Thought 6: Tectonic Chances

Ben’s Blog

Answer to Driving Question

Question: How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design

Answer: Mathematics are very important to game design. For example, Our game supports up to 6 players. To win, you must get 12 Progress Points. It is possible for every player to win so we had to make 72 Progress Points. Mathematics are also important in calculating the probabilities of certain events happening. Some examples of probability in our game are: Rolling a 6 on one dice and getting an even number on the other: 1/12, the chance of landing on payday square and rolling a 2 on two dices: 1/756, and the chance of picking up a chance card and rolling an even number: 1/12

About The Game

We have just finished our first major project with Mr. Gross. We were tasked with making a board game about earthquakes and tectonic plates. We made the games in partners, I was with Ben. Over the course of this project we learned about tectonic concepts like subduction, convection and lots of others. We also watched some videos on instructions of board games. We watched one on a game called Pandemic, which looked fun but also really complex, and one called King of Tokyo, created by the infamous, Richard Garfield. The game me and Ben made is called Monopoly Rebuild. Its called that because its about rebuilding parts of the USA and its similar to the game Monopoly. In our game, players pick one of six areas of the US to play as. There is Cascadia, Greater California, Texan Republic, Florida Confederation, United States of New England, and the Yellowstone Empire. I think the rules of the game are pretty good. Our game is similar to Monopoly. Players take turns moving around the board. If they land on a “Task” space, they pick up a task card. The task card will offer to give the player a certain number of Progress Points, for a certain amount of money. When you reach 12 progress points, you finish, and all the other players continue. You lose if you run out of money. In our game, we where supposed to come up with 10 tectonic concepts to include in our game. We struggled with this but we eventually came up with them.

Evidence Of Learning  

Curricular Competencies

Evaluating

This project was a lot harder than I thought. As I mentioned above, our game had to include 10 tectonic concepts. This was easily the most difficult part of the project, but we eventually figured it out. We did improve the quality of our work as our weather emoji has gotten better every time. I am happy with the grade we got on the final project. I think that me and Ben put in a good amount of work and dedication to our idea that formed into a good game.

Understanding And Solving

I think what led to our goal was lots and lots of revisions, re-editing and rethinking. The idea of our game has shifted a lot through the last few weeks, but I think where we ended it was the best possible state.We also spent lots of time of the project learning tectonic concepts and probability. I wrote down some of the concepts I learned in a Mind Node which I have included in the “Evidence Of Learning” section. We also learned how to calculate probability using a deck of cards.

Questioning and Predicting

During the project we had to answer several difficult questions. “How can we relate the science concepts to the game,” “How can you calculate probability in your game,” and the driving question: “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design.” I think I am now able to answer all these questions. I have already answered the driving question so I will just answer the other two. First, we related the science concepts to the game by making some tectonic concepts as Chance Cards and Area Cards in the game. We answered the second question the same way we learned it: calculating the chances of rolling dice and picking up cards. In our game rules we calculated: Rolling a 6 on one dice and getting an even number on the other: 1/12, the chance of landing on payday square and rolling a 2 on two dices: 1/756, and the chance of picking up a chance card and rolling an even number: 1/12