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Hey, Joe (where you goin' wit' dat guninyourhand? Da-dum-da-dum-dum..nyuk-nyuk!) Sounds like it's gonna need a pretty big board, with all those details. I like it well enough to fiddle with it a bit, maybe it'll go somewhere. Email me, and we'll show it off if we get somewhere, howzat?
Hi, James. Been away for several days or I would have answered sooner. I'd be happy to take a stab [so to speak] at the pieces. I see short, medium and long range pieces in the game, with some pieces restricted to small to medium areas of the board. Clerks in buildings are like guards in XiangQi, but carriers and drivers may be 'restricted' to much larger areas of the board. I'd think the board would need buildings; possibly streets, possibly just colored lines representing 'routes'; certainly pick-up and delivery 'points'; maybe 'hazards', like bars or speed traps. We should probably continue the actual work by email, just posting good results, like some of our subjects. Now, is there anyone else who would actually do anything? Send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view...
Postal Chess? Piece icons, no problemo; board, no problemo. Drawing I can do, presets I can't. I'd advance on my end of it if someone'll volunteer the other parts so it could be posted and played. We're working on how to convert (many) piece icons to CVP format to fill out some of the collections that players like but that are missing a lot of the funner pieces. Like the Pepperoni for Pizza Chess that we all know and love so well, and the Pied-bill Snaihu for--uh, what was that for again, Jeremy? *cackle!*
My son does a lot of the computer work for me, and when I asked him to help with more new pieces, he said he might as well make every crazy piece he could think of, figuring I'd use them sooner or later. He suggested making a 'Ferris Wheel' piece. Different [or maybe the same] pieces could be in each 'seat' of the Ferris wheel, and , each time the wheel moves, a different piece would rotate to the 'top'. The Ferris wheel would move as that piece next turn. Number of 'seats' in the wheels would range from maybe 2 to 5. Players might start with a predetermined set of wheels, or they could each get a kit with empty wheels and a set of pieces to fill them. This carries the general concept of the elk piece another step. Interestingly, the game Walter Labetti has just brought to our attention, 'chess to the second power', is another version of Elk chess, in which every piece is doubled and the 2nd piece is hidden until the first is captured. Of course, his is patented, unlike ours. Hmmm... James, no matter who designs the pieces and rules, you will undoubtedly be co-opted to do the board and piece icons for postal chess. :-) Figured I'd warn you ahead of time. [Probably not much of a surprise, though.] But I'm sure you'd make awesome little blue and brown pieces. The board needs buildings that will be important game features, too. Clearly, some kind of terrain is required to fight over. After all, it's all about pickups and deliveries and mayhem over specified physical areas.
Well, now I'm starting to wonder who it is who really should be confined. Hey, maybe we could put some cops into the game; they could move any one if solo, any two if in pairs, any three if three adjacent--strength in numbers. Do some ride-alongs (maybe he'll let us shoot his gun at something!); Cop could be the one who finally takes out WELOJDGWAAK--the others just stop him. It's got potential. I still like the Elk loose in the mailroom; Franker can aim the congressional mail at 'im an' let 'er rip, yee-haw! So who's gonna do the preset for it? I'll play it.....
How about we incorporate the spirit of the elk piece, and make our pieces double-sided? One side: sane; the other: normal working conditions - okay, no, but you could flip a piece to 'activate' it as a move. And if all pieces had a sane and an insane side, you could get some good effects. Maybe a shop steward could change the state of another piece. The 204B thing is fair - the stress of having a real supervisor from another office watching is enough to detonate many a 204B. About here, I realized that most of these 'pieces' should be confined. Just to keep this short, a final thought: Should the sides be Blue and Brown?
One or two postal pieces could actually strew Mail around the field. Causing the others to have to collect them in order to move. This could be the job of the Franker. As a turn it places Mail on each of its adjacent vacant cells. Causing it to be immobilized. All pieces might be able to collect the Mail, and there might be a limited number of pieces of Mail. Since in real life there is no end to the Mail, it really should not be considered as a goal. Maybe we do need a new thread.
Maybe we oughtta change the thread-name, or include an Elk in the piece set, as though the Post Office is in Colorado, maybe. Another suggested piece, duh: the MAIL. Only travels if moved with another USPS piece. Win condition: Get the MAIL to the other guy's home row? (So don't LOSE the MAIL!!) Another suggested piece: Postal Assistant (Confined, filler, doesn't move unless shoved out of the way by Inspector, Supervisor or 204B.)
Hi, Joe: A good size for Postal Chess might be 12 x 12, with a limit of maybe 15 different pieces, some of which are unique and some symmetrically placed. So far we have 12 named pieces, and I think to maintain the character metaphors, they should be divided into Travelers (long-sliders) and Confined (those who work in the Mailroom/Station/Annex.); the Travelers would be free to go anywhere on the board, and the Confined would be kept to the, say, 5 home rows. So how 'bout this for a piece set: Inspector: Travels as Q Supervisor: Confined, any 3, square or diagonal, in any combination Registry Clk: Confined, any up to 3 in a straight line, sq. or diag. WELOJDGWAAK: Travels any 2; sequential captures if possible; must be bracketed by at least 2 pieces to capture; defending side may move as many pieces as GWAAK captured on his rampage to attempt to confine him, once per rampage. Letter Carrier (walker): Travels any 1 space in any direction Franker: Confined, detonates if Supervisor gets within his 3 x 3, and disappears 204B: Confined, detonates if Supervisor gets within his 3 x 3, taking out 8 surrounding cells with him On-Break Clerk: moves any 1 in any direction, but doesn't move unless Supervisor is within his 3 x 3 Route Inspector: Travels as Rook Route Carrier: Travels as Bishop Mean Dog: Travels any 2 LOLIAB: Little-Ol'-Lady-In-A-Buick: Travels any distance at random; player picks up LOLIAB, closes eyes, and plunks her down somewhere on the board. Cannot be captured, but may not function if completely surrounded. Just working suggestions.
James, the Inspector piece should be short-range but unblockable; effectively a Guard-Squirrel combo, say. After all, they're not always around, but when they show, they come out of the walls. (Literally [for non-postal people], there are secret passageways for the inspectors built into post office buildings.) Larry, the WELOJDGWAAK piece could be a customer. You'd probably need a special capturing turn, where multiple capturing pieces could all move at once. Possibly the piece might need to be totally surrounded to be captured. So cornering a 'Gwaak would be a good idea, making it easy to capture. It should be a large variant; I suggest the Registry Clerk (the Keeper of the Keys) as a power piece; some more minor pieces like the On-Break window clerk and the Route Inspector; and finally, the 204B*, possibly the most dangerous piece of all, subject to blowing at any time. My condolences on your experiences with the USPS, by the way. I've been retired 3 years now, and the nightmares are starting to go away. There is hope. And, no, you can't blast the jam out of a machine by running more mail into it. Believe me, it's been tried by experts. I've seen it, and it's not pretty. And then you have to put each bit of remains into its own little plastic 'body bag' which says on its side how the PO is trying to fix this problem. Right! You ever see anybody working on it? * 204B: an acting supervisor; in other words, a clerk or carrier who probably wasn't doing their job anyway, so it doesn't hurt to take them off the workroom floor...
Well, hey, Larry--SHAZAM!! Bullseye! POIFICK! I couldn't have come up with a better move for him myself! (Hey, I've used some of the moves you came up with in the Jeddara game; Tony's not quite up to dealing with Warlord yet, but we'll cross that bridge, too. Someday. I hope and 'speck.) There's another 'Postal' piece, too, called the 'Franker.' He's the guy who runs the automatic franking machine when the congressional mail comes through--5000 pieces of letter-size not-quite-cardstock rocketing through a little ditch in a stainless steel table at nine hundred and seventeen miles an hour, and one corner of one gets folded and hung on the little wheelie-thing and in seven nano-seconds the whole batch is 5000 little greasy paper accordians that you can't throw in the trash where they belong; the lucky recipients of these mangled missives will wonder if it's some kind of joke. The Franker gets to straighten these pontifical pennings out, one by one, after disassembling the hunnertandeightyseven-piece mechanism in order to extricate the last two thousand and twelve, which have become compressed into a block of the most incredibly strong material known to man, separable only by exacto and microscope. I am open to input on precisely what the Franker does when this delightful event occurs. Blow in place, maybe. Go Supervisor hunting sounds likely. Head for the nearest bar. Stack up three or four more 5000-packs and see if you can blow the jam free with Overdrive. I dunno. I'm too close to the problem--y'see, it was part of an earlier, checkered life, in nightmares of which I still awaken, trembling, drenched with sweat, in the wee, still hours.
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thanks Walter Labetti