piecepack design

[Michael Schoessow <mschoessow@...>]

Since there's been more discussion of piecepack design lately I'll post my
thoughts as well. I'm not planning to build my own set any time soon but I
still like to think about what my ideal piecepack would look like.

The tiles would be 3"x3" and 0.25" thick, and be made of opaque white
acrylic. On the grid side the lines would be battleship gray, and 1/16"
wide. There would also be 1/32" gray lines running along the edges of the
tiles, so that when a group of tiles was assembled into a board the
resulting grid pattern would be an unbroken network of squares, all outlined
with 1/16" wide gray lines. The suit side of the tiles would use the same
motif that the present Mesomorph sets use except that the moon suit would be
yellow (a slightly orangey yellow to give better contrast against the white
background than lemon yellow would) instead of black. The four colors would
then be red, blue, green, and yellow.

The coins would be 1 1/8" in diameter and 1/8" thick, and would be made of
acrylic, like the tiles. They would be a light gray color (maybe a silvery
gray). The suit sides of the coins would show the suit symbols in the suit
colors. The numbers on the other side would be black. The swirl symbol would
be retained to represent the aces and it would be black as well. Since black
would no longer used as a suit color, rapid sorting of coins between suit
side and number side would become easier. The short radial line segments
would be retained on both sides of the coins for directional indication.
They would be 3/16" long and 1/16" wide, and be slate gray in color.

The pawns would be molded of colored, glossy plastic (whatever the plastic
is that's used for tournament chessmen). They would have 7/8" round bases
with felt bottoms, be 2" high, and be weighted to 2 oz. Some form of
directional cue would be molded into the "heads" of the pawns in such a way
that it was visible from at least three sides. The pawn colors would match
the suit colors, one pawn of each color. I would also consider adding a
fifth, black, pawn to the set.

The four dice would be standard 19mm resin dice, and would be colored to
match the suit colors, one die of each color. The numbers on the dice would
be white and the ace symbols would be the suit icons shown as white outline
drawings. By coloring the dice themselves (rather than using colored
printing on neutral-colored dice) their use as substitute pawns becomes more
palatable in games requiring more than one pawn per color or just more pawns
in general.

Lastly, I also gave some thought to alternatives for making the set more
convenient for people with reduced color perception. The pawn design could
be changed to give the pawns flat tops (like a chess rook without the
battlement wall). Then the appropriate suit symbol could be printed on the
flat top of each pawn, along with a directional cue. These would both be
visible from any direction. There are a couple of ways I can think of to
modify the dice markings. One would be to simply include a small suit icon
on each face. Another possibility might be to change the 2 through 5 from
printed numerals to printed pips, with the pips being tiny suit symbols
rather the usual round dots. A third possibility would be to print a large
suit symbol (as large as will fit) on each face in outline, and then print
the numeral inside the suit symbol outline. The null face would not have
anything printed within the suit symbol and the ace face would have a solid
(filled in) suit symbol instead of an outline.


-Mike Schoessow