"Now for something completely different - spinners" Topic

Has any one ever seen a 'serious' game (as opposed to a kids' game) that uses a spinner to determine an outcome? Has anyone here ever used a spinner instead of dice to generate a result?

I was kicking around the idea of reviving an old man-to-man set of rules I designed a long time ago, but now want to make it diceless. So, maybe the spinner is the way to go. Pros? Cons?

(And before anyone responds it would be too easy to 'game' the responses by a well-placed flick of the fingers -- which is true, btw -- I would set it up so any single outcome wouldn't be in a single block, but divided up around the wheel in pie-sliced fractions)

As a kid, I always hated it when the spinner pointed to a the line between slices.

While technically diceless, you haven't really eliminated the idea of dice, just the implementation. I'm not sure what you'd gain in terms of gameplay by going to a spinner.

I tried a spinner once for morale determination. Different size wedges for different probablitites of different states. If it got stuck on a line, you just spun again.

The card game from Flying Buffalo, "Nuclear War" used a spinner to determine the effectiveness of the bombs.

The football/trivia game "NFL Gamebreaker" uses two spinners to determine the length of punts, kickoffs, and returns. As in Bob's description, the "pie slices" vary in size so that certain outcomes (end zone touchback or short returns) are more likely than others (punting inside the 5-yard line, return for touchdown, etc.).

Nothing wrong with a spinner, as long as it's in good condition and is well designed. A poor spinner, however, could prove less random than is desirable.

I was looking at spinners the other day and thought they'd make a possible deviation indicator instead of dice. Put the spinner down next to where you're shooting and spin.

Yes, spinners are an interesting option. As mentioned above, it allows you to vary the odds of success to small degrees not usually possible with dice unless you to percentile dice. It also enables you to remove (some) charts because the results can be printed on the spinner face itself. One option could be to have different faces available that you could slide on the spinner, or just several different spinners. Going further, each troop type could have its own spinner representing its own characteristics with concentric rings for close combat, ranged combat, morale, etc.

> While technically diceless, you haven't really eliminated the idea of dice, just the implementation.

True dat. My original system used dice -- I'm just trying to find something different now. That's all. No matter what, you still need something to generate results.

>It also enables you to remove (some) charts because the results can be printed on the spinner face itself. One option could be to have different faces available that you could slide on the spinner, or just several different spinners.

Yes. Specifically, right now, I am thinking of using 5 colors (black, red, blue, yellow, green) that would represent "failure" "barely" "good" "great" "perfect" … this is not much different than the 'effect' chart of Marvel Super Heroes -- but the generator would be a spinner and not a dice/chart device.

In addition, there would be at least 4 different wheels, based on, say, civilian, trainee, expert, master.

. . . and here I was thinking this threat was about pimping out your starships with "spinner" rims!

The best part is all the ways folks will cheat with spinners :)

I have a large plywood spinner with nails seperating each category so no question as to the outcome.

It has been put into service in several games but as the night wears on there is a tendency for people to get a little wild with the spin, especially when they are losing.

"It also enables you to remove (some) charts because the results can be printed on the spinner face itself."

This was being done back in the 1820's in the Prussian kriegsspiel – the faces of the dice themselves showed the results of charges/close combat, losses from musketry/artillery and whether or not buildings had been set on fire…

There was an old Baseball game that used a spinner called All-Star baseball.

link

The interesting thing was that it used individual circular player "discs" that inserted into the spinner. Based on the stats and abilities of the indidual players, certain outcomes were larger -- IE Babe Ruth had a bigger homerun slice, than say, Pete Rose.

for example:
auction

For a skirmish game, I could see similar type discs with abiliities reflected by the size of the wedges IE: firing accuracy, morale, etc. Perhaps it could be done with large units like squads, companies, or even divisions…

-CH

Excellent! That was exactly what I was thinking of -- different disks for different figures. But of course its been around forever.

This would be for a beer and pretzel game (then again, do I ever design anything else?), so fun and silliness are inherent.

You need a wheel like the one on "The Price Is Right!"….

I see upright spinners at booths at home and garden shows and similar things.
Or perhaps you could use a small roulette wheel, with the numbers and red and black replaced with a custom chart of your own designing.
Grelber

@Jape77: Please keep me abreast of your ideas and developments. I'm keen.

Thanks,

Legion

I remember playing Tank Battle with its "Tank Against Gun" spinner

link

ChrisPzTp

I'll have the tank please!

Twister is the only game I have played with a spinner but I like the idea. Would be especially good for kids (real ones and grown up ones).

As mentioned above, 'Nuclear War' used a spinner.

I made a spinner to play the old Paragan Gladiator rules at school back in the 1970s as we used to play at the back of Art class on graph paper, and the teacher might have heard the rattle of dice.

In Dungeon Magazine I read a letter from a prison inmate who made a spinner to use when they played D&D because dice were forbidden.

Ok, got a burst of creativity yesterday, and worked out the basics -- at least enough for me to move forward with the idea.

(Quick background: This grew out of a effort to do a Three Musketeers dueling game some 20 years ago. Man-to-man, close combat, but quick and fun that captured the cinematic aspects of swashbucklers and tavern brawls. Originally I lifted the 'universal results' color-coded table from TSR's Marvel Super Heroes. We did a couple of playtests but it never went further than that. I found my notes recently and decided to revisit the idea. Now though, I want to go beyond rolling dice and looking up results on charts and find something faster.)

Essentially, I am still using the concept of the color-coded universal results, but breaking the chart -- and its colors -- apart and distributing them around the edge of the spinner.

Right now I have 5 colors represent a result (black = fail, red = near miss or nick, blue = contact, yellow = solid hit, green = bullseye)

These are spread around 5 spinners, each representing a level (unskilled, novice, trained, expert, master). Obviously there are more blocks of color or another based on teh skill levels.

When a figure attacks, both the attacker and the defender flick the spinner representing their level. if they get matching colors, their swords have clanged together without results. If the attacker gets a 'better' color, his blade has slipped past and may have injured his opponent. If the defender gets a better color, he has parried and reposted. Etc.

Combat is as fast as you can flick the spinner and compare colors.

Clearly there is a LOT more to be worked out (damage, different weapons, movement, armor), but I believe the spinner idea can work. More to follow, eventually …

Instead of 5 spinners, could you use one spinner with 5 rings? So "master" uses the inner ring, "unskilled" uses the outer ring, etc? It might prevent a lot of hunting around for the right spinner.

Yeah, I would do that for simpler stuff (such as, we now are considering do a 'gear' wheel for Speed Rally, with each ring a gear marked by a certain color), or rings representing expanding results, ie, d4, d6, d8, etc

I don't think it would work for the above idea however -- trust me, you'd go blind -- because I divided the outside of the wheel into 24 equal slices (15˚ each) to insure that no one could get a distinct advantage because of a gifted flicker finger. In addition, the decreasing circumference would make fitting equal pie slices on inside wheels harder to read and create more arguments over 'on the line' results.

I'll look at doing a 20 slice pie tonight, see if that's better

Trust me -- it sounds more complicated than it looks.

btw, thanks for all the feedback. This is all coming together very nicely -- at least so far on paper (yeah, yeah I know…:)

As for having to 'hunt for spinners', I'm envisioning a board of 5 spinners, going from left to right in increasing skill. It would go on the edge of the table, and there would be at least one for each side, so they are always in reach of any players

Found another one -- again, from a baseball game, but more sophisticated:

picture

The pitcher spins the wheel; the pitch is whatever result lines up with home plate, and there are 3 levels of skill, indicated by the colored rings around the outside.

If the batter lets the ball go, it is whatever the result is (ball or strike). If he decides to swing at it, the player tosses a small baseball into the center bowl, and where it comes to rest is cross referenced with the pitch to see if the batter hit, how far, etc. Very clever (Certainly clever enough for them to patent.)

Spinner update:

Work is progressing on what I'm calling "spinnakers" … these aren't just spinners, but a color-coded probability matrix that comes close to dice in generating true random results.

Essentially we (my mathematician brother and I) are taking the idea of combat result charts, assigning the final outcomes colors (or numbers, in a few cases), and then distributing them around a wheel in a way so that a player will have an exceedingly difficult time 'gaming' the outcome by a well placed flick of the spinner.

So far the idea effectively lends itself to the 5-speed "Gear Dice" of my Speed Rally game (replacing 5 polyhedral dice needed with a single spinner); a single spinner which can replace all polyhedral dice from d4 to d20; and, a set of spinners that can cover 10-15 different combat/results charts with a single board.

Most interesting, to me at least, are a couple of spinnakers based on the 8-sided taoist I-Ching wheel, and by extension, a 12 sided wheel for potential use with my rollerball game. This one still needs serious playtesting, but it sure looks interesting.

Finally, I'm working on a practical design so anyone can create a spinnaker at home with our design (or, perhaps, with an inexpensive kit we might sell). Without a doubt we I will be creating one for Speed Rally -- especially if we go forward with our idea for a SR board game.

Will keep you all posted; this is turning out to be a great idea.