I was going to post this straight to the wiki under the “Loose Mechanics” heading Leonard set up, but then I was like, no. Blog for throughput, wiki for retention. If it goes to the wiki, it’s because it got discussed here first.

So! Protodice.

Pipped dice are protodice; numbered dice are developed dice. At certain times, you may roll a pipped (six-sided) die and multiply the result by two. It’s then exchanged for a die with that number of sides (d2, d4, d6, d8, d10 or d12, where “d2″ just means “a coin”). At certain other times, you may exchange a developed die or dice showing a combined 8 or more for a new protodie.

I never thought when I wrote NewsBruiser’s story submission feature that I would one day use it myself…

For a long time I’ve wanted to make a game around the North American Industry Classification System. My attempts to date to create such a game have foundered. Here’s the best one I’ve come up with, which I call “Bidding War”.

Each player picks an industry from the NAICS, deliberately or at random. Enter the name of your industry into the search box at eBay (no quotes, be sure to check “search title and description”). You’re trying to get the top search result for the industry name to be something very expensive.

If there is a match, note the top bid (or starting bid, if there are no bids) for the first search result. The player whose bid is higher wins the round.

If there are no matches, remove one word from the right-hand side of the description and search again. In the unlikely event that none of the words match, choose a different industry and start over.

Sample game: I choose “Seamless rolled ring forgings, ferrous, made in steel mills”. You choose “Motor vehicle wheels, new”. Your search turns up a Toyota pickup with a top bid of $16,995.00. Not bad. But for some reason, “Seamless rolled ring” turns up a “SiteWatch Systems Wireless Network Video Solar Trailer” (”Long-Range Voice Data and Video Surveillance over Wi-Fi”) with an asking price of $23,750.00. I win.

You could also play only comparing the top bids of items that have bids, to eliminate way-overpriced junk from consideration. In that case you would have won that round, because the first item in my search results that has a bid is an RV (top bid: $13,999.00).

See, ’cause it’s like War, except with eBay… never mind.

Anyway, does anyone have ideas for games that use this dataset but are real games?