Everything you need to get a token from the box to the table. It takes about a minute, and there is no app to install.
A token is three parts. A molded shell, an acrylic window, and a printed TokenTab that carries the NFC tag. The acrylic window sits on top of the TokenTab, and the TokenTab slides into the shell from the base and clicks home with the hang tab proud of the top. Press down on the hang tab and the whole cartridge comes back out, which is how you relabel a token and give it to something else.
Tap the drawing to enlarge
Hold the token flat against the back of your phone and keep it still for about a second. The first tap opens a page in your browser. No app, no pairing, no account needed to look at what a token holds.
iPhone XS and newer read tokens with the screen simply unlocked. Hold the token against the top edge of the back of the phone, where the cameras are.
On an iPhone 7, 8 or X, add the NFC Tag Reader to Control Center in Settings, then open it before you tap.
Turn NFC on in Settings. It usually sits under Connected devices, then Connection preferences, though the path varies by manufacturer.
The antenna is normally in the upper middle of the back, but its position moves around between models. If a tap does not land, slide the token slowly across the back until it does.
Tap the drawing to enlarge
Almost every failed tap is one of these five things.
Still nothing after all five? The tag may have been damaged. Get in touch and we will replace the TokenTab.
A token is never spent. When a campaign ends, or when an item changes hands, the same token becomes something else. There are two halves to that: the label you can see, and the entry it points at.
Press the hang tab down to eject the TokenTab. The printed face takes dry erase, so wipe off the old name and write the new one before you click the tab back into the sleeve.
Use a fine tip dry erase marker and let it dry for a moment before it goes back in the shell. Alcohol wipes take off anything stubborn.
The tag inside never changes, so the token keeps its identity. What changes is the entry it opens. A DM reassigns the token from the DM portal, and the next tap reveals whatever it now holds.
Clearing a token also resets it to unrevealed, so the next player gets the same moment of not knowing that the first one did.
Nothing is lost when a token is reused. The campaign chronicle keeps the record of what that token was, who carried it, and what happened while they did. Reassigning it writes the next chapter rather than erasing the last one. If you want to see what that looks like after a full campaign, there is a worked example of a chronicle with five chapters and two finished characters.
