Re: [piecepack] Croquet as a piecepack tatbletop flicking game

[Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

On Sat, Oct 05, 2002 at 12:03:21AM -0700, Mark Biggar wrote:
> I have been going over my write up of the Croquet rules in preperation
> to submitting them to Karol to put in the www.piecepack.org games page 
> and it occured to me that I don't specify what it means to flick a coin.

Not surprising you should say that; I have been facing the same
question in the Tabletop Castle Croquet rules.  (They are not based
_textually_ on your Tabletop Croquet rules, BTW, but I am giving you
credit for the idea of turning croquet games into piecepack flicking
games, Mark.)

> So in the groups opinion:
> 
> 1) Do I need to define flicking as part of the rules?

Yes, definitely; not everyone is familiar with this sort of game, or
understands flicking "protocols" in general.

> 2) if so, what is a good definition to use?

We tried Tabletop Castle Croquet a couple of weeks ago, and one of the
people who played with us was a Crokinole fanatic.  I asked him about
the best way to define flicking (for my own rules), and he said the
main thing to emphasise is that _you can only use one finger_.  (This
is partly what I meant by "flicking protocol"; I'm sure there are some
other little rules in Crokinole he didn't tell us.)

> I guess I could crib something from one of the online Cronkinole
> rules or from the piecepack soccer rules.

This is probably a good idea.  I checked the piecepack Soccer rules
and there's not much of a definition therein, IIRC.  I have downloaded
some of the online Crokinole rules to my PDA but have not had much
time to check them out lately.  They are probably a likely place to
find a good, clear definition, though.  I would recommend grabbing
some material on Croquet from some good public domain rules for that
game as well, unless you expect people who play your tabletop version
to already be familiar with the regular game.  That's what I'm going
to do, particularly as Castle Croquet is based on the Victorian
version of Croquet, which differs in a number of ways from the game as
it is played today, both in rules and in game jargon.

BTW, in order to avoid confusion between Tabletop Croquet and Tabletop
Castle Croquet, I am thinking of renaming the latter to Castle
Crokinole or perhaps Castle Croquetnole. :-)

Ron H-E

-- 
         Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... & rwhe@...
           Center for Ludic Synergy, Seattle Cosmic Game Night, 
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