Howabout Dry Erase Counters?

[Patrick]

Since the counters are getting bigger and there's relatively little to keep track of when dealing with "cardboard" foes, coated counters might be a cool way to keep track of combat dry erase or grease pencil. Or perhaps a set of plastic counter jackets to write on.

[guymc]

I've been looking at the status marker discussion, too, and it overlaps with something else I'm doing. Would there be any interest or benefit to an off-board status indicator, say on individual character "dashboards"? Or is taking the indicator off-board too distant?

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Originally Posted by Patrick

Since the counters are getting bigger and there's relatively little to keep track of when dealing with "cardboard" foes, coated counters might be a cool way to keep track of combat dry erase or grease pencil. Or perhaps a set of plastic counter jackets to write on.

This is a really excellent idea! Being able to mark damage directly on the counters would speed up play considerably. As a GM you don't have to keep answering questions about who was hurt or not. No need to mark wounds on a separate piece of paper and look at it all the time. Less chance of error since the players can point out if you mix two enemies together or give the damage to the wrong one, etc.

And you could also add things like symbols for weapons or their apparent armor values and maybe just key words like "Ugly", "Big'un", "Old", "Smiley" to differentiate them from each other and make it easier for the players to remember which one they were fighting.

Printing the icons on plastic shouldn't be a big extra cost? But I would be willing to pay extra for it.

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Originally Posted by guymc

I've been looking at the status marker discussion, too, and it overlaps with something else I'm doing. Would there be any interest or benefit to an off-board status indicator, say on individual character "dashboards"? Or is taking the indicator off-board too distant?

I prefer it directly on the counters, since it is always hard to read something upside down on the other side of the table. But maybe an initiative list for player character DX scores and such could be valuable. Maybe status effects count down list of some sort might see some use as well.

[Rick_Smith]

Originally Posted by guymc

I've been looking at the status marker discussion, too, and it overlaps with something else I'm doing. Would there be any interest or benefit to an off-board status indicator, say on individual character "dashboards"? Or is taking the indicator off-board too distant?

Hi Guy, everyone.
I've been playing TFT for years, and I find I don't need a lot of counters or markers for keeping track of status. Generally we are fine remembering that person X is at permanent negatives, person Y has -2 DX from being stunned earlier, etc.

We flip counters for Dead / Unconscious, and remember who are prone.

Where I do use counters are:
-- Poison dice to count down how long you have to treat poison. (Important, and 5 turns is too easy to mess up.) Very few poisons in my campaign are instant, most give you a bit of time to counteract or mitigate them.

-- Dice to show how many hits NPC's have in huge fights.

-- Dropped weapons. (Hey, I have a bag of them, why not use them?)

IMHO, I do not think we need a counter to mark every single status change.

Warm regards, Rick.

[JLV]

I'm not entirely sure that a "dashboard" concept is a good idea with a game this simple, however, since my only experience with such things was with games like SPI's Air War (an incredibly complex game), my opinion may well be worthless in this regard.

So...I'll reserve judgment until I see an actual screenshot or mock-up of what we're talking about here...

[Groknard]

Although I don't necessarily see the need or expense for the counters themselves to be dry erase, it would be QUITE nice to have some punchable 1-hex square and 2-hex rectangles in the megahex sheets. I imagine that there will be some leftover "white space" on those. It might be the perfect opportunity to have some counter-sized blanks in there that you could use however you wish. Want a status counter (like "prone")? Draw a P on it. Need a 2-hex table that could be tipped or moved? Draw it on a blank.

I'm sure in many cases you could simply draw on a megahex itself. But for the big Dyson boards or the Melee/Wizard boards, you don't want to do that. So using the spare area of megahex sheets would be a nice, cost effective touch. In fact, even if SJG doesn't, I'll probably use the leftover from the megahexes and do it myself.

[JLV]

That's a really good idea. I don't know how practical it is in economic terms, but if it IS something SJG could do, I, for one, would greatly appreciate it! They could locate them on the existing Megahex sheets and use up a bit of that empty space that way...

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by guymc

I've been looking at the status marker discussion, too, and it overlaps with something else I'm doing. Would there be any interest or benefit to an off-board status indicator, say on individual character "dashboards"? Or is taking the indicator off-board too distant?

Hi Guy - I think JLV is correct; we are really going to need to see some sort of proto-type to get an accurate idea of what you have in mind, before we can offer you any truly accurate feedback. So, I'll stand-by with JLV and reserve from *chiming-in* prematurely at this point-in-time.

JK

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

Hi Guy, everyone.
I've been playing TFT for years,

Yes, YOU have, but p[art of this is to help get NEW players involved and that also means NEW GMs. Not everyone has all the rules memorized, or mismemorized in some cases, and having useful tokens or markers for NEW players is useful.