My wife has just finished a first run at making Dragonchess boards out of fused glass.  I'd like to get some feedback on how this prototype turned out.

This is the earth level board.  It's built according to the specifications laid out by Gary Gygax in Dragon #100.  The board is made of 101 individual pieces of glass:  96 colored pieces cut to 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 inch squares, 4 clear border pieces, and a single clear base piece on which the others are laid.  The dimensions of the board are 15" x 21", with the playing surface measuring 12" x 18".  Those are 25mm Grenadier fighting men on the board.  After the pieces are cut, assembled, and laid out, they are fused in a glass kiln in a process that takes about 8 hours to complete.  

The surface is smooth after the pieces fuse together.  The edges are straight and even - the curvature that appears in the straight-down shot is due to my camera lens.  As opposed to the stained glass approach, glass fusing eliminates the lead border or gutter that would otherwise hold the pieces together.  There are some bubble-like irregularities on the back of the board (they resemble water droplets in the photo of the board against the window) that will be ground down.

The board is 6mm thick, and weighs about 4 pounds.  It's amazingly sturdy and robust.  

We're working on the other two boards to complete a set, and will try to get it up on ebay within the next couple of weeks or so.

Any feedback - positive or negative - would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Stephen


 

hey stephen

i think that it looks great chummer!

definately a cool way of doing things and i am sure there will be plenty of demand.

Al

Isn't this a non-standard chess board?  It looks too long.  Special rules?

I like the basic design.  I think blue and gold would be better, or red and black or other color combinations.  

afoolandhis$ wrote:Thanks for the feedback, guys.

I forgot to mention that this board is amber and green. I guess the colors don't show up that well in the pics.

Gro, my wife wants to put it up on ebay for the exposure. She's pretty excited to see what happens.

I'll be posting more pics as the project progresses. Thanks for looking!

so right guys, each of us has to hit the page 50 times

MShipley88 wrote:Isn't this a non-standard chess board? It looks too long. Special rules?

Mark, the rules for DragonChess were published in Dragon 100 as a companion to Gygax's first published Gord story, "At Midnight Blackcat Comes" and they were also published on the WotC site for awhile too; I'm working on getting the file hosted at Canonfire!, but in the meanwhile you can download it at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/3956/dchess.txt

This article basically reprints the rules from Dragon 100 and adds some additional pieces of lore about DragonChess in the World of Greyhawk; the additions were done by Roger E. Moore.

This strand has made me wonder where the chess set I painted for GenCon 2001 has gone.  

    I put miniatures atop stacked checkers (stacked higher for more powerful pieces) and glued them together with coins in between to make them feel heavy.  When painted with metalic black acrylics the bases looked like they were metal and people who passed our booth really liked them.

   I think I gave the set to our company president, who had footed the bill for the miniatures.  I had better find out where he put them before they go the way of so many other game materials.  

Mark

The final (sky-level) board is in the kiln, and we're planning to put up the whole set on ebay this weekend.  I'll post it in the Classifieds when it goes up.  We're very excited to see what happens!

Many thanks to those who posted feedback.  My wife was quite surprised to see there actually is some interest in this thing.

-Stephen

grodog wrote:They look great, Stephen. I can't wait for them to arrive

Yes, I was taking an interest in the bidding, Allan!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 8758092558