Life Counters - Handy Tool
from UDE's Player Management Forums
So a quick word of introduction: I am absolutely terrible at finding the side I want on a die. The prevailing method of tracking damage in my local area is using dice of various sizes, turned so that the amount of current damage faces up.
Due to the aforementioned being terrible at doing it in a hurry, this sort of thing frustrates me to no end, particularly when a series of small packets are taken ("Take 2... and 2... and 1... and 3... and 2!").
So hey, I thought, why not do something about it?
I printed up one of these. It works easily enough- I got some green glass fishtank gems (a decent-sized tub of which costs roughly $2) which I use for tracking damage on allies, adding counters to cards, tokens which I don't have cards for, etc. I also use one gem on the card to track the tens column of damage, and one gem to track the ones column. It makes it a snap to take or heal damage, and it lets me see at a glance what sort of damage my hero has taken (or raid boss, when I run raids).
To improve sturdiness, I cut it out at just below card size and put it in a sleeve on top of a card. The black border on the counter blends in nicely with the black border on the card; the sleeve and card make it sturdy and stand up to abuse a lot better than just a slip of paper.
Well, it seemed to go over well with the local players, so I had the following series of thoughts:
1: I have a couple hundred gems and never really need more than a couple dozen; it takes two to track damage with this card.
2: I'm the local Specialist, and have a variety of leftover sleeves from making a few decks for demo games.
3: Nothing solidifies memory like free stuff (trite, but still a mainstay of human nature).
I made a sheet of cards, printed it out, did some cutting and sleeving with cards I did not need. The gem+card lifecounters, of which I now have quite a few, are now in reasonably wide use in the local scene, and make for an excellent freebie after demo sessions.
Finally, the reason this post is in the judge section rather than the Specialist section is that Judges may find it handy (like myself) to print out a number of these cards to add to their judging kit, to make things simple if players show up with no way to track life easily in a tournament.
Cheers,
Corradin
http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/COMMUNITY/forums/thread/1787111.aspx
from UDE's Player Management Forums
So a quick word of introduction: I am absolutely terrible at finding the side I want on a die. The prevailing method of tracking damage in my local area is using dice of various sizes, turned so that the amount of current damage faces up.
Due to the aforementioned being terrible at doing it in a hurry, this sort of thing frustrates me to no end, particularly when a series of small packets are taken ("Take 2... and 2... and 1... and 3... and 2!").
So hey, I thought, why not do something about it?
I printed up one of these. It works easily enough- I got some green glass fishtank gems (a decent-sized tub of which costs roughly $2) which I use for tracking damage on allies, adding counters to cards, tokens which I don't have cards for, etc. I also use one gem on the card to track the tens column of damage, and one gem to track the ones column. It makes it a snap to take or heal damage, and it lets me see at a glance what sort of damage my hero has taken (or raid boss, when I run raids).
To improve sturdiness, I cut it out at just below card size and put it in a sleeve on top of a card. The black border on the counter blends in nicely with the black border on the card; the sleeve and card make it sturdy and stand up to abuse a lot better than just a slip of paper.
Well, it seemed to go over well with the local players, so I had the following series of thoughts:
1: I have a couple hundred gems and never really need more than a couple dozen; it takes two to track damage with this card.
2: I'm the local Specialist, and have a variety of leftover sleeves from making a few decks for demo games.
3: Nothing solidifies memory like free stuff (trite, but still a mainstay of human nature).
I made a sheet of cards, printed it out, did some cutting and sleeving with cards I did not need. The gem+card lifecounters, of which I now have quite a few, are now in reasonably wide use in the local scene, and make for an excellent freebie after demo sessions.
Finally, the reason this post is in the judge section rather than the Specialist section is that Judges may find it handy (like myself) to print out a number of these cards to add to their judging kit, to make things simple if players show up with no way to track life easily in a tournament.
Cheers,
Corradin
http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/COMMUNITY/forums/thread/1787111.aspx