So, I'm working with a client to develop a game, and I mentioned that a spinner might be an alternative to dice or cards for accomplishing a "randomizing" (or probability) element. In the game there needs to be a way for determining if a player's action is successful or not. More difficult actions also need to have different probabilities. I've heard that in prisons inmates often use spinners to function as dice, because they often don't have dice and spinners are easy to make (and so they use spinners to play D&D). I had nearly forgotten about spinners entirely, in a swarm of coin tosses, cards and dice... in many contemporary games.
While my client is certainly not in prison, I felt that the spinner might be a good way to create complex probabilities that would not even work on some dice, and might be too costly to make as a deck of cards. One spinner could potentially do the job of hundreds of cards.
Part of me is hesitant to really go for the spinner though. Maybe I just have Wheel of Fortune phobia.
Here are the things that often bother me about spinners:
1) It lands on the line.... over and over, and the only solution seems to be "spin again"
2) Is is really random or is it a dexterity game? Some players seem to spin what they want to spin.
3) mechanical defects (like friction in one part of the spinner) seem to cause some effect on the probability... some cheep spinners seem to almost always give the same result.
How do you feel about spinners?
Questions:
-Why are spinners rarely used in modern games? (cards and dice seem to have much more popularity)
-Do you know of any good spinners on the market?
-Are there any work-arounds for the 3 problems above? (for example does it help to have large "spin again" areas to reduce the feeling of it being a dexterity game?)
-Do you know any great contemporary games that are using spinners?
I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts,
Matthew Kiehl
Hum... no feedback yet. maybe i said too much!