Poker Chips Video
Michelle Benitone
Apache Poker Chips has been operating in Las Vegas since 1999. Being located in Las Vegas gives us the opportunity to play with and review all new products as soon as they become available. We sell the same chips and cards used at the top Casinos around the world. Unlike most websites we actually stock inventory which helps us ship faster and provide a higher level of customer service. We are the only website that still carries the much sought after Paulson chips
A good DM should always be on the lookout for new additions to his or her bag of tricks. One of the simplest and yet most useful such tricks, in my experience, is picking up a set or two of poker chips. For just a few bucks, these little trinkets add a lot to your game. Here are some things I learned from using poker chips at my D&D table.
I like to give out awesome points for good roleplaying, making skill challenge checks, and puzzle solving, as well. Whenever a player makes an impassioned speech to convince an NPC of his innocence, or nails a Hard DC Thieving skill check to disarm a trap, I give out an awesome point. One twist to the system I use is allowing the players as a group to award awesome points to each other. If the common consensus for the party is that a player did something worthy, the DM would usually agree. Putting the responsibility on the players instead of the DM is helpful because the DM has a lot to worry about anyway, and awarding awesome points to each other helps build the sense of camaraderie for the group.
So what can these awesome points be used for? An awesome point can be turned in at any time in order to add to or subtract from an attack, skill, or saving throw roll. Red chips are worth 2, and white chips are worth 1. It works very much like the Heroic Effort human power. Like Sly Flourish, I let players see monster stats after a couple rounds, so they often know exactly how many awesome points they need to spend to turn that near miss into a timely hit.
Think of them as just another prop that you can use to really make your game come to life. When the slayer hands over his hard-earned gold to the shopkeeper for a shiny new axe, and the player has to actually count it out and give it to you, it feels far different than if he just adjusted a number on his character sheet. You can change the value of the poker chips as needed depending on how rich or poor your characters are. A good set of poker chips can be useful for tracking wealth from level 1 to level 30.
Pretty easy to ask your fellow playing partner to move his ball mark, no? I use a poker chip that has some sentimental value to me however, I know its bulky and I am always conscious to ask my playing partners if I can move my mark if I feel I am in the way.
There's one irascible old coot in our weekend group who doesn't much care for the poker chip thing (among many others). A new guy maybe 30 years old joined us one Saturday and had the really big, thick poker chip. The kind so big I can't imagine anyone would use them in an actual poker game.
Plops it down on the first green more or less vaguely in irascible old coot's line. The old guy walked over, replaced the "poker chip" with a penny, tossed it to the young guy and said, "You can keep the penny, I've got a pocket full".
P.S. The same group has on a couple of occasions "dis-invited" guys who started up with the alignment line adjusting/re-adjusting/re-re-adjusting habit. Back when that first became a craze. They were asked not to play in the group unless they could be ready to putt when it was their turn. One guy left and didn't come back. The other went away for a year or two and when he came back he was somewhat more expedient, although he still does the line-on-ball routine.
So I guess in retrospect it would have been better for him to say, "Pardon me, kind sir. Would you be so kind as to replace your saucer-sized, annoying hunk of plastic with a smaller, less conspicuous coin or other traditional ball marker? I'll be glad to provide a penny if it would be helpful".
What about just carrying the coin-sized marker? Without the giant poker chip in your pocket, you might be able to easily fish out the coin-sized marker. Heck, you might even have room to carry two coin-sized markers in your pocket. Then you'd have twice as good a chance of being able to fish one of them out of your pocket.
I usually have two or three of the teensy little flat plastic ones (dime sized with a little prong sticking out of the back) in my pocket during a round. Specifically to make it easy to grab one in and between the tees. I also end up marking someone else's ball for them at least once or twice a round so having multiple ones is nice.
I'm a line-on-the-putter guy. I always work on my pre-putt alignment while others are getting ready to putt their balls. Unless I can't because if by doing so, I'd be in someone else's way or in their line of sight. But doing a lot of the groundwork ahead of my turn probably makes me as fast, or faster than most guys' putting routines.
Coin sized is magnetic and fits a slot on the divot tool (purchased on a trip to RTJ trail site to see dad) and this marker on its own would be quite light and easy to lose if not on the divot tool when not in use.
Idle thought. I wonder what the % overlap is between "poker chip guys", "bluetooth speakers playing music guys" and "spit out their used snuff three paces from the green guys". I'm guessing quite a few individuals achieve this hat trick of modern affectations.
c80f0f1006