Re: piecepackplus

["Clark D. Rodeffer" <cdrodeffer@...>]

I don't usually get into politics, but in the effort of bringing peace
back to the piecepack group, I thought I'd climb up on my soapbox
anyway. Rant ahead - that's your fair warning.

On the one hand, I really like the piecepack just as it was designed.
It's simple, elegant, and can be used to play lots of interesting
games without any modification whatsoever. The original piecepack,
with its standardized anatomy and vocabulary, is also very helpful for
ruleset authors and makes it easy to teach new games to people who
already have some familiarity with the piecepack. And the truth is,
sometimes being constrained by an existing design can lead to
inspiration. To wit, the previous piecepack ruleset design contests.
Once a constraint had been placed for the contest, inspiration
followed, and that eventually led to several groups of great rulesets.

But on the other hand, I also really like the idea of being able to
add a fifth (or sixth, or tenth) suit, especially if it makes existing
piecepack games playable with larger numbers of players or opens up
new horizons for game design. So while the standard suits are
wonderful, I'm not married to the idea that "only THIS set of symbols,
colors and suit names" may be used to make piecepacks (or piecepacks
expanded, or piecepacks plus, or piecepack compatible systems, or
whatever) or to play piecepack games. I especially don't like the idea
of arbitrarily forbidding the use of expansions or extra suits,
especially if it would allow more players or encourage new game designs.

In my humble opinion, the root of the argument boils down to a
psychological attachment. Since August of 2000 when James Kyle
released the piecepack for public consumption, a body of work has
emerged. I read through this whole archive within the space of about a
few days, and from that perspective, the development is easy to see.
There are now dozens of published rulesets with probably dozens more
in the works. Many sets (numbers are unknown, but it's probably on the
order of at least a couple hundred) of commercially produced
piecepacks have been sold, and numerous others have either been
hand-made or simply printed from the PDFs. All this represents a
significant investment of time, effort and money from the piecepack
designer, its manufacturers, ruleset authors and play testers, contest
judges, typesetters, trophy cloth makers, etc. Naturally, no one wants
to feel like these efforts were wasted, hence a tendancy to reject
anything that might be conceived as a threat. Subconsciously, any
suggested change or addition can be conceived as such a threat,
whether or not it really is or was meant as such. When you put these
concepts into words, they start to sound kind of silly.

Is the piecepack standard going to change now that some manufacturers
use a different symbol for their arms suits? Will I need to buy a new
piecepack now that this or that expansion is out? Will my old
non-directional pawns still work now that directional pawns are also
available? Will all of my rulesets need to be re-written so people who
buy that other flavor of piecepack will understand them? Will I need
to change the graphics or colors I use for my commercially produced
piecepacks or rulesets? Will the commercial availability of the
piecepack from multiple sources force one or all of them out of
business? Will this particular piecepack expansion that bears some
passing geometric similarity to another game system literally take
money out of the pockets of other deserving game manufacturers by
luring players to the piecepack, making them forever renounce that
other system like a bad religion? Now that this expansion is
available, will I need to write all of my new rulesets to take
advantage of the expansion or else become the laughing stock of the
piecepack community? Has the new piecepack XP been properly tested and
debugged? Will I need to relearn a whole new vocabulary and language
syntax in order to get the most from the latest piecepack plug-in?

Enough of that nonsense. I'm of the opinion that the piecepack, as
designed, is what it is. Most authors probably will (and probably
should) continue to write rulesets to the standard. And most piecepack
manufacturers probably will (and probably should) continue to make and
sell piecepacks that conform to the existing standard, at least within
recognizable limits. But I also believe that the piecepack system is
robust enough to handle whatever additions or minor remodeling that
reasonable people are willing to do, and welcome additions,
expansions, plusses, and whatever makes the piecepack even better. I
certainly wouldn't begrudge someone their choices, and I may
occasionally welcome a fifth player to my table.

Clark