pp modifications

["Troy Holaday" <tholaday@...>]

Wow.  I have been at a meeting in the state capital all day.  Got back into town just in time to have a beer with my boss (Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout - the best) and drop by to check my email before going home.  Quite a flurry of responses to my initial posting.  My thoughts are:

Interesting.  The use of the number sides of tiles is a lot more prevalent than I would have thought and I had not considered the idea that placing any suit/value data on the opposite side of the tile meant 'giving away' information and thus the modification does some substantial 'harm' to the original design.  Also, I agree that the system needs to retain an almost archetypal simplicity.  The trick is to get it to produce as many effects as possible without making it ridiculously complex.  If you are a role playing game fanatic, you will understand the analogy of GURPS.  Neat system, but tries to do too much and gets way too complicated once you start adding all the additional effects (despite the fact that they are merely 'additive').

A more conservative suggestion or two:

Placing a small, but discernable, black dot (or hollow dot) at the intersection of the + on the grid side of the tile (rather than a suit sign as suggested before).  This accomplishes a distinction, but adds almost no visual complexity.  Further, it does not give away any info.

I suppose you are right about shifting a row of tiles one way, by half the length of the surrounding rows, to make a hex board.  The visual space will be somewhat warped, in comparison to a hex or 'beehive' map, but the effect is the same.  I still wonder about making more use of that side of the tile, though.  There is something about the inordinately large numbers that seems a bit of a waste to me.  It's so damn suggestive, I just want to stick something in all that white space.  I know it would have to be done with great care, though.  Also, why the suit sign for the ace tile, rather than the swirly icon that looks like a galaxy.  I like that a lot and you already had the suit in the upper left.  I understand this substitution on the dice, because of space, but it looks kind of redundant on the ace tiles.  The swirly and the null are one of my favorite features of the coins, and my first detailed design (which will be submitted for the contest) uses them fairly heavily as effect icons (rather than value markers).  Had a swirly been on the tile, I think I would have used that to.  In fact, I know I would have.

P.S. I would like to thank James for not being defensive about his tiles, which is a matter quite apart from generousity of placing them in the public domain in the first place.  The more I explore the design the more potential I think it has and the less I feel inclined to modify it.

Troy Holaday
Assistant Director of Academic Systems
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
(765) 285-3936
(765) 285-2082 - fax