ANNOUNCING THE 7th PIECEPACK GAME DESIGN COMPETITION
=====================================================
Contest rules version 2, 2006-09-20
**Contest theme**: _Good Portsmanship._ In the spirit of free and open
source software and culture, every entry must be a
translation, or "port", of an existing game to the
[piecepack][0]. While this may seem like a mechanical
exercise at first glance. there is plenty of room
for the game designer's talents. Read on...
**Judge**: Ron Hale-Evans, the Port Authority ()
**Mediator**: Meredith Hale, The Eradicator! ()
**Contest Start**: Sunday, 3 September 2006.
**Deadline**: Sunday, 3 December 2006, 11:59:59 PM Pacific Time.
What you need to know
---------------------
This section contains the minimum information you need to enter
the contest.
### Porting ###
Porting non-free programs to free operating systems or just free
versions is a venerable tradition in the free software world.
Consider OpenOffice.org, which is a port of the proprietary Microsoft
Office application suite, the free and popular Firefox web browser, or
GNU/Linux, which is a rewrite of the proprietary Unix operating
system. Entrants to this contest will be doing a similar thing with
table games and the piecepack.
1. All submissions in this contest must be a port of another game to
the piecepack. The game selected may be a game from another game
system such as [Icehouse][1] or a standard deck of cards, or it may
be a "dedicated" game with its own custom board, cards, or other
bits, such as [Carcassonne][2].
2. Your game _must_ be playable with the standard piecepack, the
Playing Cards expansion, and/or the 4 Seasons Expansion, although
you may use any number of these three sets. A _limited_ number
(the fewer, the better) of everyday items such as pennies and
nickels, pen and paper, wristwatch or stopwatch, paper bag, even a
candle (as in Ice Floe) are within the bounds of the contest, but
requiring equipment from other games or game systems, such as
[Icehouse][1] pieces, Chess pieces, percentile dice, and so on, will
disqualify your game.
3. Using the piecepack must add value to your port in some way. See
**Example** for an example of how porting a game to the piecepack
changed it in an interesting way.
4. The port must not be trivial: there must be some intrinsic challenge
to porting the game. For example, given the existence of the
Playing Cards Expansion, some (but not all) card games would be
very easy to port to the piecepack; these would not "score" very
highly with respect to this criterion.
5. If two people submit ports of the same game, each will be
considered on its merits.
6. You must not submit a previously-released piecepack game as a
competing entry.
7. Please see the **Legal notes** section. All entries should follow
these guidelines.
### Submissions ###
1. Entries should be sent to The Eradicator (Meredith Hale) at
.
2. Submit your game with the Subject line of your email in the form
"Subject: Contest: {Entry Title}", for example, "Contest:
ChessPieceFace". This makes it much easier to go back to authors
with questions later.
3. Include the names and email addresses of any co-authors. The
author who submits the game will be considered the main contact.
4. All submissions _must_ include the following header information
as the first few lines of the rules:
> {Title}
> A Good Portsmanship game for the piecepack by {Author's Name}
> Based on {Original Game} by {Original Game's Author} **OR**
> Based on {Original Game} (Traditional)
> Version {Number}, {Date}
> Copyright 2006, {Author's Name}
> {Number of} players, {Number of} minutes
> Equipment: {Equipment Needed}
5. Each submission _must_ be freely redistributable or it cannot be
included on [Piecepack.org][3] and therefore will be
_disqualified_. However, authors may retain copyright. Specific
licensing information should be indicated at the _end of the
document_. See examples of licensing on the games posted at
[Piecepack.org][3].
6. Please proofread your ruleset before you submit it. Use
standard piecepack terminology and include any definitions of
terminology specific to the individual game. Please use the
[glossary at Piecepack.org][4] or the
[glossary at the Piecepack Wiki][5].
7. While authors are encouraged to submit their games as early as
feasible, it's OK to send updates based on playtesting until the
deadline. However, please try to submit games in a relatively
finished form.
* Please send in a complete version of the game ruleset if changes
are made.
* Highlighting changes will make it easier for the Port Authority
to see them.
8. The Eradicator will not judge content, only remove identifiable
text, fix text markup (see below), and check that all authors have
complied with the contest rules.
### Anonymity ###
As I've become familiar with the work of the designers in the
piecepack community, I've learned to tell some people's games a
light-year away because of their graphic design, clip art, writing
style, and so on. Because of this phenomenon, true anonymity has been
hard to achieve. I'd like to try some new procedures in this contest
that I hope will help alleviate these problems.
1. All entries must be submitted in plain text (ASCII) format.
Preferably, people will use the [Markdown][6] human-readable markup
language in which this very document is written. If you can't
figure out Markdown, don't worry; just do your best and send a
plain text document without Markdown.
2. If the submission meets the contest requirements, The Eradicator
will strip it of all authors' names, email addresses, and other
identifying information, and then validate the Markdown, fixing it
or marking up the document from scratch if necessary.
3. Next, The Eradicator will convert the entry to HTML and send it to
the Port Authority. The Port Authority will confirm receipt and The
Eradicator will pass confirmation along to the main contact. If the
submission does not meet requirements, then the main contact will
be notified. The Eradicator will also send the HTML version to the
author of the game, so that he can import it into a page layout or
word processing program such as Microsoft Word, in preparation for
post-contest release. (For your information, here is an
[HTML version][7] of this document. It was generated automatically
from the [original text version with Markdown][30].)
4. **Ports Illustrated**: Illustrations are optional, but if you use
them, they _must_ either be _photos of standard piecepack
equipment_, such as the Mesomorph editions, the printable versions
of the same available from [Piecepack.org][3], or the JCD
Piecepack, which is also available from Piecepack.org. Please email
The Eradicator () if you have questions about
whether a given piece of equipment is considered "standard".
5. In the contest version of your game, you must not use line art or
one of the several sets of piecepack clip art available. You _may_
replace the photos with clip art in the final version. The only
exception to the "no clip art" rule is that (by popular demand),
you may use the [piecepack module for VASSAL][29] to create
screenshots. VASSAL is written in Java, and runs on Windows
computers, Macintoshes, and GNU/Linux computers with little
trouble.
6. You _may_ mark up your graphics with lines, circles, arrows, and so
on, as with the photos in the [Alien City][8] PDF rules.
7. Make sure your graphics look good in black and white, since they
will probably be printed that way.
8. File types permitted for graphics include PNG, JPG, and GIF (PNG is
preferred). Illustrations should be named figure01.png,
figure02.jpg, and so on. Markdown allows embedded images; if you
can't figure out how to link to images, just say something like
"Figure 5 goes here" and The Eradicator will fix it before sending
it to the Port Authority.
### Judging ###
1. Judging will be subjective and based largely on how fun the game
seems to the Port Authority. Factors such as the following will be
considered, but ultimately it will be the completely subjective
opinion of the Port Authority that decides the winning entry.
* intrinsic challenge of the port
* ingenuity in shoehorning a game into the piecepack
* clever twists (something extra!)
* improvements on the original game
* emergent features (see **Example**)
* appropriate retheming
* clever titles
* humour
* integrity of final game
* balance of skill and luck
* clarity and completeness of rules
* time it takes to play
* replay value
* good taste in deciding which game to port
* overall "piecepackiness"
### Contest end ###
1. The winning entry will be announced as soon as it has been
selected.
2. After the announcement, the Port Authority will send feedback on
all entries to The Eradicator, who will send a copy of the feedback
to each of the authors.
* Authors are strongly encouraged to make any revisions to their
rulesets based on this or other feedback they have received since
submitting the entry, and then send an updated version to The
Eradicator.
* If the authors do not wish to make changes, then the main contact
should send a note to The Eradicator giving permission to post
the ruleset "as submitted".
* Authors are strongly encouraged to return the final version to The
Eradicator as soon as possible after they receive feedback.
3. Following the close of the competition, after the authors either
give permission to post their rulesets as submitted or send
updated versions, submitted games will be sent to the
[Piecepack.org][3] maintainers to be added to the games page
(a.k.a. [The Big Board][32]).
Additional information
----------------------
You don't need to know the following information to enter the contest,
but you probably want to.
### Sponsors and prizes ###
1. [Mesomorph Games][9]: Winner's choice of one Mesomorph Games
product.
2. [Enginuity Games][10]: A copy of their [Spicy Dice][11] game system.
Incidentally, Enginuity is currently running the second Spicy Dice
game design contest with a deadline of 30 June 2008 and a prize of
$1000 plus publication in the next Spicy Dice rulebook.
3. [Live Oak Games][12]: A copy of their [SiegeStones][13] game system.
Live Oak recently ran their own game design contest for
SiegeStones.
4. [Winged Elephant Designs][14]: Winner's choice of one Winged Elephant
Designs [gamer's T-shirt or other item][15], customised with a
message about the Good Portsmanship contest. WED may have some new
piecepack designs soon to choose from as well.
5. [Ron Hale-Evans][16]: A Good Portsmanship certificate suitable for
framing or pinning to the wall
6. [Piecepack.org][3]: Custody of the [Piecepack Trophy Cloth][17], a
card table tablecloth with a color piecepack suit emblem
embroidered on each side. The Trophy Cloth passes from the winner
of one contest to the winner of the next, with each signing and
dating the cloth before passing it on at the close of the next
competition.
The winner also receives the opportunity to define and judge the
next piecepack game design competition and arrange for the prizes.
However, agreement to this is not a requirement for entry, and the
winner may decline or suggest another judge.
### Legal notes ###
The following rules are for the legal protection of the authors, the
piecepack community, and me. Basically, if it's legal, it's OK to
enter in the contest.
1. You _may_ port a copyrighted game, but _not_ a patented one.
Copyright covers only the _expression_ of a game, such as the
graphical artwork, the text of the rules, and so on. Patents cover
the _idea_ behind a game, so porting a patented game is illegal,
because the idea would stay the same.
2. If you port a copyrighted game, you _must_ completely rewrite the
rules in your own words. The original text of the rules is covered
by the copyright, so it is illegal to copy it and simply change a
few words to apply to the piecepack (besides, that wouldn't be a
very good port).
3. If porting proprietary games makes you uncomfortable, feel free to
port a traditional game from the public domain. _No preference will
be given to ports of proprietary games over ports of public domain
ones, or vice versa._ **Example:** All else being equal, a port of
[Carcassonne][2] will _not_ be preferred to a port of Chess.
### Example ###
Here is an example of what I would consider a good port, and how you
can do creative game design while porting an existing game.
[Spam-O-Rama][18] by Clark Rodeffer was an entry in the
[recent Mesomorph Games design contest][19], but could have been an
entry in this one as well. Clark writes, "[Clans][20] is one of my
favorite short filler games from one of my favorite contemporary game
designers, Leo Colovini. Spam-O-Rama began as a piecepack adaptation
of Clans but gradually diverged from that path."
What's interesting to me about Spam-O-Rama is how it had to become a
different game from Clans because of both the constraints and features
of the piecepack. I imagine some of his design decisions ran something
like this:
1. Piecepack tiles were used for the Spam-O-Rama board, rather than
the custom-printed board that Clans uses. Clark did create a custom
scoreboard, but pen and paper would have served almost as well.
2. Since the scoring mechanism of Clans is highly dependent on its
special game board, a somewhat different scoring mechanism had to
be found. Adding together the coin and tile values was a natural
decision, given the structure of the piecepack.
3. Because players need to see the suit of the coins in play, the
coins have to be played face-down, which hides their values.
4. Because coins are flat, it's natural to stack them when they're
grouped together on tiles, hiding all coins in the stack except for
the top one.
5. Because of the last two facts, a strong memory element emerges in
Spam-O-Rama that is not present in Clans: players must remember
both the values of coins they placed on the board and which suits
each stack of coins contains. Failure to do so could mean defeat.
Thus, Spam-O-Rama (or at least my hypothetical reconstruction of
Clark's design process) is a good example of how making very simple
and natural design decisions when porting a game to the piecepack can
lead to interesting _emergent properties_ that were not in the
original design.
### General ###
Good Portsmanship is not a contest about synergy between games or game
systems, as Ludic Synergy, the second piecepack contest was. It is a
contest about porting games to the _piecepack_, and there is supposed
to be some challenge to it. If I commissioned you to translate a
German book (Eurogame) into English (piecepack) for me, and you
translated it into a mixture of English (piecepack) and Mandarin
Chinese (some other game or game system), I would be very
disappointed. Bearing this in mind, if you need 1700 special printed
chits so you can port Advanced Squad Leader to the piecepack, maybe
that's not an appropriate game to port -- for this contest, at least.
I selected the least restrictive, most generic format I could think
of: plain text. Entrants can optionally mark up their documents with
_emphasis_ and so on -- or not, and The Eradicator will add formatting
for them -- and in return they will receive a nice HTML document that
can be slurped up into Microsoft Word (most designers' preferred word
processor and layout program, as far as I can tell) via the HTML
import feature, and then fine-tuned with the appropriate fonts and
graphics and exported to PDF. If the entrants used Vassal, or shot
decent photos, they won't even have to come up with new illustrations.
Remember, you can still make your games look nice. The plain text
version is for anonymity's sake during the contest only. After the
contest, anything goes. It's important to understand the distinction
between the contest version (plain text with Markdown, photos,
converted to HTML) and the final version for submission to
Piecepack.org (let's say PDF with JCD Piecepack font characters and
custom illustrations). I couldn't stop designers from making the final
version pretty even if I wanted to. The version that most people will
see, _forever_, is the version that goes up on the games page at
Piecepack.org: your final version.
There are no explicit anonymity rules about writing style; I just want
to make people conscious of it. I don't want to squash the marvellous
creativity and individuality of people in the piecepack community, and
such a rule would be completely unenforceable anyway. It might be
fun, though, for piecepack designers to try to imitate one another's
styles in this contest, or to break out and write in a completely new
style.
You will be doing the piecepack community and gamers in general a
service if you port an out-of-print game. However, these are not
necessarily preferred.
Noncompeting entries are also welcome and may ignore the **Anonymity**
rules. If you have an idea for a quick, simple port of a game to the
piecepack, write it up and make it a noncompeting entry. You'll help
increase the diversity of piecepack games.
### Suggested reading ###
_Le Ton Beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language_ by Douglas
R. Hofstadter (Basic Books, 1998). Despite the French title, this
book about translation by the author of _Goedel, Escher, Bach_ is in
English. If you read nothing else while preparing for this contest, I
urge you to read Chapter 7 of this book, especially Hofstadter's
detailed discussion of [chesh][21]: a port of Chess from a square board
to a hexagonal one.
_Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain_ by
Ron Hale-Evans (O'Reilly Media, 2006). Yep, this is my book. You
don't have to buy it or even read it to enter or win the
contest. However, I do recommend you check out Hack #25, "Think
Analogically", which talks about analogical game design in more detail
than I can go into in these already lengthy contest rules. People who
think the equipment allowed in this contest is too limiting might also
want to read Hack #24, "Constrain Yourself", from the Creativity
chapter. Note that you can get a [free 14-day trial from Safari][22],
read the book online, and print out these hacks or whatever else you
find useful.
You might also like to look at the
[list of games already ported to the piecepack][31]
created by Jorge Arroyo Gonzalez. It was an inspiration while dreaming
up the contest rules.
### About the administrators ###
[Ron Hale-Evans][16] (the Port Authority) won the first public
piecepack game design competition, [Time Marches On][23], with his
wife [Marty Hale-Evans][24]. They co-authored the winning game
[KidSprout Jumboree][25]. He also recently won the
[first Mesomorph Games piecepack game design competition][19]
with his game [Piecepack Letterbox][26]. Because it had been two years
since the close of the sixth public competition, Group Projects, Ron
wrote the winners of that competition for permission to run the
seventh, as they had planned to do. With their blessing and the
blessing of the sixth competition's judge, Ron assumed the awesome
mantle of Port Authority.
Meredith Hale (The Eradicator) is the Education Manager at the Museum
of Glass by day, gamer and graduate student in Library & Information
Science by night. She's been playing board games for as long as she
can remember, ever since the buzzer from Operation scared her and made
her cry. Being the sister of Marty and Ron Hale-Evans further
encourages the gaming, along with participation in the excellent
[Seattle Cosmic][27] game group, where she met her fiance, Kisa. She
has playtested many piecepack games and has designed and made a "Four
Elements" piecepack set for Kisa. She can't wait to see what everyone
comes up with.
### Questions ###
Questions and comments are always welcome. Please send your questions
to The Eradicator , who will forward them to the
Port Authority. Likewise, if necessary, the Port Authority may send
questions to the ruleset authors via The Eradicator.
All entrants are encouraged to join the [piecepack mailing list][28]
immediately if they have not already done so.
> Good luck, good luck! Porting is such sweet sorrow,
> That I shall say good luck till it be morrow.
>
> --William Shakespiece (wait, that sounds naughty...)
[0]: http://www.piecepack.org
[1]: http://icehousegames.org/wiki/
[2]: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/822
[3]: http://www.piecepack.org
[4]: http://www.piecepack.org/Glossary.html
[5]: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/PiecepackGlossary
[6]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[7]: http://www.ludism.org/piecepack/pp7.html
[8]: http://www.piecepack.org/rules/AlienCity.pdf
[9]: http://www.mesomorph.com/
[10]: http://www.enginuity.com/
[11]: http://www.enginuity.com/spicydice.htm
[12]: http://www.liveoakgames.com/
[13]: http://siegestones.liveoakgames.com/
[14]: http://www.wingedelephant.com
[15]: http://www.cafepress.com/wingedelephant
[16]: http://ron.ludism.org
[17]: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/TrophyCloth
[18]: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/Spam_2dO_2dRama
[19]: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/MesomorphGamesContest1
[20]: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/4636
[21]: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5867/chesh.html
[22]: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mindperfhks/
[23]: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/TimeMarchesOn
[24]: http://www.martynet.org
[25]: http://www.piecepack.org/rules/KidsproutJumboree.pdf
[26]: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/PiecepackLetterbox
[27]: http://www.ludism.org/scwiki
[28]: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/piecepack/
[29]: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/JonathanDietrich_2fVassalModule
[30]: http://www.ludism.org/piecepack/pp7.txt
[31]: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listid=15415
[32]: http://www.piecepack.org/PiecepackGames.asp