OldNews

13 September 2020

The contest has been postponed because it's hard to playtest the games in the IronPiecepackDesignerContest during the coronavirus. That means there's still time to enter!

If you're a piecepack designer and you'd like some ingenious ways to playtest your game despite difficult conditions, see Playing and playtesting during pandemics, and don't forget to add a link on the Iron Piecepack Designer Playtest Page, where piecepackers will playtest your game for free!

12 October 2019

Announcing the Iron Piecepack Designer Contest, the ninth in the lineage of piecepack community game design contests! This time, the contest is themed around the TV show Iron Chef. There are three challenges ("episodes"), each of which uses a different game design "ingredient". The winner of each episode moves on to the season finale to determine the Iron Piecepack Champion. As if this contest isn't enough, there's a side contest for creating the best video demonstrating a piecepack game.

Submissions are due July 15, 2020. Details: IronPiecepackDesignerContest

1 October 2019

Hey! Play piecepack games right on the Piecepack Wiki, using either Portable Piecepack Notation or the piecepack VASSAL module. Details: PlayByWiki

3 January 2019

With the addition of the games from 2018's Where No One Has Gamed Before contest, the BigBoard now lists 215 piecepack games with rulesets ready to download and play!

1 December 2018

The Italian gaming website Giochi sul nostro tavolo (Games on Our Table) is creating a Ludic Advent Calendar for 2018. They show their readers how to make their own piecepacks, and then behind each window of the online calendar, they place a free piecepack game. (In 2017, they made a similar calendar for Decktet.) Google Translate functionality is built into the website.

See LudicAdventCalendar for English summaries.

14 November 2018

According to Dan Burkey, "Chris [Goodwin] and I are planning to co-host the next contest, to be announced in early 2019." Chris and Dan were the first-place winners of the Where No One Has Gamed Before contest in October 2018.

9 October 2018

The winners of the eighth community piecepack game design contest have been announced. For more information, see Where No One Has Gamed Before Results.

10 July 2018

Piecepack patch available (iron-on, sew-on, velcro): Barefoot Sewing now makes a piecepack patch for your day bag, sport cap, emergency game kit, etc. These patches cost about $10 depending on which options you choose. The computer rendering usually looks very close to the actual fabric product.

Source: https://barefootsewing.com/piecepack-patch.html

2 July 2018

Contest status: The submissions phase of the Where No One Has Gamed Before contest has ended and playtesting will begin as soon as the playtesters and I can coordinate our schedules. --RonHaleEvans

11 February 2018

Community piecepack Competition 8: Where No One Has Gamed Before

Greetings, 'pack peeps! Announcing a new piecepack community game design contest with submissions due by July 1, 2018! The title is Where No One Has Gamed Before and the theme is novelty, in keeping with such previous community competitions as Changing Landscapes (games with mutable boards) and Solitary Confinement (piecepack solitaire games). There is also a sub-competition for the best new piecepack expansion or accessory. For the complete competition rules, see Where No One Has Gamed Before.

4 February 2018

There is now a Facebook group for discussing, working on, and sharing information about piecepack. Everyone who's interested is invited to join.

3 December 2015

The Infinite Board Game is released. See The Infinite Board Game for a list of the games in the rulebook, with links to the games' pages (and rules) on this wiki. Then buy the book (and piecepack)!

11 April 2015

The Infinite Board Game is announced: "a collection of piecepack games being released by Workman Publishing on September 22, 2015." The 160-page book, curated and edited by W. Eric Martin, comes with rules for 50 of the better piecepack games and its own high-quality plastic piecepack. It retails for $30. Hooray! ...

30 July 2011

Paul Blake, who initiated the 2010 ToyVault piecepack game design contest, has said that it is now extremely unlikely that ToyVault will publish the piecepack in any form, and that he is no longer employed there.

This is bad news for the piecepack community, of course, but at least the winners of the contest and any other entrants can now publish their games on the wiki.

5 June 2011

The home page of this wiki is now locked due to excessive spam. If you have something piecepack-related you'd like to see here, such as a news item, please email rwhe@ludism.org.

24 November 2010: One more game added to wiki

One more game has been added to the wiki: Starship Attack.

18 June 2010: Results of ToyVault's Piecepack Game Design Contest

"In no particular order, the winners of ToyVault's Piecepack Game Design contest are:

For more details: http://boardgamegeek.com/article/5171073

31 May 2010: One more game added to wiki

One more game has been added to the wiki: Pisi. This game is an adaptation of Isi to the piecepack system.

9 April 2010

A full-color, five-page article about the piecepack by W. Eric Martin that originally appeared in GAMES magazine has been added to the GamesMagazine page.

26 March 2010: Two more games added to wiki

Piecepack.org, plus [[|over 50 others]].

22 March 2010: List of games not on the BigBoard

The CategoryNonPiecepackDotOrg page has been added for games that appear on this wiki but not on the BigBoard at Piecepack.org. If you find more, please tag them; if you find some on Piecepack.org that don't appear here, please add them to the wiki.

16 March 2010: Two more games added

Two more games have been added to the Piecepack Wiki: PiecepackSeabattle and ZombieInMyPiecepack. Share and Enjoy!

13 March 2010: 10 new games!

10 new games have been added to the Games page for your enjoyment. For more details, see NewGames.

February 2010: ToyVault Design Contest

The game and toy manufacturer ToyVault is currently sponsoring a game design contest for its new edition of the standard piecepack. ToyVault stopped accepting submissions for the contest on 28 February 2010 and will announce the winners after "a reasonable amount of time".

More details


17 June 2009: Broken links continue to be fixed. More importantly, by popular demand, this wiki's license has changed from the GNU Free Documentation License to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, according to the terms of the former license (version 1.3).


14 June 2009: Tables and line breaks have been fixed, along with some minor annoyances, improving post-migration usability.


We're back! This wiki went down because of a hardware failure on 9 May 2009 and was restored on 31 May. See the announcement email for details.


First piecepack Review Contest announced

February 20, 2008: JorgeArroyo, has decided to organize a contest to promote the creation of reviews for piecepack games that have no feedback. All the details are at this BGG thread: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2096186 Everyone is encouraged to participate, although a BGG account is required, to post the reviews there.


Seventh Design Contest: GoodPortsmanship: Results announced!

18 March 2007: RonHaleEvans, the judge of the judge of the seventh public game design contest, has announced the winner. There were 10 competing entries and four non-competing entries in the contest. Every entry had to be a translation, or "port", of an existing game to the piecepack. GaryPressler was the winner with his game TheColonistsOfNatick, which is a port of The Settlers of Catan Card Game. The runners-up were MichaelSchoessow and StephenSchoessow with their game ShoppingMall, which is a port of MarraCash. See the GoodPortsmanship contest page for details.


Seventh Design Contest: GoodPortsmanship: Rules announced!

3 September 2006: RonHaleEvans, the judge of the seventh contest, has announced the rules. Every entry must be a translation, or "port", of an existing game to the piecepack. See the GoodPortsmanship contest page for details.


MesomorphGamesContest1: Results announced!

9 August 2006: DaveBoyle, the judge of this privately-sponsored design competition, has announced the winner. Click here for the details. There were 17 entries. RonHaleEvans was the winner with his game PiecepackLetterbox. The contest was intended to spur authors to incorporate the unique aspects of the FourSeasonsExpansion and PlayingCardsExpansion by MesomorphGames into piecepack game designs. All submissions had to use one of the expansions as an integral part of the theme or mechanics of the game.


piecepack Games go over 160

With 130 games on the BigBoard at the official piecepack website, 17 entries in the recent MesomorphGames contest and over 20 games in the piecepack Yahoo Groups mailing list rulesets-in-progress file section, there are now more than 160 games for the piecepack either completed or in playtest. And that doesn't even count the GenericAbstracts. Congratulations and thanks to all the game designers that made this possible in the little over 4 years since the first release of the piecepack...