Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Query: Wiki categories

  • From"James Hazelton" <jameshazelton@xxxxxxxxx>
  • DateWed, 20 Dec 2006 23:05:31 -0600
The point of a Wiki is that anyone can update anything, so if you have a catagory to make, go ahead and make it.  I like the idea of a Non-Stacking Games catagory; that is, I can see how it would be useful.  However, I don't know who goes around writing the rules to games on their notecards to bring them along with their single stashes.  Also the matter of what qualifies.  ICE-7 contains rules to games I thought for sure were too complex to be reduced down to a card.

On 12/20/06, Jeff Zeitlin <icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Back in July, I'd asked this question on the Wiki's Main_Page Talk page,
but nobody replied, so I'll ask here as well, with a note that this is a
question about the wiki, rather than about Icehouse or Icehouse pieces
/per se/.

I'd come up with two potential categories for classifying games, and the
inquiry was essentially "Is there some sort of vetting procedure for
categories, or do I just go ahead and create the categories and add
games to them as appropriate?"

The two potential categories were:

(1) Non-stacking games: These are games where the Icehouse pieces are
never stacked, either treewise or nestwise.  Games in this category
would be suitable for playing with the early Xyloid pieces, or with
probably the vast majority of piecenikked stashes.   The original
Icehouse game would fit into this classification; Ice Towers and Volcano
would not.

(2) GIANTs: GIANT is an acronym for 'Game In A Nifty Tube', and refers
to games that (a) use a single stash, AND (b) can be explained fully in
eight-point Courier type on a 3x5 index card.  Treehouse is a GIANT, and
in fact might be considered the prototype GIANT.  My own Par-Trees-i
probably isn't a GIANT, although it's a Single-Stash game. 'Single
stash' does not specify whether the game requires a monochrome stash, a
Treehouse stash, or a Whocares stash; merely that it can be played with
at most fifteen pieces, of at most five pieces of each size. I am
undecided whether requiring COMMON materials (e.g., all or part of a
deck of ordinary playing cards, one or two six-sided dice, etc.) beyond
the stash disqualifies a game from being a GIANT.

GIANTs are more a potential marketing category than anything else, I
think, but I'm unsure whether that should be considered a Bad Thing or
not.

Discuss?
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