Title: BYOP1 Version Number: 0.2.3 Date: 2002-09-11 Number of Players: Any number Approximate Length of Game: 15 minutes and up Equipment Required: One piecepack per player, an opaque bag, and a smooth, flat surface Author: Ron and Marty Hale-Evans Copyright: Copyright 2002 Ron and Marty Hale-Evans Licensing Information: Released under the GNU FDL; see licensing paragraph at end of document Pre-release version. CONFIDENTIAL! Please do not redistribute! BYOP1 An entry in the Changing Landscapes Contest Introduction BYOP1 is the first game in a new genre: the "B.Y.O.P.", or "Bring Your Own Piecepack" game. It can be played solitaire, or with as many players as there are piecepacks available. It can even be played over the phone. Players agree on how many rounds of the game they will play. (Three is a good number for beginners.) On each round, a Caller is chosen. (Callers need not rotate.) The Caller creates a random layout of tiles and randomly designates a strict order in which the tiles must be placed. All players then try to slide the tiles on their boards one at a time into the proper positions. The player who does so most successfully over the specified number of rounds is the winner. Setup 1. The Caller shuffles all 24 tiles of his piecepack face-down and lays them in a 5x5 "board" on the table, with a "hole" where the 25th tile would be in the lower right-hand corner. 2. The Caller throws the Ace through 5 coins of one suit into the bag along with the four pawns. The other players also set aside the Ace through 5 coins of one suit and their own pawns. 3. The Caller draws the four pawns from the bag one by one, announcing the colour of each one as it emerges. He places them to the left of rows 1 through 4 of his board, in the order they were drawn. The other players place their pawns in a manner corresponding to the Caller's pawns. 4. The Caller draws the five coins from the bag one by one, announcing the value of each one as it emerges. He places them above columns 1 through 5 of his board, in the order they were drawn. The other players place their coins in a manner corresponding to the Caller's coins. 5. The Caller flips his face-down tiles face-up, moving from left to right and top to bottom, announcing the color and value of each tile as he does so. Example: "Blue 5, Green Null, Green 2, Red Ace...". The other players place the same tiles from their own sets into the corresponding positions. 6. Each player's board should now resemble the following diagram. (It will probably differ in the order of pawns and coins, but every player's board should look the same as every other's.) 2 4 5 A 3 K T T T T T R T T T T T B T T T T T G T T T T T T T T T Key: K = black pawn, A = ace coin, T= tile. Game Play 1. All players now attempt to slide the tiles on their boards to their proper positions as designated by the pawns and coins around the outside of the board. For example, in the above diagram, the tile in the top left corner should be the Black 2 (2 of Moons), the second tile in that row should be the Black 4, the tile at the end of the second row should be the Red 3 (3 of Suns), and so on. 2. All null tiles must be placed in the bottom row. They may be placed in any order, and the hole may be anywhere in the row. (This row is known as the "parity sponge", and guarantees that every BYOP1 board is solvable.) 3. Players must use only one hand to slide tiles. Tiles may not be picked up, but must be slid across the playing surface. Players must slide only one tile at a time, and must keep each tile in only one column and one row at a time (except the tile currently being moved). 4. The first player to finish her board calls "Done!" and the other players check her board to make sure it is correct. 5. If her board is correct, she receives a number of points equal to the number of other players she beat (for example, four points in a five-player game), and play continues. 6. If her board is incorrect, she receives zero points, and play continues. This is called a "fumble". 7. The next player to finish calls "Done!" and the process just described is repeated. (In a five-player game, the second player to finish would normally receive three points, because he beat three other players.) 8. Players continue to go out of the game until only one player is still trying to solve her board. That player receives zero points, and the round is over. 9. Exception: at the end of the round, every player who did not fumble, including the player who did not finish her board, receives one point for every player who fumbled that round; all other players are considered to have beat every player who fumbled. 10. Play continues until the agreed-upon number of rounds has been played. The points gained by the players on the current round are added to the points they gained on previous rounds. At the end of the last round, the player with the most points wins the game. 11. If there is a tie among players at the end of the agreed-upon number of rounds, the tied players engage in a final playoff round. At the end of the playoff round, the player with the most points wins the game. Antecedents As you have no doubt noticed, BYOP1 strongly resembles the 15 Puzzle that many of us played as children and is still popular today. To give credit where credit is due, the strongest influences on this game were the 15 Puzzle (Anonymous; popularised by Sam Loyd in the 1870s); Square Off (Alex Randolph; Parker Brothers, 1972); and Take It Easy (Peter Burley; FX Schmid, 1994), in that order. The best way to get better at BYOP1, apart from playing it solitaire, is to practice the 15 Puzzle. Here are some links to web pages that give tips on solving it. (The first two should also help clarify why the "parity sponge" row is necessary.) http://www.jimloy.com/puzz/15.htm http://rec-puzzles.org/new/sol.pl/competition/games/15.puzzle http://www.javaonthebrain.com/java/puzz15/technical.html Although the last page is not very complimentary to the 15 Puzzle, we believe the latter to be an addictive classic. It is commonly referred to as the Rubik's Cube of the 19th Century. During the design of this game, we became very fond of a pocket edition of the puzzle from Binary Arts. It is made of enamelled stainless steel, with a wonderful "chunky" solid feel, and only costs about US$10.00. (We are not being paid to endorse this edition; we just like it a lot. Your mileage may vary, but get an edition you like, because you'll be logging a lot of miles on those little squares.) http://binaryarts.com/OurProducts/BA/01p_fifteen.htm Credits Thanks to... for... History 0.2.3, 2002-10-20: Added "Confidential" notices; postponed FDL until release. Added History section. License The following is the license under which this game will be available _when it is released_. At the moment, the game is confidential, because it is meant to be an anonymous entry in the Changing Landscapes piecepack game design contest. Copyright 2002 by Ron and Marty Hale-Evans. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license can be found at .