Thursday, June 2, 2011

Woodburning and Pai Sho

Last Sunday I bought a new toy. I've been having a bit of fun with my new wood burner. I've only done a bit of practicing so far to figure out how a few of the 11 tips work. I'm loving it. I've already ordered the 108 blank round wood discs I will need to make Pai Sho pieces. For those of you who don't know, Pai Sho is a fictional game played by the characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender (an American animated T.V. series). From the various screen shots and in series use of the game several fans have worked out some playable rules for Pai Sho. I've been following the progress on creating the (unofficial) variations of the game and really want to play it for myself. So the plan is to make a set of the tiles and a travel board (either laminated paper or maybe an imprinted/burned/embossed animal hide) at first. Eventually I plan on making an actual Pai Sho table - I figure it would function as a pretty coffee table when not in use for games.

I've also been looking at making a piecepack (follow the link to learn more). A piecepack is the following set of game pieces:
24 tiles (square):
one tile per suit/value pair
suits are Suns, Moons, Crowns, Arms (but I've seen different suits and plan on making a themed piecepack)
values are null, ace, 2, 3, 4, 5
faces are marked with value at center and a small suit symbol at top-left, both in color to match suit
backs are marked with small black crosses to suggest a division into four square quarters

24 coins (round):
one tile per suit/value pair
suits are Suns, Moons, Crowns, Arms (again, I'm planning on using a theme set of suits)
values are null, ace, 2, 3, 4, 5
faces are marked with value in black (aces are spiral symbols)
backs are marked with suit in appropriate color
both fronts and backs are marked with a small mark near the edge to indicate direction

4 dice (cubic):
one die per suit
suits are Suns, Moons, Crowns, Arms (I'll be changing the suits to fit my theme)
values on each die are null, ace, 2, 3, 4, 5
die sides are marked with value in color to match suit

4 pawns (non-specific shape):
one pawn per color (I'm thinking 2 male and 2 female pawn people)

So I need to figure out what theme to use.
Theme: Possible Suits
Star Wars: Imperial Cog, Rebel Alliance Symbol, Mythosaur skull (symbol of the Mand'alor), Sith Symbol, Jedi Symbol - I think the only issue with this one would be picking which four symbols to use
Avatar - The Last Airbender: Earth, Water, Air, Fire - this one was easy
Harry Potter: Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw (might have to save this for a House Cup project)
Firefly: Hands of Blue (blue), Brown Coat(brown), Wash's Dinos (orange), Vera (silver), cupcake dress (pink)
The fandom list goes on...

Also I am currently reading The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny - which includes all 10 books in the Amber Chronicles, because a friend of mine recommended it. I've already finished book one and am definitely enjoying it.

2 comments:

  1. Aah, finally!! I tried to comment like Friday, but for some reason whenever I visited a blog, it would say I wasn't logged in... I just came from my dashboard...

    ANYWAY! This is such a cool way to break in a wood burner. As for the piecepack...do them all? Because there's no way I could throw in a vote for just one of those themes. :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. I probably will end up doing them all and some for a few other fandoms as well. I figure if I have a lot of fun making them - I may end up making a lot of Christmas presents this year.

    ReplyDelete