LL EduCATE: Introduction to Engineering Concepts

Clausewitzian Chess | Scenario 3: Your Design

 

Step 1: Setup & Materials  

This scenario is entirely yours to design and build. Depending on your goal, determine which Piece Configuration settings make the most sense to change and modify them accordingly.

Step 2: Design & Build 

Knowing what you now know from running the first two scenarios, design a new scenario based on one of the following suggestions. You can consider experimenting with the friction as an example.

While designing and building the scenario, consider what limitations your settings will pose on the players and how that might change the difficulty of the game and your play style. Some examples are as follows: 

Win-Win Situation

• Design a scenario where both players can win. 
• (Hint: Think about how the game decides what a win is to each side.) 

Do I have to?

• Design a situation where a subset of 2-3 kinds of pieces of your choice will occasionally refuse to obey commands. 

Your Own Creation

• Design a situation that combines two or more of the settings in a way that sounds interesting to you.

As you design, consider the following questions.

1. What settings will you choose to combine and why? How will the settings help or hurt each other?
2. How do the settings give an advantage or disadvantage to one or both players?
3. How might the resulting combination of settings change your strategy?

Step 3: Evaluate & Reflect 

This third scenario is truly your own and reflects your creativity and ideas from design to building to evaluation. First run your scenario and check in with yourself occasionally to see what you observe about the changes in the scenario and how you react to them. After the game, return here to continue.

Now, having run your scenario, take a moment now to reflect on your development process.

1. What steps did you take to design your scenario?
2. What limitations did you think of and account for while designing and building your scenario?
3. How was your strategy affected by your findings from the first two scenarios?
4. What else did you observe? What were questions you had at the start that were addressed by your experimentation? What else would be interesting to explore in the future?