[Icehouse] IGDC Winter 2008 is ready for announcement tomorrow!

[Jorge Arroyo]

On 11/8/07, David Artman <david at davidartman.com> wrote:

> Do you mean "each player needs two matching stacks (e.g. two blue
> stacks)"? That is clearly a case of arbitrarily forcing colors--as you
> say (if I am reading right here) one could just as easily play it "blue
> and green stacks versus yellow and red stacks." Put it another way: what
> if the rule read "each player takes two stacks that aren't the same
> color as the other player's stacks"? Now it's even clearer that a given
> player's stacks needn't match--there's nothing mechanically significant
> about their colors at all (unlike Find The Green Mid).



Yep. That's what I meant. So a game that has pieces spread in two sides
needs to require  more than 7 pyramids per side in order to qualify for the
contest. So a chess-like game that uses 6 pyramids per side, as you say,
won't meet the requirements for the contest. I understand the reasoning, but
I don't know if it's too harsh...

There are many ways to adapt games to be played with less pyramids, some
games don't even need pyramids if we take it to the extreme, as many games
don't use all the characteristics of the pyramids, and other pieces like
coins, dice, etc... share a number of these characteristics (pips,
direction, etc...). For example, Martian Chess needs 3 nests per player, but
the only characteristic from the pyramids used is pip number. You can play
with one treehouse set and three dice for the missing nest, by placing the
side with the correct pip number up (or three kinds of coins). You can even
substitute all the pyramids this way... So, should a game that can be played
with other pieces instead of pyramids be out of the competition too? I don't
think so... In fact, if this were so, only games that use all the
characteristics (color, pips, direction and stacking) would qualify for the
competition.

That's why I think we should relax the requirement a bit...

-Jorge
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