Tokens, pogs, markers, oh my!

[Nytmare]

I use tokens instead of minis, so I'm dealing with flat spaces. On top of that, each of my players has their own color that we use to keep track of what stuff is theirs. Their dice, their pencil, their character cards, the cup they're drinking out of, are all the same color.

I've got red glass beads to mark things as bloodied, and each player has a half dozen or so Alea tool markers in their color that they use for whatever they need to mark on the board. Marks, quarry, spell effects, whatever they feel like they need to pay attention to.

To keep track of effects, I wrote a combat tracking program and just type in or erase things as the fight goes on.

I've never really seen the need to keep track of every single effect on the board, just the ones that are going to influence people's strategic decisions. Rooting through the bin of marks, and cross checking them against a color chart to figure out which shade of blue means what seems like more of a time waster to me than anything else.

As for the problems associated with magnets attracting or repelling each other on the game board, it's only a problem with the old Alea Tools. The newer ones (Neotools I think?) don't have that problem. What I did to fix it with my old Alea Tools was to throw a sheet of galvanized steel under the game mat.

 

[supersaiyandoyle]

I scanned the dungeon maps from the back of my dungeon books and made a battlemaps from them. I use pennies with tape and letters on the tape as markers, and personally keep track of all the status effects for the enemies and pcs.

 

[Obryn]

I use alea tools for most effects, but rings for bloodied conditions.

However, I plan to move to more soda rings. I just love them, and I'm collecting quite a few.

-O

 

[dvvega]

For my monsters and NPCs I use beer bottle caps. You can buy them unused in bags of 200 around here for like $1-$3.

I then painted their tops in groups and numbered/lettered them so I could use them for monsters and track them. They are slightly bigger than a 1" square but it doesn't make a great issue.

You can number/letter them directly without paint of course. They also come in handy when a player brings minis and we stand them on the bottle tops so it is easier for me to track who is who.

As for statuses etc, I have a little spreadsheet system I developed that lets me keep track of that.

D

 

[TirionAnthion]

tokens

My solution to the token/marker problem is probably fairly unique and has a tie to D&D. I use the elevation markers from the old Dragonlance boardgame. The game used small quarter inch thick round counters. The counters had grooves and ridges so that you could stack them one on top of the other and they would lock together. They are the same diameter as a medium sized D&D plastic mini.

I painted the sides of them various colors to represent marks, quarries, curses and bloodied. I also numbered several of them. That way when I have multiples of the same monster I put the numbered counters under them so my players can easily identify which monster they are attacking.

When I fight winds down it kind of looks funny. You will have the boss monster towering over the PCs. He is bloodied, marked, cursed and quarried which makes him stand an extra inch taller.

I also stack the plain white counters under flying creatures to represent elevation, with 4 markers equivalent to 5ft.

The game game with dozens of the counters so I never run out.

Anyway, that is what my group uses. I thought some people might get a kick out of it.

 

[Joshua Randall]

each of my players has their own color that we use to keep track of what stuff is theirs. Their dice, their pencil, their character cards, the cup they're drinking out of, are all the same color.

I was about to make fun of you, but then I realized I unconsciously do the same thing.

Person A always gets the green cup, Person B always gets the blue cup, etc.

I haven't gone so far as to make Person A use green dice and a green pencil, though. I don't know if that's brilliant or scary.

I've never really seen the need to keep track of every single effect on the board, just the ones that are going to influence people's strategic decisions.

Er, by definition, don't all conditions / effects influcence strategic decision making?

 

[Storminator]

We have a number of pipe cleaners cut into small pieces and twisted into loops. Plays pretty much exactly like the soda rings. Those are for marks, quarry, etc. If you get a condition slapped on you we hand you a card with the relevant rules. When you use it up you hand it back. I'm thinking about making something a little smaller, but I already have a ton of condition cards.

PS

 

[Alisair Longreach]

I use plastic markers from Litko Aerosystems in my 4E campaign.

 

[TerraDave]

Did the post-it thing, and it worked until it didn't.

Right now doing initiative cards with status written on it, tracked by a player.

But I have been thinking about a visual marker, as discussed above.

 

[Nytmare]

I was about to make fun of you, but then I realized I unconsciously do the same thing.

It's not nazi control freakiness, it's just something we adopted from pretty much any other game and it sorta spiraled into a "thing". Everyone started with a color for their piece. Then I noticed that I just happened to have a bunch of old paper folders that were the same color that I could stick their character sheets into. I had a bag of mechanical pencils that just happened to line up with the color scheme. People sometimes forget their dice so I pulled out a set for each of them that could live in the little cubby hole they had at the game table. It was a natural progression.

Now when they sit down, they know what belongs to who and it's easy to sort things out (especially since we use character cards now instead of sheets).

Er, by definition, don't all conditions / effects influcence strategic decision making?

Conditions and effects CAN influence other players' decisions, and if there is a chance that it might, we can mark it. But we rarely (so far for us, "never") need a visual cue as to who or what is taking ongoing damage. If the BBEG is dazed, it's 1 piece of information that trumps pretty much every other strategic choice people might make. "You walk into the room, and these 3 guys are surprised." doesn't really necessitate the 30 or 40 seconds you'd spend looking for the "surprised" tokens and placing them under the three miniatures.

My take on using tokens and markers is that they're there to make things easier and less confusing. Keeping track of a rainbow assortment of 50 different pieces stacked up behind a DM screen and strewn across a battlemat isn't making anything easier, or less confusing.