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Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
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Here is the First Law of Game Systems:
Given enough time, every set of objects becomes a game system.
Let's say you're someone living 10,000 years ago. You have a stick, some stones, and the dirt on the ground. They mean nothing to you. They're just a set of objects.
One day, you idly start using the stick to dig holes in the ground, you roll the rocks around with the stick, you drop them in the holes, and so on. You are playing with them. Your set of objects is now a toy, but there are no rules associated with it, so it's just a toy.
Someone else sees you playing with the sticks, stones, and holes in the dirt, and joins you in play. Over time, the two of you make certain rules about the way you play with your toy, and possibly over generations, Mancala evolves (or simpler games, such as Morris, or what have you). Now that your set of objects has one ruleset associated with it, it is not only a toy but also a game.
The game Mancala spreads, and people develop variants. Eventually, variants evolve that are different enough from Mancala to be called different games. Now that there is more than one ruleset, your set of objects (stick, rocks, and dirt) is not only a toy and a game, but also a game system.
Thus, a game system is always a game, a game is always a toy, and a toy is always a set of objects (possibly a set with only one member). Furthermore, each stage usually evolves from the one before it.
game system: 2+ rulesets
game: 1+ rulesets
toy: 0+ rulesets
It's basically a simple Venn diagram: four concentric circles, with (sets of) objects the outermost and game systems the innermost (see above).
I suppose negative numbers of rulesets could indicate further and further departure from use as a toy, so tools (such as rotary sanders) would have small negative numbers and weapons (such as neutron bombs) would have large ones. However, not every object is a tool, and not every tool is a weapon, which breaks the diagrammatic convention. Possibly usefulness and lethality need their own axes...
Entered 21:01 [/games/game_systems] permalink
I had this conversation with my friend John Braley back on the Fourth of July:
Me: Why are highly-themed games more popular than abstract games and game systems?
John: Why is Spider-Man more popular than Wittgenstein?
By the way, congratulations to my friend Kevan Davis for being the first to kick me when I immediately failed to fulfill my oath to blog daily.
Entered 21:10 [/games/game_systems] permalink
To make a long story short, having won the previous piecepack game design contest with my game Piecepack Letterbox, I was entitled to design and judge the next contest. The rules have been announced, and the contest is called Good Portsmanship.
The rules state,
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. While this may seem like a mechanical exercise at first glance. there is plenty of room for the game designer's talents.
You can enter games until 3 December 2006, and I hope you will, unless you're Charles Manson, which seems rather unlikely.
By the way, there was some debate on the piecepack mailing list about the rules of the contest, which some people thought were rather strict. There have been several easements, and the rules are now at version 2.
Entered 08:19 [/games/game_systems] permalink
While writing the latest article in my Game Systems series, I had occasion to research the origin of the phrase "shooting the moon" in the card game Hearts.
At the turn of the last century, "shooting the moon" was apparently used to mean something like "aiming high as a desperate gambit", and particularly to mean absconding in the middle of the night without paying the rent. Examples:
For a day and a half I had nothing to eat or smoke, and then, too hungry to put it off any longer, I packed my remaining clothes into my suitcase and took them to the pawnshop. This put an end to all pretence of being in funds, for I could not take my clothes out of the hotel without asking Madame F.'s leave. I remember, however, how surprised she was at my asking her instead of removing the clothes on the sly, shooting the moon being a common trick in our quarter.
--George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
What concentrated irony and imagination there is for instance, in the metaphor which describes a man doing a midnight flitting as "shooting the moon"? It expresses everything about the run away: his eccentric occupation, his improbable explanations, his furtive air as of a hunter, his constant glances at the blank clock in the sky.
--G.K. Chesterton, "The Red Town", Alarms and Discursions
How well the last passage describe the nervous attitude of someone trying to shoot the moon in Hearts.
In the Hearts variant I am designing, I considered replacing the phrase "shoot the moon" with "fly by night" as a contemporary phrase for a similar situation, but the old phrase stuck, so "shooting the moon" it remains.
Entered 12:07 [/games/game_systems] permalink
I visited Piecepack.org yesterday and saw that at long last, James Kyle's seminal article on the piecepack from Grampa Barmo's Discount Games Magazine has been posted.
I also noticed that you can download beautiful, colourblind-friendly JCD printable piecepacks there now too.
Finally, the piecepack has just made an appearance on MonkeyFilter also.
Entered 14:05 [/games/game_systems] permalink
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Followup to the original piecepack playset story:
Delivery-date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 06:26:57 -0800
Subject: Sakura Piece-Pack Playset
From: Lion Kimbro <lion@speakeasy.org>
Ron: Good news and bad news.
Bad news first: My piecepack set is, well, rendered unplayable.
One tile is now very, very, silver colored.
Another one is makeup-red all over.
Others have various other uniquely identifying patterns of
God-knows-what feminine makeup-like substances on them.
The good news.
Sakura's FAVORITE TOY is now the Piecepack. She plays with
it all the time, and always wants it.
I keep coming to interesting game-like configurations on
the ground, different every time I get home.
Take care,
Lion {:)}=
--
http://speakeasy.org/~lion/ LionKimbro@jabber.org Seattle, WA
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Entered 19:22 [/games/game_systems] permalink
New piecepack game: Piecepack Playset
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Rules
I visited my friend Lion Kimbro yesterday and gave him a new Mesomorph piecepack as a holiday present. His 2-3/4-year-old daughter Sakura was present, and since her mother was away, she stuck close to Lion. As soon as Lion opened the piecepack, she dug her hands into the components and strewed them about. She messed around with the components for a while, then built an 8x3 board of tiles. (Are there any piecepack games that use an 8x3 board?) On top of each tile, right in the middle, she placed either a coin or a pawn. (She may have used dice too.) I did not notice any ordering, except that she placed the pawns close together. The result was pretty. Later, she took a coin from each suit and placed it suit-side-up on the corresponding suit icon on top of the piecepack box. (The diagram on the box is roughly the same as the logo shown to the left.) Pretty sharp for someone who's only 2.75! After she took off the coins, I placed a pawn of the appropriate colour on top of one of the box icons. Sakura picked the remaining pawns up and distributed them to the other icons. She didn't match the colours and I couldn't discern any other pattern in the way she placed them, but for all I know, the kid is a piecepack Mozart and invented a new system of colour correspondences. Overall, it was a lot of fun watching Sakura play with the piecepack. She treated them as construction materials, like building blocks, rather than as a game or game system. Lion showed me some varnished wooden building blocks she likes to play with of approximately the same size and colour as the piecepack tiles. He also suggested that "unit blocks" (that is, various blocks made of unit cubes) would make in interesting game system. If you do let a little kid play with your piecepack, watch them to make sure they don't eat the smaller components. This episode of the Piecepack Ethologist has been brought to you by Ron Hale-Evans. |
Entered 23:01 [/games/game_systems] permalink
People are saying nice things about "Game Systems, Part 4" over on rec.games.board:
"The whole of [The Games Journal] is good, but this series of articles are the jewel in the crown for me. This article was thought provoking, well researched and well written. Over 7000 words of quality."
--Iain Cheyne"Yes, that certainly is a meaty article. The Games Journal is always really great, but this one is really REALLY great."
--Justin Green (shumyum@yahoo.com)
Thanks, guys! I wasn't even sure that people would like an article that focused on game systems made from everyday objects, so the response is especially gratifying. It seems the part that has gotten the most response is the game of Remainders, which was almost (not quite) an afterthought. Since it's not always easy to tell what people will respond to most in an article, my theory is that you should throw it all in. I believe Penn & Teller refer to this as "the scattershot technique" in one of their books. Note that "scattershot" is not always a word used in praise.
Entered 13:08 [/games/game_systems] permalink
"Game Systems, Part 4" now available
My article "Game Systems, Part 4: Low-Tech Game Systems" is now available online at The Games Journal, as the "cover story" for the November issue.
I love what editor Greg Aleknevicus did with the graphics for my article. The pictures for the games Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard and Change Change are great. Greg adapted my US-centric description of the latter and replaced my ASCII diagram of US coins with photos of Canadian coins, including a loonie (dollar coin) instead of a quarter.
This issue was atypically a little late (Greg says Halloween is a big holiday for him), but from my perspective, it was worth the wait. I'm sure the rest of the articles will be a lot of fun too, as usual.
Entered 00:13 [/games/game_systems] permalink
Gamers who run GNU/Linux systems should check out gtkboard, the free software world's answer to Zillions of Games. Conceived by a gifted programmer from India, Arvind Narayanan, gtkboard can currently play about 30 games. Thanks to its Logos (Lots Of Games, Open Source) library, however, gtkboard will soon be able to run the almost 1000 free games available for the Zillions platform. There are other good reasons to run it too.
The gtkboard project is understaffed at the moment, so if you're a developer and a gamer, gtkboard needs you!
Entered 12:29 [/games/game_systems] permalink
I created a page on the Piecepack Wiki today called Playing Chess with a Piecepack and 88 Cents or Less. You probably have the eight dimes and eight pennies, or something equivalent, but do you have the piecepack?
In the spirit of WikiWiki, "AlphaTim" Schutz added the game setup illustration you see above, and Mark Biggar added an explanation of how to play Chess with just a piecepack. Thanks, guys!
Entered 19:19 [/games/game_systems] permalink
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