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Re: [piecepack] New Piecepack game: Japan

On Mon, 04 Jun 2018 02:12:49 -0500, Aaron Waters aaron.waters@... [piecepack] <piecepack@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


Hi Daniel,


Hi Aaron,


First let me say I like this implementation. I'm an RK fan so I recognize
the source. For years I've thought the original was a great two player,
so-so three player, and kind of randomish and dull as a four player. I
eventually traded away my copy, since it is much more rare for me to have a
chance to play two player games and when I do my friends often want to use
the opportunity to play exclusively two player games (which I personally
thought the original was one of, but since it said otherwise on the
box...). Very clever use of the double 0 domino as the special reuse an
existing samurai, and the use of the die as ronin is also good.


I'm really happy with the reducing value mechanism of the die.


So that being said, the rules were pretty clear in general, though it's
possible that some unclear parts may have been clear to me knowing what it
was based on. There were two things I saw, though, that I thought could be
improved. One is probably just a typo, but I think you want the word
'placed' instead of 'place' when you talk about setting up the dice in
front of the players.


fixed.


The other is that I think your setup instructions could use a lot more
detail. At a minimum I think you should add the words "wherever you want"
about the coin placement, because the very first thing that came to my mind
was to wonder if there was only one possible way of placing them while
keeping them from being orthogonally adjacent. I'm assuming the intent is
to have them somewhat randomly distributed and well spread out.


Yes, I added that intention, to the text.


If so, you
might want to explicitly say that. Also I'm guessing, since you have the
players place the coins suit side down, that you intend them to shuffle
them so they don't know which number is going where. If so, it would
probably be better to explicitly say that as well. The other possibility
would be that you're placing them face down just so the other player
doesn't know which number you are placing where but that you would know
where your numbers were (and so could try to separate some numbers from
each other and/or put some close together). Even if neither of these things
make that much of a difference to overall gameplay, I think it's still
generally better to make them explicit and you could also then suggest the
other possibilities as variations.

One additional thought I had, and you may have already considered this and
decided it didn't work or wasn't useful, but what about allowing the die
also to be used off of land like the ships from the original. It could only
influence a coin if it was placed adjacent to it before it was otherwise
surrounded. Anyway, just a thought.


Die? no... but we tried used the null-side dominoes as a means of shoring-up the borders of the board.

A null-side domino has a null side an a number side. The domino is placed touching the board.

The number side should be linked with a coin and the null side has to be used exclusively by the same player (on a future turn) to add a regular domino (following the regular rules of Supporting Coins). Only that, in this case, one side of the regular domino is on top of the null side of a domino.

In the end, not much of that was done, because other strategies were more direct. And because I wanted the game to use pawns, too. Pawns solve the same kind of problems solved by shoring-up with null-side dominoes.



And one last thought, since you're using the name Japan and nothing in your
rules has even the tiniest of ties to anything Japanese, perhaps you might
want to think of moving the rightmost rows of tiles up some to generally
curve the island a bit like Honshu is. That or call the dominoes samurai
and the die ronin or just change the name to something abstract like games
like Yinsh, etc. do.


I like the game Japan, and I see there isn't a game with that name in BGG. I think the name is easy to remember.

I added a note about the name in the rules.

Thank you for your help!

Daniel