Re: [piecepack] Re: JCD Piecepack Update from Blue Panther

["Kistaro Windrider" <kistaro@...>]

> If you are referring to whether or not someone could tell the difference
> between disks by touch, the birch is pretty consistent in terms of grain,
> but with the oak it may be possible to feel the grain a little.

The concern with touch isn't so much the grain as with reading the
face of the piece, braile-style. Tiles can be shuffled face-down (if
the grain isn't a giveaway), but coins have hidden information on both
sides, potentially, so they have to be drawn. I think the concern is
about being able to feel the shape of a Sun relative to the shape of a
Moon.

It's a trade-off. I suspect that individual Suns (fr'ex) are less
likely to be distinguishible than their stamp-printed colorful
counterparts, but it might be possible to tell a Sun apart from a Moon
in the bag.

Note that this problem can be solved at tournaments for about $1.50 if
the players will cooperate: (cheap, inexpensive stretch-material)
gloves required for blind bag draws.

>  All
> components get a protective coat of polyurethane which tends to make them
> feel pretty similar.   Travel set will be birch so it should be pretty good
> for blind draws.

Although it might not be an issue anyway! If you are intending to
create a Travel Size set, I'll wait for its release. (If you aren't,
I'll still wait a while because my college-student budget is stretched
thin with my addiction to science fiction novels anyway.) Not for any
tactile considerations, but because I already have a perfectly
reasonable regular-sized set (if not quite indistinguishable enough
for tournament play), but getting a set of different suits from you
wouldn't do as much good as I might hope because I still can't make an
eight-suit game of it..

> With regards to the exact size of the travel set - the tiles could be 1"
> versus the 2" size of the normal tiles.  The question then becomes one of
> scale - with 1" tiles, the disks and pawns would have to be pretty small,
> and the symbols on them even smaller.  The resolution is not an issue here,
> but my gamer eyesight isn't what it used to be...

So how about we all invent yet another PiecePack suit design- the same
suits that exist, but stripped down to be even more abstract than the
JCD set, designed for maximal visibility at small sizes?  I don't have
a good mental image of the JCD design in front of me, so I'm not sure
how well it works when shrunken, or what modifications should be made.
It could be an interesting community project.

--Adam B. Norberg, who regrettably has an allergy to oak but will
probably buy a birch set eventually