Re: ANNOUNCING THE 7th PIECEPACK GAME DESIGN COMPETITION: Good Portsmanship

["mschoessow" <mikeschoessow@...>]

Hi Ron and everyone,

Great idea for a contest theme Ron! There has been a bit of porting of
existing games in the past but I suspect that most designers feel
there is more cachet to submitting an original design. But being able
to play more of the existing <great games>, comercial and historical,
would be fantastic and must be considered a very good thing for
piecepack.

I agree that making necessary rule changes to facilitate the use of a
piecepack should not necessarily be judged a bad thing and could, in
many cases be judged positively. However I hope that if the author can
work out a scheme for sticking mostly or entirely to the original
rules of a highly regarded commercial game through clever or
innovative use of the piecepack bits, this would be judged a positive
thing.


I have a couple of suggestions regarding the contest rules.

Firstly, I believe there would be more and, in some cases, potentially
better entries if you allowed some additional very common components
such as pennies and nickels, etc. Everybody has these and their use
substantially increases flexibility, which is particularly important
with the present theme. In the past I have tried to restrict my games
to utilizing only the components that are included within the
piecepack because this just seems cleaner and more self-contained, and
I continue to strive for that. However I have come around to the idea
that if the game can be made substantially better or more fun if the
use of pennies or whatever is allowed (as undifferentiated markers or
as money etc.), or especially if the use of such additional components
is what makes a game possible in the first place, then they are not a
bad thing. I believe that allowing such components would increase the
number of contest entries, especially the number of ones that port
major German board games. And coins as money are so much more
satisfying than paper and pencil.

Secondly, I have reservations about the format restrictions regarding
anonymity. I appreciate the intention and the fact that we, as a
group, have become comfortable with the requirement of anonymity. I
think it has been a good thing and I am happy that you suggested it
after the close of the second contest; it has served us well since
that time. I also agree with your supposition that long-time piecepack
enthusiasts will likely be able to identify some authors by their
fonts and figures. Having said this however, I believe that strict
author anonymity as a requirement may be becoming untenable and here's
why.

1) Even if the fonts and figures are standardized, long-time piecepack
enthusiasts will undoubtedly recognize the writing and organizational
styles of some authors, so restricting the fonts and figures doesn't
really fix the problem.

2) One of the concerns in any piecpack design contest has been
attracting enough entrants. Some contests have fared better than
others in this respect and it's not easy to predict in advance how the
turn-out will be with each new contest. The format restrictions will
certainly not help this and will likely discourage some authors from
entering at all. It's a lot of work coming up with a well written,
well organized set of rules, in some cases fully as difficult as
coming up with the game mechanics themselves and many authors take
evident pride in doing a good job. Asking authors to first submit the
rules in one format, not to their liking, and then, after the close of
the contest, revising the format and adding different figures and
headers potentially adds quite a bit more work for those authors who
are determined to do the best job they can in the style they feel is
best and is sure to discourage some from entering the contest.

3) Many other game design contests don't have these requirements, or
have other ways to get around them. If you feel it's a problem that
play-testers might recognize rules styles you could, for example, not
let the other play-testers see the rules; you would just describe them
to the other players before the game (note, describe, not read
verbatim). And, of course, you would not vote on which game was best,
even though you had the fun of participating in play-testing. Here's
another alternative: someone else in your play-test group describes
the rules to the players, including you. This way you get to vote (or
be the sole judge, whatever) without being biased by having seen the
fonts and figures styles. This seems to me a fairly simple and
straight-forward way to preserve author anonimity without putting a
burden on the authors regarding rules writing. It would also be good
to consider non-piecepack-group potential authors (in the past,
piecepack design contest rules have usually been posted on many other
boardgame-related sites and sent to appropriate magazines, etc.) who 
might be even more put-off by the format restrictions.

4) Lastly, after thinking about this afresh I'm not convinced that non-
anonimity is a problem. I suppose the argument is that the group "long
time members" might be inclined, as judges, to vote for each other's
games but, speaking for myself, I love to see new group members do
well so I don't think that would be the case for me, and I suspect not
for most members. And really, it's not as if we're awarding giant cash
prizes, new cars, or trips to Tahiti as prizes. Let's keep this in
perspective as we consider added burdens. I firmly believe that the
sort of people who participate in and judge the piecepack contests are
honestly interested in awarding the prize to the best game, whoever
the author is. Some on-line groups on various topics frequently get
very acromonious postings and challenges but that hasn't happened here
and I think it reflects the character of the group members. I don't
think there will be challenges against the judgement if the contests
were not anonomous.

This is still early days in the contest. Surely nobody has yet gotten
to the rule writing stage in their entry. I think you still have the
reasonable option of revising the rules at this time if you wish.



I hope the contest goes well and I urge group members to consider
participating. I'm starting to think about ideas myself, even though
I'm at an extremely busy (product intro) stage at work right now, and
if either my brother Steve or I come up with an inspiration over the
next month we'll probably submit a joint entry. Thanks very much Ron
for resurrecting the design contests!


-Mike