And who knows what you might use your trinket for if you are creative?
I sold a deed to a unknown piece of land (my trinket) as part of a bribe to some NPC
Use your trinket to flesh out your backstory.
In some AL settings, players come in and out of games too often for the DMs to memorize everyone's trinket and backstory, so it is really up to you to find a use. If I were your DM and you found some clever way to use your trinket during an interaction, I'd probably give you advantage on the check plus inspiration.
And plenty of the trinkets can be useful, too. The 9V battery is pretty cool as a backup firestarter or improvised questioning device (depending on alignment). A clockwork spider that only moves when people aren't looking at it? Awesome distraction for guards.
Possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
Frankly, I don't bother selecting a trinket, and I don't blame anybody who doesn't -- there are enough decisions to make about inventory on a starting character that adding an additional trinket to the mix isn't always obviously helpful.
That shouldn't stop anybody from taking a trinket they find interesting, but if it doesn't move you, then don't bother with it.
--
Pauper
I allow PCs to keep trinkets from their enemies all the time.
Examples Include:
- Pegleg from a Minotaur
- Broken Sharktooth Longsword (no longer useful as a weapon)
- Buckled/Dented Horseshoe Crab Shield. (no longer usable as armor)
- Body Parts
- Child Skeleton Disguise (previously worn by Kobolds)
- Clothing (frequently worn as disguises)
- Black Armored Plates from a Helmed Horror
- Masks, unusual objects, etc.
I completely forgot to pick up a trinket for my cleric, until I saw the list in the book last night and took a few minutes to look over it. When I found the right one, it almost completely re-wrote the character - new deity, maybe a new background, new personality. The trinket? A pipe that blows bubbles.
When I run my home game, I always ask the players where they got the trinket from, and why they kept it. It always manages to flesh out the background, backstory, and history of the new character.
You could use that for a similar purpose for your AL characters.
From Thursday, an article with 100 new trinkets themed for Elemental Evil:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/elemental-evil-trinkets
Some of them are quite........ interesting. 
Enevhar_Aldarion wrote:
Technically these trinkets aren't legal in AL play, unless we're told otherwise.
TheBreen wrote:
Oraibi wrote:
Ainulindalion wrote:
Very sad. Oh well, time to stock enemies with trinket loot of no value.
Be careful with that, Ainulindalion: your players will start trying to use those trinkets thinking they *must* be magic since you included it as treasure.
There is nothing in the ALPG that makes those 'illegal'. At best one could claim that you can't simply start with one of those and would have to pick it up later.
Undrhil wrote:
Ainulindalion wrote:
AndrewJO wrote:
It's not legal for a player in AL to create their own trinket or choose a trinket that is not on the list in the PHB.
This is something that probably could be changed, but so far has not yet.
That's what I mean by "illegal."
Oraibi wrote:
DMs can hand out whatever they want, as long as they're changing the value. I'm not arguing with that.
I'm just saying that by the rules, players can't choose from the new list. The comment is not to show that I'm more strict than anyone else -- it's to show that maybe the rules need to be changed so that the allowable player resources include some of the articles on the WotC D&D site (but obviously not all of them).
Personally, I've never seen any DM, myself included, check players' character sheets to see if their trinkets are AL legal or not -- nor do I expect to ever see that happen. As an AL DM, I am perfectly fine with letting any player roll or pick from the table in the new article, and I wouldn't say "hey now, you're CHEATING", because it's such a minor and by definition trivial issue.
However, the larger issue, of which articles on the D&D site are legal for AL play and which are not, is an important and non-trivial one that needs to be resolved.
Oraibi wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Oraibi wrote:
Pauper wrote:
Enevhar_Aldarion wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
Stormborn20 wrote:
This article on the Adventures League site (which is just a link to the WotC site article) may indicate that it's meant to be AL-legal content.
I'll see if I can get clarification.
Yes, it is kind of odd that they didn't add the "AL Legal" image to the article. I suspect the goal was to confirm these as being legal options for S2 players, but it doesn't explictly say as such. Let me know what you find out Oraibi. No sense in two of us following the same lead.
I will look into this.
Greg Marks
DnDAL Associate Resource Manager
We have added the "Adventurers League Legal" sticker to the "Trinkets of Elemental Evil" article so it is clear that they can be used in the campaign in addition to the PHB trinkets.
http://dndadventurersleague.org/trinkets-of-elemental-evil/
Greg Marks
DnDAL Associate Resource Manager
Skerrit wrote:
Thanks!
I went ahead and made a pdf of the trinket article for table use during character creation. You can find it here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ZvCC_INs4RQlVVN0trbmtpSGs/view?usp=sharing
Ainulindalion wrote:
shivafang wrote:
Kalani wrote: