Rule Liecenses

["Jorge Arroyo" <trozo@...>]

Hi all,

  I'm starting to feel a bit stupid sending these messages to the list, as
there seems to be very little activity lately, but here it goes anyway:

  My recent asking for permission to translate and include rules with my
sets wasn't very successful, so I thought of trying to start a little
discussion... What is our goal for the piecepack system? (if any). I see
that the analogy to the standard deck of cards is always mentioned when
describing the piecepack system (I use it all the time), but there is a BIG
difference in that the games you can play with a standard deck of cards are
described in many forms, with many variations, by many differentt people and
in so many different ways... Of course, the standard deck is much older, and
more popular than the piecepack, but how can the piecepack system ever reach
a reasonable level of popularity if its games are not as easy to make
"available" as the piecepack itself?

  If a rule set says something like: "(C) Whoever, this game can be freely
distributed as long as there is no profit, etc..." Then people CANNOT make
derivative works out of it, which means translating the game directly is out
of the question. Also, the "no profit" can be problematic, since including
the rules in a piecepack set which is being sold, could be considered as
selling it for profit (not too sure about that one though, and I'm also
guilty of using it...)

 So, I repeat the question: How will the piecepack ever reach world-wide
popularity if the games can't be translated to other languages?

  The answer is, of course, similar to what we ourselves have done recently
with out "ported" games for Ron's contest: Take the rules for a game and
explain them in our own words without directly copying the text. I've done
this with the rules for Froggy Bottom, which I've rewritten in Spanish
because I really want to include it with my sets. But it does take more
work, and so it'll mean that the whole process of translating the bulk of
piecepack games will be much more slow...

  All this is important because when I try to sell a piecepack set to a
customer at my shop and they ask what games can they play with it, if I say:
"There is this web site where you can download hundreds of games (in
english)" they just won't buy it. And the same will happen when I try to get
other shops to sell the sets...

  When trying to sell the piecepack to non-gamers, you need a "killer-app",
some games that represent the possibilities of the system, and that won't
put them off... Selling a piecepack without rules is ok when you're selling
to geeks like us, but not when you're trying to sell to "regular" people.

  What do you think?

  For the record, here's a list of some games I want to include with my sets
and their licenses. The list is not definitive, and it doesn't represent my
favorite games, just some games that I think will work well with people
beginning with the system:

Froggy Bottom: Copyright with no allowances at all
One Man Thrag: Copyright. The author grants permission to distribute this
document if it is not modified or sold for profit.
Powergrids: Copyright with no allowances at all
Alien City (not sure about this one because of the extra components, but I
just love this game and will at least teach it and play it at the shop):
These game instructions may be distributed and copied for free as long as
the author is credited or this header is left in place.

  I'm glad that others like Piecepack Letterbox use a Free License, so it
won't be a problem translating them :)

  So, what do you think?

-Jorge