Friends,

I didn't see a post on this elsewhere, so I thought I'd start one.

FIRST: I'm a fan of the components, but I don't utilize them all as much as I would like. The following is how I use components in my game:

Always Use (see regular use in every game)

Action cards, Career Sheets, Career Ability Cards, Wound/Insanity Cards, Talent Cards, Party Sheets, Activation Tokens, Fatigue/Stress tokens, Corruption Tokens

Sometimes Use (I've used these once or twice, but they don't seem to get regular play)

Location Cards - I've brought these out at times to represent key locations - but I guess my style of play is too "sandbox"ish, and I only occasionally think to use them. These are, perhaps, set up for a more linear (or slightly off-linear) play-style?

Line/Ladder/etc. Trackers (puzzle pieces) - This is one component I try to put into my games, as I feel it should be useful. However, my personal style has always been "shoot from the hip", so even when I set-up a tracker and convince myself to abide by it - I break my rules at one point or another. Also, setting up a ruleset for a tracker is somewhat time consuming, as you have to work through all the if/then/else cases. Most likely, I am complicating things.

GM Screen - More often than not I end up putting this thing down to look over my table. I know I'm not the only one to have all the information on the screen memorized while still having to look up details like first aid checks and monster stats.

Condition Cards - I sit them on the table at every game, but I have to have quite a bit of fore-thought to use them. Perhaps if I studied them more I could say to myself, "you know, what has just happened should grant the Inspired condition...". I'd love to use these more.

Item Cards - These are a struggle to use, unless I already have one or two in mind for the session. Actually, last session I managed to use both the "Locked Chest" and "Warpstone Nugget" in one session, and the players seemed to enjoy the visualization.

Never use (I don't really know how to fit this stuff in)

Stance Rings: I just can't understand why the cardboard was wasted on this. Might be useful to visualize an "aura" effect? Sell me on these guys please.

Never use, but most likely will use in the future

Spell cards (no wizards right now!), Nemesis Tracking Sheets (maybe), Mutation Cards (no humans in the game currently!), Adventure Handouts

What does your component usage look like?

Hey G! Interesting post, lets take a look at it.

gsoul said:

We don't use fatigue/stress tokens as we find them to be easy to track, but can get a bit confusing (handing to DM, taking from DM etc. I suppose if I brought a small tupperware 'bowl' for them to put on the table it might do the trick). Usually we just use a red/blue die on the character sheet and increment it as necessary. Aside from that - I'm with you.

gsoul said:

There's a great post in the gamemaster forum: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=165&efcid=3&efidt=395673

Location cars are useful for a couple reasons.

1: They give you ideas on mechanics. If you need to know how to pull a cart, change the battlefield etc - its a great set of rules you can 'skin' to make whatever you need (the OP has a great example of using a 'burning building' to simulate drowning).

2: Often we set up 'locations' on a battlefield that have optional rules. For example we'll set down a merchant wagon we're on, the 'Old Road' for rules of the general battlefield, and some 'Ruins' nearby the bad guys are firing from. Then as you enter the locations the battlefield rules change. Overall its a great way to just put down a few small 'close' circles with different rulesets that mix up the general combat. You can use it to your advantage, or it can serve as a warning. Overall it mixes up combat and makes the battlefield exciting. Alternately it also really sets the scene socially (whether its an Inn or a throne room).

3: Once you get used to it, you can make your own on index cards. This really can get the players into the mindset, and provide flexible rulesets to set the scene, and give them new 'strategies' to incorporate and handle. Keeps things fresh and interesting.

Overall I give them 'thumbs up' and highly reccomend them. I say these go into the 'every game' pile.

gsoul said:

These are best done for 3 things.

1: Short encounter setups. If you are chasing someone, if you have to convince someone, etc. Its a good way to show the PCs vs Enemy sort of position on the tracker. If the PCs do something clever or go 'off script' you can always build a second path out of it (yes you can build up/sideways as well as straight). Or just grant/take away extra successes. Often we change tracker rules on the fly. This is also good for moralle of enemies, and other things you just need to keep in mind while fiddling with tokens and dice - which is just a simple way to track.

2. Timing. If you have 'bandits crash the party 3 tokens in, city guard comes in 4 stages later' you can use it to simply track the passage of time, and give cued events positions.

3. BIG PLOT MOVEMENT. So if a chaos storm is coming, every time the PCs roll a chaos star, the tracker can advance. These can be long trackers that take multiple sessions to complete. Its again a shorthand way of keeping track of things. You could do hashes on an index card, but its sometimes fun to put the tracker down and just not tell the players what it is.

Its just a question of keeping it in mind, and practicing using it. After a while it becomes second nature, and you start thinking of cool ways to do it.

gsoul said:

Our GM uses a little side table stand (think like TV table for TV dinners or something) and keeps her dice, ACE pools and such on it leaving the big table for us and the scene. The screen is on the little table and seems to work well. Also as a suggestion, photocopy the 2 monster pages. Its alot easier to put counters on flat paper, and it keeps the monster stats right there for you.

gsoul said:

I am guilty of this as well I really wish the conditions were listed on the GM screen. I may end up making a paper sheet of them and just paperclipping it on.

gsoul said:

Guilty of this as well.

gsoul said:

So overall I thought these were useless too. These days we just use Minis to represent us and the bad guys, but when I'm demo-ing I'll just bring my box and not mini's so much. That's where these guys can really come into play. So say you're doing a group of henchmen or just a squad of a weaker monster type. I find that if you use the cutout on the stand, the stand fits in the ring, which gives you a small platform to put 'number of baddies' tokens on. In that regard, they provide a stable platform for placement and fiddling and that is the only thing I've found them useful for. I don't think they 'waste' slots for them so much as they provide a convenient way to put 'activation tokens' on the cardboard cutouts. They have some 'spare' cardboard room so they use it. Overall I agree, I don't use this much.

gsoul said:

Aww man these are some awesome things. With so many human centric careers I'm surprised you ended up with no humans. But alot of these can be very fun. Also PCs love handouts. I've made little arches that were broken down and had to be re-assembled (I cut up an arch picture and had them put it together). Clinked some fake coins together (bus tokens) in a pouch to incentivize them. Etc. PCs dig 'bits' and whatever is hands on can usually get a great response. Good luck getting a few of these going.

gsoul said:

Just wanted to add - I didn't use tracking tokens for a while. Overall I found glass beads or pennies faster/easier to handle. But since picking up a few spare sets I have a) enough tokens, b) enough DIFFERENT tokens that aren't mistaken or flipped into one another - that I've actually started using them more. This way we can clearly see that the green GM looking ones are paths/distance. The tzeenchy looking ones are bad guy counters. And the little colored skull basic ones are used for tracking cards, recharge, etc. Helps alot.