[HN Gopher] Board Games of the Ancient World
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Board Games of the Ancient World
Author : CrankyBear
Score : 117 points
Date : 2020-02-07 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| jvm_ wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZskjLq040I
|
| 25 minutes of "Tom Scott vs Irving Finkel: The Royal Game of Ur".
| Great to watch.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Game of go have been played since Spring and Autumn period (~500
| BC), at the time, it's just called 'The Board Game'.
|
| Quite a few variation happened, at the time it was played on
| 17*17 board and with 4 existing stones at the beginning. But the
| general rule (which was so simple) persisted.
| danidiaz wrote:
| The cathedrals of Ourense and Leon in Spain have a few game
| boards etched in stone at discreet places. Some of them look like
| Nine Men Morris (Alquerque?) boards: http://jesus-
| manuel.com/2015/08/08/658/ (in Spanish)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alquerque
| lordleft wrote:
| Sometimes I look at my closet filled to the brim with expensive
| boardgames, sometimes packed with well-honed mechanics and
| expensive miniatures, and consider the irony of the fact that in
| our age of ceaseless digital distraction, we have more offline
| entertainment than ever before. Surely someone in the 18th
| century (AD or BCE) would more greatly appreciate the
| embarrassment of board-gaming riches we have today.
| contingencies wrote:
| Same for Steam accounts / cellphones vs. 80s consoles /
| portable handheld gaming systems.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| I'm sure ancient peoples had much more opportunity to play
| outside. They didn't have our resources, but they had lots of
| playing field. Lots of room for throwing stones, darts, climbing.
| If you were old or unathletic you could still collect mushrooms
| or berries - that's a game of perception and patience. Singing or
| instrument playing contests, fishing contests. Or "let-see-who-
| can-grow-the-biggest-pumpkin" contest.We increasingly live in
| cities and going outside often means going into noise or crowd.
|
| My point: I'm sure many games they played were not on boards.
| They didn't have to be.
| The_mboga_real wrote:
| Fuck whichever folk you like up the shitter?
| navbaker wrote:
| There was an ancient game I found an article on a few years back
| that I have been unable to find again. It (I believe) was an
| Asian game and had over 400 distinct pieces, each with their own
| rules for movement. Does that sound familiar to anyone? I'm
| striking out with google...
| al_chemist wrote:
| > over 400 distinct pieces, each with their own rules for
| movement
|
| I doubt it'd exist. It's hard to place 400 pieces on board,
| hard to remember 400 different movement patterns, it takes
| forever to setup the game.
|
| Shogi is asian game with 15 types of pieces.
| mrob wrote:
| There's this probably never widely played shogi variant:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi
|
| "Each player has a set of 402 wedge-shaped pieces of 209
| types. The players must remember 253 sets of moves."
| acomjean wrote:
| The royal game of Ur sounded familiar. They released a boxed
| version is the 70s I vaguely remember..
|
| Board game geek has a summary:
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1602/royal-game-ur
|
| Interesting.. backgammon and chess seem to have thrived..
| dkersten wrote:
| Here's a video of Tom Scott playing it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZskjLq040I
| jimtwo wrote:
| A lot of this article is inaccurate:
| https://twitter.com/CuseKicks/status/1225417738656604160
| bashmelek wrote:
| Makes me wonder about how these games evolved over time and why
| we have the modern versions we do now. Are the games we have
| today really more "fun" or is there something in these that we've
| been missing and have to experience?
| mysterydip wrote:
| One thing I learned only recently was the Romans had a version of
| tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses, Xs and Os, etc) that is (IMHO)
| superior to the modern version.
|
| While any capable player will always draw in the modern version,
| the ancient one gives each player only three pieces. To place a
| new one, an old must be removed. On the surface at least, this
| seems to result in a much more strategic game.
|
| I wonder why the modern variant is the one that is most well
| known?
| gibolt wrote:
| My guess is it was played on paper. Pens were the dominant
| writing utensil. Hard to remove and repeat on the same surface.
|
| Even with pencils, erasing leaves a mark and doing so
| repeatedly will either become too hard to tell or rip through
| the paper.
| simonh wrote:
| The Romans didn't have paper, and pencils were invented in
| the 16th Century. I think they had chalk, but they almost
| certainly would have used playing pieces on a board.
| gibolt wrote:
| My response is why the _modern_ one is _not_ the Roman
| variant
| [deleted]
| sfRattan wrote:
| We had to do something similar for our Intro to CS course at
| Tufts years ago: implement both a tic-tac-toe game and an
| algorithm that would play optimally. Second stage of the
| project was that, after a player's third move, the oldest "X"
| or "O" would disappear each turn. I have no idea if they still
| use that project, but the feeling when your computer player
| started working and you couldn't beat it was like nothing else,
| and was one of the reasons I went into CS rather than
| Economics.
| tcgv wrote:
| I also had to implement a Tic Tac Toe "AI" when I was in
| college about a decade ago. Last year I was revisiting my
| college files backup and decided to upload it into GitHub:
|
| - https://github.com/TCGV/TicTacToe.
|
| The AI player was implemented using the Minimax algorithm,
| and can never be beaten ;)
| gnulinux wrote:
| Sorry very tangential.
|
| One time I wrote something like this, and shared on reddit.
| Like you, I used minimax to solve tic tac toe. My comment
| was downvoted to oblivion and one highly upvoted person
| wrote:
|
| > You don't need "AI" to solve tic tac toe, it's a solved
| problem!
| watwut wrote:
| > I wonder why the modern variant is the one that is most well
| known?
|
| Cause it is the one you teach small kids when they are bored
| and you have nothing except pen and paper at hand.
|
| They don't know optimal strategy yet. And it is fun when they
| finally find it out.
| marcofiset wrote:
| One thing that I've learned over the years playing modern board
| games is that the vast majority of the population is too
| intellectually lazy to bother learning new games. They'd rather
| keep playing their (outdated) classics that they know than
| learn new and better-designed games.
| Benjammer wrote:
| I'm always fascinated by people who not only stick to the
| same basic, boring classics, but they've adopted "house
| rules" of some sort over the years that they _INSIST_ on
| playing by, because "that's what they're used to." And then
| they know how to cheat using the house rules they've come up
| with, and all their creative efforts become focused entirely
| on cheating the dumb, inconsistent rules, rather than any
| actual sense of tactical strategy.
|
| It's like, come on! If you used the same creativity for
| coming up with real game strategy that you use to trick the
| other humans in the room and skirt the rules, you'd be
| really, honestly, good at this game. But people are unwilling
| to put that kind of direct accountability on themselves, for
| fear of failure I suppose.
| xaedes wrote:
| They win and rule by dictacting the world their own rules.
| Clever they are. Why risk a loss to anothers rules when you
| can win by enforcing your own rules on them?
| bovermyer wrote:
| This is largely because they're looking for a social activity
| first and foremost, and don't much care about the particular
| rules.
|
| A lot of these people that "don't want to learn something
| new" will learn that new thing if enough of their
| friends/family are interested.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Monopoly! Woo!!
| contingencies wrote:
| Met the US chamption of Monopoly in LA at a boardgame
| meetup in 2010. I asked him how he found enough interest in
| the game to continue playing to such a level, since it was
| so shallow/predictable. He replied immediately that
| Monopoly was really just about convincing people to give
| you what you want. Turns out he was a lawyer.
| smoyer wrote:
| Monotony? ... for some reason I never had a problem playing
| Risk in college even though it would last all night (or
| more). Playing a six-hour game of Monopoly was only fun for
| the first couple of hours.
| Psyladine wrote:
| Monopoly should rarely, if ever, last more than 45
| minutes. Assuming Of Course you are playing by the rules.
| All properties landed on must sell - even if by auction,
| no free parking payout, chance cards are not optional, no
| banker loans, and there are a finite number of houses
| which caps development for the late-comers.
|
| It's as ruthless and unpleasant as a game of Sorry but
| that's the point, capitalism is only great when you're
| winning.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| You are exactly right, because Monopoly was literally
| invented as a propaganda device to show how awful
| capitalism is. The game was literally meant to be
| unpleasant and soul-draining. But... something went
| wrong. People took it at face value, and claim to be
| enjoying the experience. Stockholm Syndrome?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game#Descr
| ipt...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Well, I enjoy playing it, and appreciate the message. The
| best bit for me is the auctioning of the properties,
| however.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| ...and they also often delegate boardgames to "child's play".
| Having done that, they pre-emptively dismiss new board games
| because they're - by definition - for kids.
| contingencies wrote:
| Many people are deeply afraid of or do not enjoy losing
| competitive games. Further, they may also fairly associate
| the effort of learning a new game with an experienced player
| a prelude to losing. So their behavior could be fairly seen
| as 'pain avoidance' or 'enjoyment optimization'. Few people
| are motivated by intellectual stimulation or curiosity beyond
| childhood years.
| mrob wrote:
| The blame lies largely with the experienced players for
| failing to give sufficient handicap. If you're teaching
| somebody how to play Go, start with a 9x9 board and give
| them 5 stones. If you're teaching Arimaa, give them
| something like four rabbits, one horse, the camel, and the
| elephant. Dial back the handicap whenever they win a game,
| which at those starting handicaps should be from the very
| beginning.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| As somebody who has played a lot of different board games
| with a lot of different random people, its a huge time
| investment to learn a game, especially a complex one, that
| you might only end up playing one time.
| marcofiset wrote:
| I'm not only talking about complex games. Even something
| like Azul, which takes 5-8 minutes to teach and 45 minutes
| to play is met with reluctance from non-initiated people.
|
| I don't expect any non-gamer to sit through a 40-minute
| explanation, obviously. However, I wouldn't call an hour-
| long game (including teach) a "huge time investment".
| watwut wrote:
| 45 minutes of board game I likely won't like is a lot. In
| any case, games popular among causual players (including
| me) tend to be much shorter.
|
| Plus, no game that claims 45 in box or even take that
| long with experienced players ever take 45 min first
| time. It is usually double the claimed time.
| smoyer wrote:
| Cool to see the Tafl games in this article! Being part Welsh,
| I've researched and (tried to) played "tawlbwrdd" with a printed
| paper board and a few coins. I'm thinking about turning a maple
| tree (and a bit of black walnut) that we had cut down into
| heirloom games for my kids (they used to climb in those trees).
|
| http://tafl.cyningstan.com/page/172/tawlbwrdd
| leto_ii wrote:
| On a couple of occasions I have actually seen such ancient game
| boards in different places in Italy. Here's one from the Baths of
| Caracalla in Rome:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gaming_Board_in_the_...
|
| I especially like the thought that countless people have played
| on the same board for whole generations. It was a public pass-
| time that brought people together.
| mrob wrote:
| Is there evidence that it was actually used for playing games?
| The irregular placement of the divots makes it look like a kind
| of vandalism that was popular when I was in school, where
| people would surreptitiously use coins to grind divots in walls
| while waiting for class.
| leto_ii wrote:
| I don't have any definitive proof at hand, but it was
| mentioned in the brochure for the Baths of Caracalla. Here's
| a photo with a longer description:
| http://www.ipernity.com/doc/287951/48703648
|
| I think this kind of stuff was relatively common throughout
| the Roman world.
| mrob wrote:
| It's more obviously a game board in this photo. The
| irregular placement increases the difficulty of the game.
| mstade wrote:
| I love playing Backgammon, I find it to be an almost perfect
| blend of skill and luck, while also being much more accessible
| than something like chess. It's easy enough to learn on the fly,
| and after only a few games you start recognizing patterns and
| strategies and it really motivates you to get better. I find it's
| a pretty good way to get a more intuitive grasp on probability as
| well.
|
| It's also easy to teach other how to play and get hooked. I have
| lunch at the same spot almost every day, and I bring a backgammon
| rollup travel set with me so I can play with whomever might be
| interested in a game. Most often it'll be the owner or her staff
| (I've taught six of them how to play, so far!) but sometimes
| random people will come up and say "what's that game" and we're
| off to the races. Great conversation starter!
| misja111 wrote:
| Backgammon has gained some new popularity since computer
| programs appeared that were able to beat humans and more
| importantly, analyze the games afterwards. The game is now
| played more as a game of skill than of luck: there are some
| backgammon sites that rate your play according to computer
| analysis, e.g. https://backgammongalaxy.com/. If you're
| interested you should give it a try.
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