PP - first thoughts: specs, pawns, cards, and playtest requests

["david_bruce_cousins" <david.cousins@...>]

Hi there, 
I've recently picked up the piecepack and found it to be all I had 
hoped. My hats off to "ALL INVOLVED"

First, forgive me for some pontification....

I've noticed some thoughts going around for modifications to PP, and 
the flavor of the discussion reminds me of the many open software 
specifications I've seen. I believe that there should be some ground 
rules developed for adding to the PP spec (forgive me if there are, 
but if so I have missed them). 
For an open software spec, usually these go something like this:
There is an open period for proposing additions/changes to the spec. 
They are collected and the results redistributed for intereseted 
parties to mull and haggle over. 
After a predetermined review period, the people 
involved vote on adding each one of them in. Sooner or later everyone 
is satisfied, and a final draft is passed around for one more review 
cycle. The final spec is then released.

There has been lots of interesting discussion about upgrading the 
pawns. I am with the "upgrade" party (sorry Jim, I know you designed 
direction out of your games, but I designed it IN mine). I think the 
pawns are the only component in the Mesomorph PiecePack that didn't 
get due justice (sorry guys). 
I personally think the next generation pawns should be directional, 
invertable, and have at least 6 sides (with each marked like one side 
of a piecepack die), maybe even eight sides! Think of all the things 
you could use them for: as scoring markers, roll them as 
dice, and on and on. I realize however, that this is a really big 
change! 

As for these kind of changes to the "spec", there is always the issue 
"what about those who already have bought a PP?" or worse yet "I'm a 
manufacturer and I have 1000 copies of rev1.0 in my basement!". Same 
problem happens with software! 

However, by following the example of the software major.minor
revision model, one could add minor changes to the spec by bumping up 
the minor revision number as long as a current PP set owner could 
easily add with minor modifications to their current set (e.g. adding 
a dot to each pawn to indicate spacing), whereas a major mod, like
new 
pieces (or my radically different polygonal invertable directional 
pawns) require bumping up the major rev number. Manufacturers would 
only have to "retool" a new set to follow the major revision numbers. 
One could also produce upgrade kits (a PiecePackPatch) to go from say 
Release 1 to 2 which only included the modified or additional pieces.

Enough pontificating! Thanks to you if you're still reading!
=================

I've written a solitare game that I'd like playtesting input for, so 
please rsvp via email if you are interested.

I've also got a little robot battle game called BattlePack that uses 
the tiles in a hexagonal(!) multi level board. That one needs alot 
more playtesting, and a bit of thinning out (you could go overboard 
very easily adding optional rules). Again email if interested.

Finally, I had been thinking of ways to add cards to the PP. I wanted 
at the least a set of 20 cards that mirrored the 20 tiles. Most ways 
of home fabricating cards (that I know of) are either expensive or 
give cruddy results.  The answer hit me square in the face, when my 
kids asked me to play the card game UNO. Uno has 4 suits the same 
colors as PP and the cards are numbered from 1 to 9 twice, a single
zero, and a mess of other cards you could consider using. 

I'm currently working on a train game using PP and an UNO deck. UNO 
has the advantage of being very easy to get. I don't think there are
copyright problems as long as you note that UNO is a registered 
trademark etc. etc. and don't try to put to many UNO rules into your 
game. Any feedback on this idea would be greatly appreciated.

There, that's enough. Now I'd better finish writing up those rules.
Dave Cousins
Barrington RI