Re: [piecepack] Genesis, Cloning, Possibilities

[Doug Orleans <dougo@...>]

jdroscha@... writes:
 >    As far as I know, no other game set was designed in this way.  The 
 > Icehouse set, for example, was created specifically to play Icehouse 
 > and was later found to be suitable for the development of several 
 > other games.  But because of the way it came into being, it lacks 
 > some common gaming elements such as a board, a convenient randomizer, 
 > and convenient information hiding.

Interesting.  Do you have a list of the particular elements you had in 
mind when you designed it?

 >    This is an interesting perception, as none of the existing 
 > piecepack games (that I can think of) are adaptions of other games 
 > (unless you count the real-life equivalents of Soccer and Baseball).  
 > Some of the games certainly resemble other games in their genre; 
 > MotoX, for example, necessarily has similarities to other racing 
 > games.  But most of the piecepack games contain mechanics that, at 
 > least to me, are brand new.

Perhaps "adaptation" is too strong a word (and I certainly didn't mean 
"clone").  You're right, there are new and interesting mechanics, but
most of the games fit pretty well into existing genres.  Dungeon Crawl 
is a bit like Dungeon Quest or Talisman (or maybe Wiz War); Power
Lines is similar to Poker Solitaire/Cribbage Squares/Auf Heller und
Pfennig; Takeover bears a strong resemblance to Acquire.

 > I personally have never seen anything remotely 
 > similar to the very three-dimensional Hanging Gardens (Mik Svellov's 
 > favorite of the bunch so far).

I think it shares a family resemblance to Torres (3-d tile laying).  I 
can believe that it was an independent creation (perhaps even
pre-dating Torres) but I think many people are going to think it was
inspired by Torres.

This isn't really a bad thing; Mu could be considered an "adaptation"
of contract bridge (trick-taking partnership card game where you bid
on the trump suit) but it's also pretty unique in that it's a 5-player
version with variable partnerships (plus the idea of a bipartite trump
suit, which might include numbers).  I guess I was thinking of
Icehouse, which has no resemblance to anything at all, really.  But
like I said before, I doubt that the actual Icehouse game is the
primary driver of sales of Icehouse sets these days.

 >    If the games all feel like clones to people, I certainly will not 
 > argue against that notion, but I wish to make it clear that none of 
 > the piecepack games (that I have) written so far were intended mimic 
 > existing games.

Fair enough.  It's an interesting accident that Hanging Gardens
resembles Torres.

 > I am also excited by the possibilities of combining the piecepack 
 > with other various game sets.  In an article I wrote for Grampa 
 > Barmo's Discount Gaming Magazine, I briefly touched on ideas such as 
 > playing chess on a board of any shape (piecepack + chess), playing 
 > scrabble on a board of any shape (piecepack + Scrabble), combining 2 
 > or more piecepacks, or combining a piecepack with an Icehouse set.  
 > Jim Doherty has already combined a piecepack with the standard deck 
 > of playing cards to create Baseball.

Clearly you need to combine all of the above, plus Cosmic Encounter and
all of its expansion sets...  :)

--dougo@...