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Help with home-made playing pieces

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Julius
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Joined: 12/31/1969

I'm going to be whipping up a prototype of a board game to playtest. I need to have some playing pieces that meet the following criteria:

Must hide the piece's information from the other player. You shold be able to look at your pieces and know what it is. The player opposite you shouldn't be able to determine one of your pieces from another.

Must come in five (ten? more?) different weights. You should not be able to tell by looking at a piece how much it weighs, particularly if one piece is heavier than another.

I'd like to make them myself, if possible. What would be the best way? I'm thinking that some type pieces with a hollow base, and then putting varying numbers of metal washers inside the base. What should I make the piece out of?

FastLearner
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Help with home-made playing pieces

I was going to suggest Sculpey, a polymer clay that hardens in the oven, but it sounds like they have to look absolutely identical. Maybe drop by a home improvement store... I'm thinking something like the plastic end caps for some tubes or for the bottoms of chairs or such, or something similar that is open on one end. Drop in your washers and fill with (depending on the material of the piece) hot glue, epoxy, acrylic, or something along those lines. Then label one side with a sticker, a side that's always turned away from the other player.

This, obviously, for playtesting, not for the final product. :)

-- Matthew

FastLearner
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Help with home-made playing pieces

A, another possibility for a test would be floral foam bits. They sell little eggs and blocks and other shapes. You could simply press washers into the bottom (on edge, "slicing" them in) and put just a bit of white glue over the top to keep them from sliding out. Easier than trying to get something to stay in something hollow, I think.

-- Matthew

Krakit
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Help with home-made playing pieces

sounds like stratego style peices would fit the bill nicely.

You just need to make bases for them with different weights inside.

Glue identical plastic boxes on the bottom of each peice containing one of your weights.

Carl

dete
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Help with home-made playing pieces

the whole weight thing cannot be
simulated by numbers or something?

FastLearner
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Help with home-made playing pieces

I would think that it's the key fun part of the game. I can imagine a scale and some form of combat where I place a guy on both sides at the same time as you place a guy on both sides, neither of us seeing each others' numbers. One side will be heavier (or they'll balance), and based on the half of the information you know, you can start compiling information. Over time you'd be able to figure out which pieces were likely which and act accordingly. Assuming it's something like that, it seems pretty clever, but there's no way you could simulate it: the balance would have to actually do its thing because otherwise you'd have to reveal numbers to each other.

Of course, maybe the game's nothing like that. If it's not, let me know so I can make it. ;) j/k

-- Matthew

Krakit
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Help with home-made playing pieces

Here is your answer:

http://electronicsusa.com/productsboxes.html

On the bottom of the page are plastic 1" cube boxes.

Put the information on a single side of the box by paint or sticker, fill with appropriate fishing sinkers. Viola!

They even come in solid black and solid white.

Carl

Julius
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Help with home-made playing pieces

Yeah, you hit the nail right on the head - its an abstract wargame where combat is resolved in secret based on the weight of the piece - on a little balance next to the board. Steal away - you cannot copyright concepts.

I just realized I've got another problem that complicates things significantly - I need the pieces' weights to "stack": Two pieces that weigh "2" should tie a single piece that weighs "4".

Xaqery
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Help with home-made playing pieces

Julius wrote:
I just realized I've got another problem that complicates things significantly - I need the pieces' weights to "stack": Two pieces that weigh "2" should tie a single piece that weighs "4".

How does Carls solution not work. Those boxes stack and you can control the weights in them.

- Dwight

FastLearner
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Help with home-made playing pieces

It won't work because the weight of two boxes won't equal the weight of one box. If your weights are 5 grams and your boxes weigh 3 grams, then two boxes with one weight each will weigh 16 grams and one box with two weights will weigh 13 grams, but they should show up as equal on the scale.

You can do some fiddling with the weight you put in, of course, to make it work (total weight of a "one" box is 10 grams, total weight of a "two" box is 20 grams), but it won't be a simple one-washer vs. two-washers kind of adjustment.

Lead fishing weights cut easily with a knife.

-- Matthew

(Edited to make slightly more sense. Ha.)

Krakit
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Help with home-made playing pieces

What is being asked for is impossible (unless I misunderstand). You would need a weightless container. Try to find one. :^)

Depending on how sensitive the scales are two of these boxes with a combined weight of 5 might balance with a sigle box weighing five. At least it won't drop one side of the scale all the way to the bottom. However three against one would be another story.

Instead of weight you might want to try resistance of electricity. Plug two or moreboxes together in a chain the brightest bulb wins the combat.

Resisters are pretty cheap and the type of boxes that I gave you are made for electronic projects. Just suspend a 1, 10 or 20 ohm resister inside and mount 8th inch phono jack inputs on either end. Connect short phono jumper wires between boxes. A battery on one end of the chain and a small light bulb on the other. Of course both batteries need to be fresh unless both players share the same contraption and take turns. Maybe instead of a light bulb a volt meter, but that would start getting a bit expensive and would give away more information than I think you want the players to have.

Thinking about it just mount a male plug on one side of the box and a female phono input on the other. You can link up a long chain that way and set up a battery pack with a male plug and rig the light bulb with a femalel.

Carl

FastLearner
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Help with home-made playing pieces

It's not impossible, it's just that he's got to take the weight of the boxes into account when adding more weight.

If the boxes weigh 5 grams, then he'd add this much weight to each numbered piece:

1 = 05g = 10g total
2 = 15g = 20g total
3 = 25g = 30g total
4 = 35g = 40g total
5 = 45g = 50g total

Obviously you could go finer or more coarse.

In fact, looking at it, you just need two sizes of weights, one that's the same as the box, we'll call it B, and one that's twice the weight of the box, which we'll call T. Then the weights to go in each box are:

1 = B
2 = BT
3 = BTT
4 = BTTT
5 = BTTTT

etc.

Pretty sure that works fine.

-- Matthew

Krakit
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Help with home-made playing pieces

I don't know, if I weigh three boxes that should add up to 4 (two tens and a twenty) they will be heavier than the 40 box.

Unless my math is wrong.

Of course if this is for combat resolution I would let two tens beat 1 twenty anyway. The strength in numbers and all that.

The only real solution regarding the weight would be putting empty boxes (or equivilant weighted things) on the outnumbered side. That seems inelegant to me.

Carl

Krakit
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Help with home-made playing pieces

You could also forget about weighing the boxes at all. Just have each player place a hidden number of "beans" into a cup and place the cup on the scale. Based on the hidden value on the peice. Heaviest cup wins the round/battle/whatever (loses?)

Carl

FastLearner
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Help with home-made playing pieces

Unless I'm missing something, no, this works fine. Two tens and a twenty = forty. You have 10g per point. In my little list above I didn't include the box, so it may have seemed like they don't have the right weight, but you can see that the totals are 1 = 10, 2=20...5=50, with 5g for the box and the rest in added weight.

OutsideLime
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Help with home-made playing pieces

1. Find hollow rectangular pieces with removable caps. Label the piece on one side with your unit marker, stratego-style.

2. Put a piece on your sensitive digital scale, with the cap removed but also present on the scale. (C'mon, you have a digital scale....)

3. Fill the piece, while it is on the scale, with bearings/sand/whatever, until it reaches your desired weight. Cap it.

4. The piece + the filler = the total desired weight of the unit. No problems for different unit/different number of unit confrontations at all.

Where you can find such a component is another matter.

~Josh

Hambone
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Help with home-made playing pieces

If the weight of the piece is x (considering any sticker or engraving you plan on), make x the weight of the incremental increases. The level 1 piece has no additional weight. The level 2 piece has 1x added. The level 3 peice has 2x added, and so on. I think several people have done similar math, this is just another way to describe it.

As for the mechanic, it seems like little more than a gimick (not that there's anything wrong with that). How easy is it to determine the weights by feel? Can you tell the difference between a level 3 and a level 4? You would still need some visual indicator to make sure you knew what your unit's strength is. How fun would it be to play a game where you couldn't determine your unit strength except by guessing the weight? Maybe it would be interesting for a drug traffiking themed game.

Another issue. What happens if something causes a piece's weight to be altered (dog chews it, breaks open and loses filling, washer falls out, my brother figures out a way to add weight...)?

FastLearner
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Help with home-made playing pieces

I think it's a lot more than a gimmick if you know the weight of your own pieces but not those of your opponents. If we simply compare one of yours from the board with one of mine and we see that one is heavier than the other then we've both learned something but not necessarily the fine details. If later in the game I compare that piece of yours to a different one of mine and compare the results then I've learned more. If, for example, you defeat others' pieces by attacking them with the identically weighted piece, there'd be a fun deduction and memory element. This type of balance wouldn't compare the weight of one to another along a scale... you'd set it up so that if one piece was 1 point of weight more than the other, that side goes down and hits a stop point. All you'd get is which one is heavier, but not by how much.

An alternative is to always be weighing one of my pieces and one of yours on each side of the balance, with an actual scale built in (variable degrees of weight difference). If we each put a piece on each side and then let the scale go and it show, for example, that the right side (from my perspective) is 2 points heavier than the left, and I can see that I put a 3 on the left and a 6 on the right, then I know that your one on my left is 1 pt heavier than your one on my right (whew). That tells me something interesting, which along with other weighings will allow me to deduce the weights of your pieces.

Etc. Seems like a real game mechanic to me, and something that is pretty elegantly and inexpensively implemented.

-- Matthew

Julius
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Help with home-made playing pieces

Hambone wrote:
As for the mechanic, it seems like little more than a gimick (not that there's anything wrong with that). How easy is it to determine the weights by feel? Can you tell the difference between a level 3 and a level 4? You would still need some visual indicator to make sure you knew what your unit's strength is. How fun would it be to play a game where you couldn't determine your unit strength except by guessing the weight? Maybe it would be interesting for a drug traffiking themed game.

You will know the weight of your own pieces, as it directly relates to that piece's combat value. A piece that weighs 5 units will have a sticker on it that you can see with the number 5 on it. It will be visually obvious to you because of this number. Your opponent shouldn't be able to see this number, and is not permitted to handle your pieces.

When two pieces fight, they are placed on a simple balance. The heavier side wins, but it won't say by how much. The balance will not say how much heavier one side is, just that it is heavier. So, if you put a 1 up against your opponents piece (unknown) and lose, you don't know if he has a 2, or a 6, or a 10. Just that it is bigger than a 1.

The scale itself is about 20" long, and rests above a very short pivot point (at rest, total height is about half an inch). This makes large differences in weight not as obvious as small ones - as they both bottom out the scale.

Hambone wrote:
Another issue. What happens if something causes a piece's weight to be altered (dog chews it, breaks open and loses filling, washer falls out, my brother figures out a way to add weight...)?

Jeez, I don't know. What do you do when your cat eats some letters out of your scrabble set? :)

It's just a prototype. I was planning that the final pieces would be solid in construction.

I've bought a digital postal scale (it's a really neat toy!), and have made a few pieces out of sculpey, by breaking off bits and weighing them individually. Sorry I don't have pics, but they look like half of a hollow cylinder. Inside the back area, I simply added clay near the base that weighed the same as the structure itself to distinguish the weights.

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