John Lindal’s Blog

Hero Dice

If you’ve ever played Champions (the Hero system), I’m sure you’ve wished you had dice that would always roll low for attack, ensuring you hit, and high for damage, ensuring that your opponent will not get back up. Character Builders, designed for D&D character generation, cannot get the job done because they always roll high, so you’ll never hit

I searched the web and only managed to find these instructions for how to make crooked dice. Nobody appears to actually sell such stuff

Interestingly, the design I came up with is mentioned by the above link, but it is described as unreliable, presumably because those who wish to steal money by cheating at dice games need their weighted dice to be far less noticeable than what a friendly neighborhood Champions player can get away with. Not that gamers don’t take it just as seriously as gamblers, of course, but frugal, judicious use of adjustable, weighted dice would be very hard to notice.

So, as you’re probably guessed, my design allows the weighting to be adjusted so the dice can be fair or weighted towards either 1 or 6:

1. Start with a die that has 1 and 6 on opposite faces.
2. Drill out the core of the die on the 1-6 axis, leaving one of the two faces intact.
3. Line the inside of the intact face with thin cloth.
4. Mount a thin guide pin on the drill axis.
5. Cut a disk to fit the hole in the die. The thickness of the disk should be 1/4 of the depth of the cavity that was drilled.
6. Drill a hole in the center of the disk so it can slide along the guide pin.
7. Remount the missing face with an inner lining of thin cloth.

This is the base configuration. It allows the weight to slide back and forth between the 1 and 6, so either can be weighted to make it least likely and the opposing face most likely. The guide pin ensures that the disk slides correctly. The inner cloth lining muffles the sound when the disk moves. The thickness requirement is necessary for latching the disk at either end or in the middle. The hard part is making this secretly configurable.

If the pips are raised, then you can convert the two corners of 3 or the two pairs of corners of 5 into invisible buttons that are the ends of rods running through to spring loaded latches embedded in the opposite face. There are two latches in order to allows the disk to be positioned either at the center or behind 1 or 6:

+-------
        |
        |
       <**
        |
        |
       <**
        |
        |
+-------

If only one latch is opened, the disk can slide between that face and the center. If both latches are opened, the disk can slide from one face to the other.

To avoid detection, you would keep the disk at the center of the die until you were ready to roll. After picking up the die in preparation for the roll, you hold the die with the desired result facing up and push the appropriate pips. After the roll, you pick up the die again, turn it upside down, and push the pips again to re-center the disk.

Unfortunately, raised pips are quite unusual and are likely to temp others to try pushing them, just for fun. An alternative is to convert an entire face of the die into a pair of buttons, but this makes it harder to conceal because there will be a hairline cracks. A better, though more complex, solution is to use additional pips to implement a locking mechanism for the latches. This way, the pips controlling the latches can only be pushed while another pip is pushed in. The best way that I can think of is for the latch rod to have a bump which is obstructed unless a pip is pushed to remove the obstruction. Imagine these two running orthogonal to each other in 3D, so the bump in the left piece can pass through the U-shape at the right:

   ^
+--|----
        |
        |
       <**
        |

+-|  |-*
   --

This is an awful lot of machinery to put inside a standard size 6 sider, but I’m sure it could be manufactured. I doubt anybody ever will, however, since the market niche is so miniscule.

Annoying Drivers

Have you ever wished you could tell the jerk behind you how you really feel about his tailgating, complete lack of courtesy, etc.? You can, with this 10″x2″ LED Scrolling Message Sign. It mounts on your rear window, plugs into the cigarette lighter, and has a remote control so you can easily choose which message to display.

I originally started thinking about it after the person in the other lank honked at me for not skipping my turn at a 2-to-1 lane merge point created by a road construction crew. After seriously considering starting a company to manufacture such a sign, I figured somebody else probably had already done so Understandably, but still sadly, the sign I found has a naughty word filter, so it’s useless in Los Angeles!

Lord of the Rings

It occurred to me today that perhaps The Lord of the Rings no longer can be made into a successful movie. Today’s audiences want main characters to whom they can relate, but The Lord of the Rings is built on ancient legends from a time when people needed characters who could inspire because they were a cut above the ordinary.

This does not excuse Peter Jackson’s mangling of Tolkien’s masterpiece, but perhaps it does explain why Gandalf was made a bumbling fool and Aragorn was portrayed as reluctant to reforge Narsil. The real Gandalf was a tactician on par with Niven’s Pak Protectors, while Aragorn was a living embodiment of Nobility — both so far beyond human ken that it is excusable to label their motivations as alien.

I do think the story could be faithfully told on the screen, but it would be necessary to frame it with characters who clearly convey their awe of the tale and their reverence for characters like Gandalf and Aragorn. These frame characters would be the ones to whom today’s audiences could relate.

Biology Teacher

We bumped into my high school biology teacher, Mrs. Compeau, at Ralphs this evening. She has two years left until retirement. And here I thought I was so old that all my high school teachers were long gone

TV Star

My daughter, Heidi, waved to Emily Osment in the SUV next to us after we came out of the local Panda Express. Heidi liked Emily’s little doggy. (At least, I think it was her…)