Mod Moons

["Troy Holaday" <tholaday@...>]

Okay.  I messed with the design of the moons a bit just to incorporate some of the modification ideas.  It can be seen at:

http://www.bsu.edu/web/00taholaday/ppmoonsmod.jpg

Here's what I did and why.

1) added a hexboard.  Say what you will, but sliding tiles over 1/2 a unit is not the same.  A beehive cell hex grid provides not only a hexboard, but it adds a triagonal board (played on the points).  This gives equidistant moves in three directions, something not possible with the tile-slide maneuver (note that if you are playing along a 'seam' - on a tile-slid board - you would have only three moves, but would have four from the center of any tile.  This is actually pretty neat and I'm sure some design genius out there could make good use of it.)  By the way, your eyes aren't out of whack, the hexes are slightly 'fat' (0.2 inches, I think).  I was having trouble making a nice symmetrical hex grid in the 2" square tile.

2) I changed the ace on the tiles to add the swirl icon, instead of having the moon show twice.  (I think the icon that means value=1 and the icon that stands for a suit might be best kept separate - no matter what the 'tradition' is in playing cards.  Confusing these two means losing a layer of mechanics.)

3) I did the same (changed the ace) on the die.  Hell, the dice are color-coded aren't they?  (The moons suit is not as apparent an example as one of the 'colored' suits would have been, but I didn't think of this ahead of time.)  I would make the same argument about aces I made in mod "2)", though now the dice aren't matched to suit by anything but color.

4) I added direction markers to the face of the die.  Now they can be used as 'spin-down' pawns.  The 'robot' can move, indicate facing, and take damage.

5) I added larger points to the center of the square grid tiles.

6) I added a 'front' marker (dot) to one side of the pawn.

I think that's it.

Now.  Having done all that.  If I added an effect that screws up a game that already exists, I would like to hear about it.  For the most part, I think the tweaks are fairly 'harmless.'

Troy Holaday
Assistant Director of Academic Systems
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
(765) 285-3936
(765) 285-2082 - fax