Re: Glass beads as AP?

From: Michael Schwartz <mschwartz_at_...>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 14:22:31 -0400

I use small poker chips, as they take up less space in front of each player, in a variety of colors and do indeed indicate negative AP values using black and blue chips when possible. I have far more black chips than other colors at the moment, however, due to all the copies of Steve Jackson Games' DELUXE ILLUMINATI I have laying about, so they oft serve as 1 AP tokens when a larger number of players are involved in a contest.

The custom will definitely travel with me when I attend both Origins and GenCon this summer (get the dates, times, event numbers and descriptions for all six of my HEROQUEST events at
http://www.glorantha.com/tribes/events.html), and I will be adding what I call a "bid box". This is a nice, felt-lined wooden box of dimensions sufficient to hold a ream of 8.5-by-11" paper, into which players pitch the tokens representing their current AP bids.

My intent with the "bid box" is to provide the players with more visual and psychomotor cues to the ebb and flow of extended contests. Players whose heroes are victorious scoop up their tokens from the bid box, possibly with a matching number of additional tokens or more. A very tangible glimmer of strategy appears in players' eyes, when they have actual, physical items to manage which represent their heroes' current physical, mental, magical, and psychological resources. The act of gathering AP tokens from the box or watching them disappear behind the literal or figurative "narrator's screen" can evoke much greater emotional and intellectual engagement with the contest.

In short, it gives players a real sense of putting their heroes "out there" on the line.

--
Michael Richard Schwartz | Language is my playground,
mschwartz_at_... | and words, its slides and
Ann Arbor, Michigan  USA | swingsets. -- yours truly