Taken from the IceList: the co-creator of Icehouse's reminiscences about the early sets.
To: icehouse@HUMANS-ONLY.andrew.cmu.edu
From: Andrew Looney
Subject: Re: Feats of Clay
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 12:09:52 -0400
JWC>Eric Zuckerman wrote:
EZ>> So, then, a little bit of lore for us: what
EZ>> were the first 8 sets, and does the Original Reliquary
EZ>> Fishing Weight Set count among those 8?
EZ>>
JWC>OK, I lied, or just guessed about the set's number. It's circa nine,
JWC>though, and I wanted the Ice-9 set, darnit.
JWC>
JWC>I can't remember whether the first set was a lumpy resin set made by
JWC>Chort (creator of Super Nova card game) or the fishingweight set made by
JWC>A. Looney..... Ask Andy, if you wanna know the truth.
JWC>
Here's the truth as I remember it:
Set #1: A 2 player set made by me in 1987, shortly after writing the
original Icehouse story. Consists of lead fishing weights, painted blue and
green. The bottoms are unpainted as putting pieces on their sides was
John's innovation and didn't occur until a year later.
Set #2: A 5 player set made by Chort in 1988, shortly after my postcard
publication of "The Children of Mars". The pieces were cast resin with a
lumpy texture and a spectrum of colors in each stash (due to imprecise
tinting and a mold that only allowed 1 piece of each size per casting). The
fifth stash was plaster of paris, painted red.
Set #3: A 3 player set made of sculpy by Kristin, again of lumpy texture,
painted black, white, and gray.
Set #4: A 2 player set made of sculpy by Robin Vinopal, started at the same
time as Kristin's (both of them participated in the first rules playtest,
described here recently by Kristin, which Number 12 also participated in
(the fourth player being Kristin's boyfriend at the time (and Robin's
husband now), Mike Hickey.)).
Set #5: A four player set made by me, with fimo (green, blue, purple,
white), using the
sheet-metal-triangles-taped-together-with-masking-tape-and-stuffed
with-fimo-method.
Set #6: A four player set started by Kristin but finished by me, using
marbelized sculpey packed into the sheet metal shells at the sides, then
filled with ordinary sculpy.
This is as far as I can get and may not even be accurate after #4. Number
12 made a sculpey set pretty early on too, followed by (as he recently
described), wood, metal, and plastic pieces, quickly becoming the master
piece-maker of the day. His sets would need to get counted in here too. And
I don't really remember when in this timeline John made his set, so it's
possible that it's #9, but no one will really ever know for sure. I think
it's a good bet though that Number 12 made set #12, wherever that set is
now.
--Andy
Last updated 1999/01/22
