Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

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.

Wild-Eyed-Laid-Off-Just-Divorced-Guy-With-An-AK.

Hmmmmmmmm.

That's the piece that once it starts capturing, it keeps on capturing.
And it takes several pieces to capture it.

Hi, Joe; interesting, my brother's VOMA Greensboro, finishing out 30;
didn't want to go management because he likes his soul too much.
Kitty says he's allergic to you, too; three dogs! Fer shame..
Dogs have masters, cats have staff.
Hey, how 'bout a 'Postal Chess' variant?  Lessee, pieces are the
Inspector, Supervisor, Letter Carrier, Mailbox Lurker, Mean Dog and
Wild-Eyed-Laid-Off-Just-Divorced-Guy-With-An-AK.

Thanks, James, for welcoming me to the human race. It means a lot to me; I
was a postal supervisor, and retired as an EAS17. You may be the first
person in decades to consider me human. I really appreciate this. ;-)
Please, don't tell the cat and confuse him! My wife is an animal lover
and I wouldn't want to upset her. And I'm allergic to cats anyway, so I
could probably deal with being hated by yours. So tell him we have 3 dogs
among the menagerie. This way he'll always feel justified. Enjoy. Joe

Well, y'know, we can all get hot sometimes about things we care about;
welcome to humanity.

Shucks, now I'll have to take back all the rotten things I said about you
to my cat.  That's so sad because it confuses him, and when he gets
confused he's hard to deal with; he already thinks I'm a sap. (smilie)

Mats, I must start with an apology. My statement was emotional and rather
over-the-top, instead of reasonable. I'm sorry. I should not have posted
that statement. I was wrong to do so. And my display of bad manners makes
my arguments about your conduct far more difficult to prosecute either
successfully or comfortably. 
Nevertheless, I will attempt to explain where our differences lie. I will
copy some of the CV comments:
2006-05-30	Mats Winther Verified as Mats Winther	None	Joe, I followed your
suggestion and replaced the knights with Elks, instead of the rooks. It's
implemented as a variant in my Elk Chess. It seems to work fine, too. I
think it has to do with the fact that the Elk's value is on a par with
the other pieces. If one introduces Chancellors to the Fide setup, I
don't think the game would work very well.
--Mats
(and now I've uploaded a bugfixed version)
2006-06-01	Joe Joyce Verified as Joe Joyce	None	
Hi, Mats. Shouldn't I at least get honorable mention on your Elk Chess
page for coming up with Elk Chess II? ;-) Joe
2006-06-01	Mats Winther Verified as Mats Winther	None	
Joe, no that does not qualify to be mentioned! But I am still not
convinced
that the notion of Elks together with Rooks works that well. What are the
Rooks supposed to do when the Elk takes control of an open file? They
can't oppose because the rook is worth more than the Elk. However, I
later found out that, thanks to Elks, one can play on the wings instead
and temporarily ignore the open files. So it's possible that this
variant
works anyway. Time will tell.
--Mats [end of quotes]
Quite a change in attitude in a very short period of time. Another quote:
2006-06-02	Mats Winther Verified as Mats Winther	None	
Joe, I don't know what got you upset. If it was the trivial idea of
replacing the knights with Elks, I had already investigated that before
you proposed it, and I had dismissed it, for reasons I already  told. But
when you proposed it again I investigated it again, and decided to add it
as a variant. [eoq]
If the variant is that trivial and you had already investigated and
dismissed it, why include it in your game? Especially without noting its
poorness? If it was worth including in the game, it was worth crediting.
You are trying to have it both ways. I object to that general attitude.
Further, you have changed your page to include references  and links to
everyone but me - thanks! That was a good laugh. (Seriously, I did laugh;
it reminded me so much of work.) That you went back and changed your pages
after I made my comments says something about the relative merits of our
positions. 
Here, I must apologize again. That I implied you gave no credit at all was
wrong and misleading. This is where I went over the top. You did, when you
became aware of their existance, name the games that contained the Squire.
I will state here that I do not remember any designers names associated
with the games you credited on your Mammoth Chess page when I looked at it
a few days ago. Again, I state this is wrong. 
Cavalier expropriation of ideas and a reluctance to credit either sources
or original creators coupled with a dismissive and condescending attitude
first made me seriously consider saying something. But, finally, it was
your dismissive and condescending statements toward others that prompted
me to respond. Telling Alfred Pfeiffer to, in effect, run along and stop
bothering you as you no longer have the time to bother with chess was what
got me irked enough to write. Mr. Pfeiffer wrote a nice expansion of your
initial idea, adding details that clearly could enhance the game. You
said:
2006-06-01	Mats Winther Verified as Mats Winther	None	
Alfred, I think I will have a break now. If you have a good game idea you
could always ask somebody at the Zillions site to implement it. Sometimes
they will.
--Mats [eoq]
Now run along home like a nice boy - not. I'm a New Yorker. I know when
I've been dissed, and when others have. I do not like to be in this
position, but, as it occurred in a public forum, I felt and still feel it
must be addressed publicly. In a forum like CV, all we have are our ideas
and our willingness to work. Everybody should be credited, no matter how
trivial the idea or how invisible the work. That everybody plays in good
faith should be a fundamental principle of this site. This is my main
position, and I have no hesitation in asking every member of this site to
weigh in on this question.
This post is already too long. While there is much more I wish to say, I
will sum up my 2 main points:
 I apologize for my improper emotional post, it should not have happened.
 Give credit where it is due, and it's due if you are aware, or should
be, of the existance of a reason to give it. 
Finally, I will say again that you are an excellent piece designer
(although I think you need to work a little on game design); and I'd much
rather we played nice together. 
 Joe Joyce

James, you're right. I argued emotionally instead of logically, and
created a public display of irritation and bad manners. I hereby apologize
to everyone. I should not have done it. I will do my best to avoid such
things in the future. Joe

Aw-w, c'mon, guys; de gustibus non disputandum est.

Joe, I don't know what got you upset. If it was the trivial idea of
replacing the knights with Elks, I had already investigated that before
you proposed it, and I had dismissed it, for reasons I already  told. But
when you proposed it again I investigated it again, and decided to add it
as a variant. There is too much touchiness in this forum sometimes. 
I have not claimed that the Mammoth is my invention. I say on my homepage,
and in my zrf:s that '...The Mammoth piece (also called Mastodon) is not 
entirely new. Under other names it appears as the queen analog in Grand 
Shatranj and as the royal piece in Atlantean Barroom Shatranj. In EV 
Greenwood's Renniassance Chess (not misspelt) from 1980, the piece is 
named Squire.' So these allegations directed against me are false. Other 
inventors have already acquired the Squire and renamed it, before I did so. 
Probably they had no idea that the Squire existed. Moreover, the demand 
that I should have to check up every obscure fairy piece in all kinds of 
publications, before I appropriate a piece name, is ridiculous. 

Anyway, I now leave this forum because there is a very strange underlying 
enmity here. I feel no need to put up with it.
--Mats

Alfred, I think we've been dismissed. But that's okay, because I've been
thinking. I've come up with a couple new pieces. I'm calling them the
NightRunner and the BishopRunner. The NR moves like a knight or a rook,
depending on the color of the square the piece is on. There are, of
course, two complimentary types. The BR moves like a bishop or a rook,
depending on whether the number of squares the piece last moved was even
or odd. Again, there are complimentary types. I like these pieces, I think
there's a great future for them. I'm going to add them to my Jumping
General, a new piece I discovered last year. It slides 1 or jumps 2 in any
direction (orthogonally or diagonally). The JG isn't going to be just big,
it's going to be mammoth!
Now just between you and me, Alfred, I was inspired by your idea, but I
don't know whether or not to give you any credit. After all, I expanded
on the idea and made it uniquely my own. What's that? Eric Greenwood's
Squire is my jumping general, and he used it in Rennaissance Chess over a
quarter century ago, and it's still being played? Well, maybe he might
get some credit.

I put it up to all. What does everybody think? Credit, or no credit?

Alfred, I think I will have a break now. If you have a good game idea you
could always ask somebody at the Zillions site to implement it. Sometimes
they will.
--Mats

I think the asymmetry in Elk Chess is probably good.
It creates a strategical tension, and castling will tend to be on different wings.
Moreover, should it not be asymetric, then the Elks would tend to be exchanged immediately, e.g.,
1.Eg3 Eg6.