This isnt strictly deckbuilding, but I wanted to share it with you guys and there was no other place in the forum that seemed appropriate.

I was having a casual match last night, and my opponent had some very clever ways of handling the sheer number of trinkets needed to play L5R.

His Fate was represented by miniature pink poker chips, which stack neatly on top of each other. For honor statuses he used Othello chips: white side honored, black side dishonored - nice and simple.

My favorite was how he tracked honor. He gave us each a 24 sided D&D dice. Since 25 honor wins the game and 0 honor loses, 24 numbers is all you need. We simply rotated to show our current honor pool.

There was just so much less CLUTTER! What do you guys think?

Sounds reasonable to me, at least for casual play. Remember that FFG doesn't allow dice to be used to track things in competitive play.

Why not? (What I men is: Is there some cheat that can be done with dice? Or is it just company policy: you use the ingame products for offical events.)

1 hour ago, Green Raven said:

Why not? (What I men is: Is there some cheat that can be done with dice? Or is it just company policy: you use the ingame products for offical events.)

I'm sure one of the main concerns is how easy a dice can be "accidentally" knocked over and an honor total played with if you "can't" remember what your current honor was put it back to the right number.

It could be a Scorpion card: "Brush your sleeve gently against your honor dice."

Ah well, I see your point.

What about the Othello pieces are those tournament legal? And the Poker chips were a LOT easier to handle than FFG's cardboard fate counters...

1 hour ago, Green Raven said:

What about the Othello pieces are those tournament legal? And the Poker chips were a LOT easier to handle than FFG's cardboard fate counters...

Those should be perfectly acceptable. They're still essentially tokens, they're easy to read. As long as the Othello pieces aren't easy to accidentally flip, they should be fine.

2 hours ago, Green Raven said:

It could be a Scorpion card: "Brush your sleeve gently against your honor dice."

Ah well, I see your point.

What about the Othello pieces are those tournament legal? And the Poker chips were a LOT easier to handle than FFG's cardboard fate counters...

The tournament rules actually do explicitly state that alternate tokens are allowed. Dice fall into the not resistant to accidental modification clause which is why they aren't usable, but alternate honor, fate and honored/dishonored tokens should be fine.

"Tokens
Tokens are representations of information about the game or game state. The presence of tokens is marked by one or more indicators. Indicators may also be used to represent multiple tokens, or other open or derived information.
Typically, players use the cardboard tokens included in official product as indicators. However, players may choose to use other items as indicators, so long as they do not obscure significant component information, are resistant to accidental modification, and their purpose of use is clear to both players. The marshal is responsible for determining the legality of an indicator and its reasonable use during a match if objected to by its owner’s opponent. Page 8

Legal Products
Players may use only official Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game components in tournament play, with the following exceptions for third-party replacements:
• Tokens that do not obscure card information
Determining the legality of any questionable third-party tokens is the marshal’s responsibility. Proxies of cards are not allowed unless used under the rules of “Lost and Damaged Cards” on page 7. "

Huh. Thanks guys

I don't know, I like the feeling of exchanging tokens, and the honor/dishonor tokens fit ok at the top of a sleeve.

Tokens are good because information can be obtained at a quick glance. From the other side of the table, it's easier to see you have 3 piles of 2 honor tokens than have to check the number on a dice. Plus I may have to ask you what's your honor total and give you insight that I'm considering something against your honor... Each player moving a dice doesn't have the same feel as exchanging tokens.

White and black token or beads are commonly used for honor/dishonored, there also lots of custom ones that goes on tourney or streams.

People are actually using a lot of custom markers in this game, but it's more for the bling than for practicality, because FFG ones are in the end really not bad and do the job.

Dice are good though, if they aren't small and are easy to read to mark a character increased skill or a skill totals during conflict.

What matters the most is how it conveys information during a game, and FFG ones are good because everyone knows them. But then of course, if your playgroup use nutshells or sakura petals for a game currency and every one knows it, it's totally fine too.

In my group a friend of mine uses 2d10s to keep track of honor. They are in a 3d printed pedestal thing, so they cant be accidentally bumped or something. You have to lift them up, turn them, and put tjem back down. In my case, i made a custom playmat with a number track on top to keep count of conflict total (i use an honor token for this), and a numbered grid on the right side to keep track of honor (I use anothe rhonor token for this). I carry a third honor token for public forum. I dont use that province anymore but the token is there just in case. No one has ever had problems with my friends and my approach to this

Mines the mat to the left