So I'm preparing for some Mortal Coil goodness.  I dropped on by the store and picked up a pack of poker chips (50 red, 100 white, and 50 blue... something like that.)

Two questions:

1. Is that enough, chip-wise, for say a high-magic game with three players, plus GM?
2. There are FOUR things I need to track with tokens on each sheet.  Any suggestions about where to find a fourth color of poker chip, or some other kind of token to use?

With three players + GM I found that 100 tokens was only just enough for a low magic game. The most you get of one colour is fifty and the other two only have twenty five. You need another pack. You'll need 20 magic tokens for each player plus 32 for the GM, that's 92 just for that. You'll need around 6 or 7 action tokens per player plus at least a like amount for NPCs. Passion tokens should be easier to cover.

For Flaming Taft we used Shab Al-Hiri roaches for power tokens because Brennan had a stack of them. Using something themed to the game might be nice. I've got a small pouch with 20 lead brains that might suit some kinds of games.

Yeah, I considered this problem when I was writing the game. I luckily happen to have a big set of poker chips I bought a while back and used as fantasy game coinage for a while. I bought six total colors for that, so I generally have enough for a game. You can use anything, even beads from your magic game or whatnot. When I left my poker chips in the exhibit hall during the game Steve mentioned, I just used whatever I had to hand (which happened to be a massive stack of rubber roaches, which we used as power tokens in that game).

The magic tokens can end up being quite a stack, so I suggest having everyone keep five or so tokens on the sheet, and write down the total next to it. If you are running low, just add to the stack and note the sacrificed tokens on the total.

You know what's really cheap...large pound bags of M&Ms...or better...Skittles.

Bonus #1 you can eat em afterwards

Bonus #2 your players are constantly confronted with the tempation to eat them during..."what if I sacrifice this magic token...to my bellyyy..."

I've done that in Universalis.  Its amazing how the people with huge piles of Coins will self balance back to rest of the group simply by concluding they're rich enough to eat some of them.

Valamir wrote: "what if I sacrifice this magic token...to my bellyyy..."

Yeah, but what's the price? :)

Brennan wrote: Yeah, but what's the price? :)

You can also use dice, much like a Magic: The Gathering player might, to keep track of your pools.  I believe there are even some specially made d20s that are numbered in a fashion that makes them intuitive to set to any given number.

Regards,
Daniel