When: Wednesday, Feb 12, 2003, 1pm

Who: Me and Rachel

Experience: Rachel and I had both played Tao Dice a few times.

Notes:

The session focused mostly on packaging and dice cup issues. We tested the 'two-sided token' idea for regulating the goal state:

• If the round winner (person gets all stones) does not already have the token, they get it with the silver side up.
• If they have the token with the silver side up, then they turn it to gold-side up.
• If the winner already had the token gold-side up, then they have won the game.

This game progressed pretty quickly, with a win after about 30 mintes of gameplay.

Rachel proposed 'frosting' the interior of the clear case, so that the player could better see the dice inside when looking from the top. Possible issues here are the ability of a competitor to count the pips on the side of a die that is directly touching the translucent, frosted side of the dice cup.

We tried switching from the rectangular dice cases to smaller cylendrical tubes. This necessitated switching from 16mm dice to 12mm dice. This doesn't seem to present a problem, and would even bring the unit price of a set down by several cents.

I simulated frosting the die-rolling cylinders by rolling paper up inside them, reaching from the lip of the cylinder to about 3/4" from the deepest part of the cylinder. This gives the added bonus of allowing the dice to be seen through the in-store packaging.

The two cylinders would each be screwed in to opposite sides of a threaded disc with a nurled edge. This is simulated by the two red caps that they currently use. Imagine these caps glued together, and connecting to the cylinders by threading instead of friction. The connecting cap itself will be the 'marker' with a gold side and a silver side.

In-store packaging would include padding within each cylinder to push the dice and stones into the visible (non-frosted) portion of the tubes. The tubes then would be shrinkwrapped together to inhibit opening and to allow the secure inclusion of a promotional sheet between the shrinkwrap and the tubes themselves. The ends of the tubes would remain exposed so they can be examined. The shrinkwrapping would be secured either by the slight bulge of the connecting ring, or by extending slightly over the ends of the tubes.

There were no gameplay revisions to this round, though the above notes detail the ongoing evolution of the packaging and design of game components.