll go with the flow. This isn't the place to pull rank on the players. I don't, however, see it being something that the players will have strong opinions about.</blockquote>

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