Players are, more often than not, weird. Designers however, are worse. You can easily define one category from the other by observing a typical behaviour of the latter.
Just like an ant, the designer’s nature forces him to grab and store weird stuff of any kind: plastic corks (tokens wannabes), cardboard hexagons for that wargame he is working on, card decks of any shape that may come handy for that game he is not yet working on.
If you don’t want to pursue these quests, follow our advice and get a piecepack.
So what’s a piecepack?

Some years ago, during 2000, a smart author named James Kyle realised that the world was missing a universal and ultimate set of game pieces suitable for any need. There were, to be honest, several multifunction decks, starting from the standard poker one, that allows playing hundreds of different games, and coming to decks with the letters of the alphabet; there were also games that were particularly useful for re-utilisation, like a mancala board. The inspiration, however, has struck Mr. Kyle by watching a set of ICEHOUSE.
ICEHOUSE is a nice abstract game by Andrew Looney, which employs cute coloured plastic pyramids as tokens. Those pyramids had a great success, and almost all the designers use them as tokens in their unpublished games.
The basic idea of Kyle, however, was to create a universal set of materials, so that a designer could use them for infinity of new games. The piecepack was born.

A complete piecepack set is composed of: 24 tiles, 24 coins, 4 dice and 4 pawns.
Each tile shows on the upper right a combination of four suits (red suns, black moons, yellow crowns and blue arms) with values ranging from 1 to 5 plus a null (empty tile). A 1 is shown by the symbol of the relevant suit. On the back, all the tiles are divided into four identical squares.
Coins have the same suit and value combinations, but the coloured suit is depicted on the front, while the value (in black) on the back – a 1 is shown by a spiral. Each coin has also a small mark next to the upper edge, to indicate direction. The size of a coin is smaller than the size of one square of the tile’s back.
There is one die for each suit, with the six values in that very same colour.
Last, there is a pawn for each of the four colours – yellow, black, red and blue.

“Ah, ah, you fool!” – I hear you say – “now I know how pieces are shaped and I’m going to build a set myself, rather than buying one”.

	The material of a piecepack: tiles, coins, pawns, dice. You can create your won set and decorate at your will.

You are more than welcomed to do so! The brilliant inventor encourages the production of personal do-it-yourself piecepacks. That’s true! The system is public domain: you can build a piecepack yourself, you can sell it, you can personalise it, ...
It is indeed obvious that the same holds true for a poker deck or a chessboard, but the author has been so kind and showing foresight when he created his idea.
Why “foresight”? Because thanks to its public domain nature, the idea has flown in every gaming corner.
Two different producers started to manufacture the piecepack: Icepack Games has produced a very good quality set, only slightly different from the initial specifications.
Mesomorph has on the other hand printed several editions of the piecepack, each one better than the previous. Both firms have added to the original piecepack some other materials: additional tokens, cards, tiles with new suits, etc.

If you want to save up a little money, the best way is to build your own piecepack: just visit www.piecepack.org, download the set designed by Paul Shope, and print and cut it (and possibly glue it on cardboard).

If all of the above has suggested you how many different games you can design, then we have timely come to an important aspect of the article: rules for new games!
With the piecepack you can not only recreate many classic games, but even better find brand new rules for games invented with and for it.
There are many places to find new games: the aforementioned site offers many interesting links, many others are available at Piecepack Wiki, an ever evolving site thanks to its users’ dynamism. Public forums are also a must, CD containing collections (Mesomorph sometimes gives away CDs for free with certain editions), links suggested by the BoardGameGeek...
Finding new games isn’t a problem, finding the time to play them all might be! Many of the games are very good games, starting from the ones designed by the author of the piecepack, coming to the ones designed by the fans. Sometimes the piecepack is coupled with some additional materials, like MAGIC– THE GATHERING cards, ICEHOUSE sets, GO stones, etc. Sometimes you only need the piecepack to play. Since the authors are many and of different cultures, and being the system so flexible, rules truly offer a multitude of different combinations. You can find abstract games, auction games, racing game, tile-laying games, etc. each type of game you can think of, including variants for action games like CARROM!

In order to have you appreciating the piecepack potentials, we present a 1-player game by James Kyle.
The rules of the game are public domain, provided you don't distribute them for money.

Four Shinto Priests have traveled from their various prefectures in pilgrimage to the top of Mount Fuji.
You must find pathways for them to move up and down the mountain until they can all achieve the summit. Often,this will require you to guide them into positions from which they can assist each other.

Setup
Place the tiles face down in the configuration shown below. The top two steps of the mountain are double layered for aesthetic reasons only.
Shuffle all coins face down (so that the values are hidden). Turn one coin face up onto each space of the mountain thusly: place two sun coins on the rightmost step of the mountain, then moons on the next, then crowns,then arms, then suns, and so on up, then down the mountain.
Place a Priest (pawn) beside each space at both ends of the mountain.
If, after setup, there are no legal moves (see MOVING A PRIEST below), roll all four dice. Choose one of the dice and move the Priest whose suit matches that die the number of spaces shown on the die. If there are still
no legal moves, foul weather prevents the ascent.

Moving a Priest
1) A Priest may move onto a space if the coin's value matches the number of unoccupied spaces the Priest must move in a straight line to get there (including the destination space itself, but not including the space the Priest's starting space). For example, a Priest may move onto a space containing a value 4 coin if there are 3 unoccupied spaces between it and the Priest.
2) Occupied spaces (containing intervening Priests) are not counted when determining if a Priest may move onto a particular space. For example, a Priest may move onto a space containing a value 2 coin if there are 3 occupied spaces and one unoccupied space between it and the Priest.
3) A Priest may move freely between the spaces of any given step of the mountain; that is, a Priest may move back and forth in the same column. This is the only manner in which a Priest may move onto a space containing a null coin.
4) Once a Priest lands on the top tile of the mountain, he will refuse to leave it, but he can move back and forth (in the same column) or to and fro (between the two columns). Clarification: A Priest may pass over the top tile as part of a move.
5) A Priest must enter the mountain from his own starting row; that is, he cannot move back or forth while he remains on the ground.

Goal
The Priests will be content when they all reach the top of the mountain.