When I started looking for a plot idea that would lend itself to 150 pages and just 30 days for a rough draft, I wanted something simple, but every idea I looked at, I couldn't come up with an ending. Just recently I realized that I was looking for endings without knowing what the central conflict of the story was supposed to be. I was, quite literally, trying to solve the "problem" of the story before I'd determined what that problem was.

And I find myself wondering… has years of playing roleplaying games, both in the player's and gamemaster's seats, crippled my ability to tell a story on my own? As a player, I've learned to create "starters"… ideas for characters and starting situations, without any strong pre-conceived notion of how the story should progress, let alone end. As a gamemaster, I've learned to set up situations and antagonists, and often have some idea of how things might end, but I've learned to be vague and unattached to any particular story path or outcome.

In short, I've learned to quite deliberately not tell the story on my own. I've learned to create story elements, but then refrain from turning those elements into a story until I sit down to engage with four other people who will bring their own elements, and then together the flesh out the story through our roleplaying interaction.

That's a weird thought that, when I've read so many books on writing fiction and screenplays in an attempt to improve my roleplaying, my roleplaying experience would get in the way of trying to write fiction.

Their web pages are a little disorganized and if you don't know what's available, it's easy to overlook important parts of their catalog.  Their catalog as grown organically, and newer items have somewhat overshadowed their core products.  So be sure to explore the site thoroughly.

Let's look at "Tokens and Markers" in the left-hand menu.

Now, the first thing that catches your eye may be the link to "4E Tokens". In my opinion, you can give these a pass… I think a different selection of shapes would work better, and to get enough tokens for all the effects and conditions is pretty expensive. And those tokens were developed before the "Custom 20" customizable selection, which will let you make your own custom set. So take a look at 'em, but don't give up on me yet if they aren't interesting… those aren't why we're here.

Here's what I'm using, and a bit of what's on my wish-list for the next time I order.

"Mini Skulls". They're about half-an-inch tall and a set of fifteen is just five bucks, which makes them a good value for the number of markers. (Note that these are MINI-skulls… Litko makes larger skulls that are about an inch tall, but they're slightly more expensive.)

I use red mini-skulls for "bloodied" markers, and fluorescent green mini-skulls for "poison" or other on-going damage.

I have found that the important thing with the on-going damage isn't to indicate the exact type of damage, but to create a visual reminder that, "Hey, this guy has some kind of on-going damage." So I just need one color for that. If that's not flexible enough for you, you can get skulls in white, black, and translucent gray as well.

I like these better than the "Acid Splatter" and "Blood Splatter" shown here (and standard "Skull" tokens)… they're smaller, so they don't cover the entire character token (a good thing), and they're quite a bit cheaper.

After that, I picked up a set of "Blast Area Effect" tokens… they're more expensive because they're big, and I didn't really need ten of them, but who doesn't love a big, spiky amber token? These get used for the wizard's Flaming Sphere, and generally to indicate single-square zones of denial like Cloud of Daggers. I've sometimes used them to indicate other statuses, like "this monster is the one your daily power grants a bonus against until the end of the encounter". They're cool, but I'd rather they had been available in a set like the "Area Effect Token Set"… maybe with the "Shock Effect" and… "Energy" and "Acid Splatter" tokens? I'll have to suggest a set like that.

If you look around a bit, you'll find what they call Markers… 3-D markers made by inserting a stand-up bit into a slot in a base token. It was difficult decision between the "Blast Area" tokens and the "Mini Blast Markers". But what I did get was the "Mini Smoke Screen" set… they're just under three inches long and work fairly well for outlining Stinking Cloud and other sustained area-effects without displacing the character tokens much. (Unfortunately, if the zone is really crowded, placing them can be a tad difficult because the base is about 3/8" wide.) Five bucks for four of them, but I think they were worth it… they come out in just about every session.

Wander around a little more and you'll come across the "Nuke Blast Marker, Large". It's out of my price range, but if you'd like to send me one, I'll give you my mailing address. :)

Alright, by now you've probably noticed the links I've been putting off… they're the most interesting: custom tokens and markers, which will round out both my purchases and wish-list.

At the heart of Litko Aero are laser cutting machines. The sweetness of a laser is that there is no tooling cost… you just draw up a design in your CAD program, slap some acrylic (or plywood, or magnetic base material) onto the cutting bed, and push "Go". Bang, instant tokens.

This is where Litko Aero really shines… they've made the process of custom-ordering a large (and growing) variety of tokens automatic. No filling out a "request for quote" or anything like that. You just enter all your parameters, click "Sell me that stuff, laser-man!", and (someday; see expectation-setting below) your custom tokens show up on your doorstep. Sweet. Let me break 'em down for you.

When I ordered my (only, so far) custom set of tokens, the only thing available was Custom Tokens series 1… if "Custom 20" had been available, that's what I'd have gone with.

The basic Custom Tokens series 1 & series 2:

• 11 colors of acrylic; six transparent/translucent, five opaque
• 14 different shapes
• Up to 12 characters of text

Now that's pretty cool… except you have to choose one color, one shape, one text, and buy ten of them for $7. All well and good if you need ten of them… but I wanted a "Marked" token. I didn't want ten of them… I only needed about five, and I wanted each one in a different color. Alas, I bought ten "clear" and used a different color of crayon to highlight the text of each. (Yeah, I'll explain the crayons in a bit.) That works, but it doesn't work as well as I'd like… the colored text can be hard to tell apart from a distance. But if the player forgets, it's easy enough to pick up the token to see what color it is. (In retrospect, these would have been better in a light opaque color.)

I also bought ten amber hex-shaped tokens that say "Grants CA" planning to use them to indicate statuses that grant Combat Advantage. Surprisingly, I don't use them as often as I expected to. I probably use them for Prone characters the most.

Now hop on over to "Custom 20".

• 16 colors of acrylic; ten transparent/translucent, six opaque
• 15 different shapes
• Up to 12 characters of text

I don't know there are 16 colors here, but only 11 above. Even stranger, "MarkerMaker" offers 22 different colors. I half wonder if they simply haven't gotten around to updating their order forms to reflect a new selection of colors and shapes.

Anyway, this is probably where you want to be. Quite a bit more expensive per-token… $20 for a set of 20 tokens compared to ten tokens for $7. But you get to choose the color, shape and text of every individual token. You're not buying ten "Marked" tokens when you wanted only five, and you can get every one of them in a different color and even shape. So unless you actually want ten identical tokens, this is a sweet deal.

The newest in the custom lineup is the "MarkerMaker"… custom two-part stand-up markers

• 22 colors of acrylic; 12 transparent, 10 opaque
• 24 upper shapes (plus the 10 digits), 12 base shapes
• Up to 12 characters of text

These are kind of neat, but I'm not sure what I'd use them for considering the expense… $20 for 10 of them, but like "Custom 20", each one can be completely different from the others. You could do a stand-up Flaming Sphere and whatnot, and those are a little easier to move around the map, but for me, that's getting into extra expense for no added benefit.

What I'm missing:

• "Marked" markers in a true variety of colors.
• "Quarry" and "Cursed" markers for the ranger and warlock.
• "AC Bonus" and "To-Hit Bonus" markers for when one character buffs another.
• A few markers for the most common statuses… those that grant Combat Advantage would be a unique shape or color to set them apart.

Now, the more I've played, and having changed character lineups a couple times, I find that what tokens I need varies heavily based on the PC classes in play. If you don't have a warlock, you don't need a "Cursed" token. But if you do have a warlock, you might need five or more of them.

So I decided  that for specialized but not-always-needed functions, considering that I'm not made of money, the best bang for my buck was a couple more sets of generic tokens with no text on them, which I can redefine as needed.  In the game with the warlock, the "Mini Targeting Reticle" is a Curse token. If there's no warlock in the party, then I can use it to indicate stunned characters. Toss in the green Energy Tokens with the Blast Tokens I already have, and that gives me three generic tokens in my bag to use as needed by the moment.

Alright, last but not least… go to "Jim's Product Lab". Here you'll find experimental stuff that may or may not make it into the regular catalog. You never know what you're going to find in there, but new stuff shows up regularly.  Some of it's rather clever, some of it's "boy, that's interesting, but I'd never have a use for it."

Final notes:

About those crayons. Do listen to Litko when they say to rub over the text with a contrasting crayon. It's a pain in the butt to do on thirty tokens at once… rubbing off the excess crayon takes a lot of work. But you must do this… it makes an incredible difference in clarity, and you are not getting your full value if you don't.

Wooden bases. As I mentioned in an earlier installment, I glue all my cardstock tokens to Litko wooden bases. Being plywood, they're perfectly flat and all consistently sized. 100 25mm, 3mm thick laser-cut plywood "miniature bases"… $12. If you really want an exact inch, which isn't a stock item, $17. (Bug them to stock 1" rounds if you want them!)  I even bought some 50mm rounds for Large beasties.  And if you prefer square, they've got squares, too.

And finally, A mild warning of expectations: Don't get all excited about placing an order and getting these for the game coming up this weekend. Litko's work is great, but apparently they keep little in stock… both orders I have placed that contained only stock items took over two weeks to arrive. The order I placed with custom-cut tokens took over three. So don't get discouraged when they don't have service like Amazon.com… these are great products and worth the wait.

Next article, we'll tie it all together and show you how all of this looks on the map in play.

Much of Mike's advice works for me, I like the idea of keeping the initiative order in view… I might have to try the cards on the top of the screen. (I normally use a Paizo Combat Pad and I've experimented with a spreadsheet combat manager on my laptop.) Not so thrilled with the buddy system... if you're having that much trouble keeping their attention, I'm afraid that this would be a Band-Aid and not a cure for the real problem.

But the one thing I think it's going to work is having players pre-roll attacks and damage before their turn comes up. On one level, I have a player that I suspect would re-roll or declare that he used an at-will and not his daily if he thinks I wasn’t looking… he’s not my typical player, but he’s a friend and generally fun to play with, despite his competitive view of the game.

But on a more important level, a lot of the fun of such a tactical game is watching it unfold as it happens… the dice are what create the tension of combat, and pre-rolling the dice removes the tension out of the moment. It’s the difference between the whole group looking on, waiting to see if you’re going to hit the big bad at that critical moment (”A 20… 18 points of damage, eat cold steel, dragon!”) and phoning in your results… (”Yeah, wait until his turn’s over. I’m about to crit the dragon for 18 points of damage… it’ll be cool.”) By the time you declare your results, the energy has been drained out of it.

It’s almost like knowing if the batter is going to hit the ball before he steps up to the plate… if you already know the result, there’s no anticipation, no elation or let-down when he hits or misses.

What little roleplaying that happens during a combat comes from everyone paying attention and being in the moment… having players pre-roll is asking them to stop paying attention to what’s happening right now and think about what’s coming up. And that's the opposite of what we're trying to do here... get the players to be in the moment and pay attention to what's happening at the table right now.

My thoughts are, if you’re having this much trouble with players’ attention wandering, you probably have too many players at the table, or the DM is running with too many monsters (or, if you’re me, you’re taking too long to make up your mind about what to do).

My solution is to ban the iPhones and Blackberries if they’re causing trouble (if they can’t distract themselves, they might actually get interested in what other people are doing), cut down to a manageable number of players, cut all monster hit-points by 1/3rd so that the “it’s all over, but the fat lady still has 23 hit points” tail end of combat is minimized. Keep things moving fast and keep them interesting, so that the players find what’s going on at the table more interesting than texting their girlfriends or checking the latest sports scores.

The player’s side of the game is not so complex that he needs a computer to keep track of his character. I’d rather players use pencil and paper, and avoid the distraction of a computer interface just to keep track of hit points and the minimal resources of 4E. As a DM, I’m reluctant to use a computer on my end… the interface itself can become distracting, when it takes longer to find the right tab/window and position in my document to make a note than it does to scribble something down on my notepad. I’ve experimented a bit, but I haven’t found/developed the solution that doesn’t “take me away from the table” when I interact with it.

A Dragonborn warrior, Goblin Cutter & Ghoul

A quick summary of why I like Fiery Dragon tokens specifically:

• There is a huge variety, over 3000 tokens available.
• The art has a consistent style. All the tokens are drawn by one artist.
• They're very affordable. All the tokens up through the end of 2008 are available in a single collection for under $40.
• There is a unique token for every variation in the Monster Manual, and Monster Manual 2 tokens are in production.

In a wonderful bit of timing, FD has just posted an article detailing the history of their tokens/counters, and pointing out that Claudio Pozas has drawn over 3000 counters for them over the last nine years.

That right there has a lot to do with why I like FD tokens… the art across the entire collection is very consistent.

Some folks don't like Pozas's style, saying it's too "cartoony". And it is a little cartoony, but I think that's a feature… the art makes it easy to identify tokens from across the table, even when there are eight different kinds of kobolds on the map. The clear, uncluttered style is perfect for me. No background, no dark, detailed art that looks like a brown smudge from more than two feet away.

Fiery Dragon sells every darned token Pozas has drawn (up to its publication date) in an archive pack. Counter Collection Digital v3.0 is the current one, released December 2008, with over 3000 unique counter images, for under $40. (Note that this collection predates some of the 4E packs.)

Now here's the thing as a 4E Dungeon Master… FD's 4th Edition packs, broken up by tier and book, provide a unique token for every variation on every monster.

This is very cool. No trying to decide how to represent the six different kinds of kobolds in this encounter… they're all there, and Pozas has given some attention to the monster descriptions, because they all (as far as I've seen) carry the right weapons and so on.

I don't think I can stress enough how great this is. When I put together an encounter for my 4E game, I don't have to hunt for art, and I don't have to accept something that looks "close enough". It's a real time-saver.

When I started putting together the encounters for The Keep on the Shadowfell, the free Castle of Shadows token set contained a different token for each variety of kobold, goblin, etc. Every single type of monster I put on the table had its own unique token. Even the unique characters (Balgron the Fat, Kalarel, etc) had their own tokens. That was something I'd never enjoyed with metal minis, or even with cardboard stand-ups. Because the art is simple and relatively inexpensive, they can afford to create tons of unique tokens, and I can afford to buy them.

Turning cardstock into usable tokens

Now, a few technical details. The FD tokens as-designed are square… FD calls square a "counter" and "round" a token. I prefer round… no dinking with aligning the token to the grid (or when gluing to a wooden base), the round tokens fit in a pill bottle, and I can punch them out with a 1" craft punch, which makes it go very quickly.

This is easy to deal with. The FD tokens come in two versions, a regular PDF and a collection of individual image files. I use the individual images and an Inkscape template to arrange customized sheets of tokens. (FD provides a set of blank PDFs that let you select the counters you want to print, but my Inkscape template fits my needs for round tokens better.)

Square counters or round tokens, the nice thing about this method is you can make up a sheet of exactly the images you need… no printing a sheet full of tokens twice to get one more skeleton off of it. This is what makes the digital tokens shine… just lay out the exact tokens you need for the upcoming game on one sheet.

Concerning round versus square, I'll agree with Fiery Dragon here… if you don't have a 1" craft punch, you're going to want to go with squares. You'll go cross-eyed trying to cut out a page full of round tokens with scissors. Twelve bucks or so will get you a nice one, and it's totally worth it.

As I said in Part 1, I knew that the cardstock punch-outs would have to be glued to something. Some folks online were using flat washers, which meshed well with Alea Tools stackable magnetic status markers, but even if I found washers the right size at a reasonable price, they're too heavy to lug around very many of them. (And the Alea markers, while nifty, are just too danged expensive for my wallet.) Some folks were using wooden "craft" discs, which were cool, but oddly hard to come by at a reasonable cost and quality. Then I discovered Litko Aero… they do laser-cut acrylic game tokens and wooden mini bases. (Litko gets its own praise in Part 3.) The wooden bases are high-quality thin plywood (no warped ones like with the craft discs), and cheaper than the above solutions, but sadly the 25mm round bases are a "stock" item and 1" round are custom-order… so the 25mm are cheaper. But 25mm is a lot smaller than 1" than you think. I've never broken down and bought the 1" discs, and I've not found a 25mm punch. So my tokens have a slight cardstock "lip"… this is actually handy, as it makes them very easy to pick up.

I punch out all my tokens ahead of time, and then use a Q-Tip to apply a very thin layer of PVA ("white") glue to the disc and apply the cardstock token. The glue stays wet enough to slide the cardstock around a bit to position it, but if you keep it thin enough it won't soak through the cardstock. (You could use paper, but it's harder to work with.)

I'll talk about using and storing the tokens in Part 4, where I'll show you how all these pieces come together in my game.

When 4E came around and I somehow found myself running D&D again for the first time since about 1986, and I needed monsters to put on the map, and with a budget of zero, I figured I'd make do with the stand-ups I already had.  I'd heard other gamers rave about tokens, mostly made from Magic cards (bleh), but I really didn't think I'd like them.  Then Fiery Dragon published a free token set specifically aimed at The Keep on the Shadowfell, and I decided to give them a try because there was a unique token for every monster and variant in the adventure.

Knowing that cardstock counters wouldn't fly (or, specifically, that they would fly right off the table), I glued them to wooden discs and off we went.

Now I'm a Token Convert. I'm about to become a Token Evangelist.

Why I like monster tokens in general:

• Variety: If I don't have a monster I want (unlikely with the Fiery Dragon tokens), I can make a token out of just about any art.
• Portability: They're durable, and store easily. I use a pill bottle to hold all of the tokens I need for a single encounter. I can store hundreds of tokens in one little box.
• Cost: The tokens are so cheap that I can print a bajillion of them.  A one-shot monster token can have new artwork glued over the old.  I've considered double-siding them, but the official D&D cardboard tokens taught me how annoying that can be.
• Clarity: The tokens on the map are clearer than minis or stand-ups.  A little circle on the token gives me a clear place to write a number or initial to track my hordes of minions.  I can place status markers directly on top of the tokens as a clear indicator.

Now if I can just get the players to use tokens instead of minis for their characters.

Next post, why Fiery Dragon tokens are a huge factor in making tokens work, and then why Litko Aero brings an essential dash of spice.