When: Sunday, Feb 16, 2003, 10am

Who: Me, Crash, Kent, and Nat

Experience: All of us were familiar with the game, and had played for at least 45 minutes previously.

Notes:

I was very pleased to see that my fellow playtesters remembered exactly how to play without any reminding needed. I showed them the new die rollers, and two players used the rectangular cups, and two used the 'tube rollers'. Halfway through testing we switched cups, so each player had experience with each type.

Overall the tube was preferred.

A few interesting characteristics of the tube were learned:

• 'Shaking' the tube is different than shaking a regular dice cup, or the rectangular set. An up-down motion is required, as the dice have little room for 'horizontal' play (see picture).
• 'Slamming' the dice down effectively randomized them, often making them 'bounce' pleasurably above the tube's obscuring level, making them seem to 'percolate.' Rolls only rarely resulted in cocked dice, and in such cases, flicking the side of the cylinder resolved the dice.
• Because the 12mm dice side-by-side were only slightly narrower than the tube diameter, cast dice were very secure. There was little chance of dice sliding accidentally, even if the tube was jostled by hand or a rolling D12 die. Since the roll can be observed by looking at the top of the tube, there is no need to peek 'under' the tube, lessening even further the chance that a die could be disturbed during gameplay.

The side-pips touching the side of a tube were not visible to opponents, even in a well-lit room. There was easily enough light to observe the top-pips by peering in to the top of the tube (see picture).

Theming

We discussed possible themes for the game, including:

• Asian themes - Leveraging off of the black and white stones ('Zen Dice', 'Yin-Yang', 'Tao Dice')
• Similarity themes - Recognizing games that served as the inspiration for aspects of the gameplay ('Poker Dice', 'Pennsylvania Stud', 'Pittsburgh Hold-em')
• Abstract themes - Inspired by gameplay, or form-factor ('Redux' (for the rerolling white stones), 'Mulligan', 'Quarterstaff' (for the combined stafflike packaging))

We noticed that when the sets were assembled as they would be in the store (with padding and attached end-to-end) they had a good feel to them. The dice and stones pushed to the edges gave the whole unit a higher moment of intertia, giving the set the illusion of being more substantial than it is.

Overall, the group found gameplay to be solid, and should not be changed.

While still holding off on establishing the full game vocabulary until I'm more confident of the final theme, I'm temporarily going forward with the name 'Tao Dice' (pronounced 'Dow Dice')