Which did you use?

We used counters. I remember cutting the illustration board with a dull x-acto blade and inking them with my clogged rapidograph.

Once Steve Jackson's Cardboard Heroes came out, I never looked back.
Their swords and sorcery set was great too. We used it for Stormbringer.

I've used all of the above, depending on what we had available at the time.

For many other games I've just used descriptions, or perhaps little marks on graph paper.

But for V&V, I've always used the markers (since the early modules provided them).  I've liked them so much that I've made hundreds (thousands?) of my own, and now we often use similar markers for other games.

The simple way to make markers for other games came about because of V&V.  My wife picked up a die cutter (I think that's what they're called) at a craft store.  It essentially cuts a 1" x 1" square out of paper or cardboard.

So now it's a simple matter for me to use a picture off the net (which I can quickly turn into a 1" x 1" marker with Microsoft Word), or to grab a playing card and use that tool to cut one out (I've got hundreds of thousands of CCG cards) and I've got a nearly instant marker for any game.  We've used markers like this for Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and other games (plan to for Star Trek very soon, too).

Doctor Foom wrote on Jun 13^th, 2009 at 2:58pm:



I'll take a look when I get home (for a manufacturer name).

It's a small, pink (I know - strange, huh?) gadget that isn't very big - perhaps twice as big as a bottle of white-out.  It technically doesn't make 1" x 1" squares; I think it's actually 1" x 15/16" (but it's so close that you can hardly tell).

Thanks a million!

Before we converted to Steve Jackson Cardboard Heroes, I also drew 1" counters for every game, in almost every genre.
Had a big ziploc bag full of 'em.