Tweaking an ancient game: Ur

As part of an assignment, I need to tweak the mechanics of an ancient game of my choosing. for 

this, i have chosen the Royal Game of Ur, as I have the most background knowledge for it.

There was a variety of different routes I chose initially. Whilst i had considered making changes 

to the board itself, i felt that wouldn't change the game for the better. 

One of the idea that cam to mind was to change the nature of the 'safe' squares, so two player pieces (of the same team) can land on it, as well as having the ability to ‘block’ the route for the opposition, similar to the Egyptian game ‘Senet’.

Another change that was considered was to allow the players to allocate their moves to each and any of their pieces.  But this effectively destroyed the game by creating too may variations which made the game less frustratingly long, lessening the tension of the game.

This method was to modify the binary die so for every blank result the opponent can move their piece instead of staying stationary. Whilst this is an interesting idea, the problem with this is that it caused turns made the turn taking more confusing, making everyone to lose track of whose turn follows.

One tweak that as my attention is another change to the binary die, where this time players role the dice multiple times. But for every blank result, it is removed from the subsequent roll. For example, if the player rolls 4 dice and one is a blank, this is removed from their next roll in their turn, so they can only roll three on their next move. This would continue on until the player has run out of dice, and the turn will end. When the player's turn begins again, the player will have four dice once more. This modification gives the opponent an advantage which 'rolls over' to their next move, which they can use as part of their strategy.  This tends to speed the game up for an experienced player if his opponent is a novice.

Senet and Ur... Now what was that other game called?

As guessed from the title, this post is about two ancient board games: 'Senet' and 'The royal game of Ur' (hence why the title was written like that... see what I did there?).

Royal game of Ur

Originally discovered in what is now modern day Iraq by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, it is 

one of the oldest board games ever found, dating back as far as prior to 2600 BCE (before common era)

The game roughly plays out as follows:

-The two players have four pieces each on one side of a game board (the left side, that is) strangely shaped like some sort of guitar (maybe they were fans of rock - get it, because its made of rock and,,, oh, evermind...)

-The players would take turns to move their pieces around the board to the other end. the first player to get all their pieces off the board completely wins the game.

with these basic principles are other rules to spice up the game. for instance, an opposing player can send your pieces back to the start if they land on one of your pieces, and vice versa. Io avoid this, there are spaces on the board (the marked spaces) that render the player 'immune' to this attack, but it only applies to pieces on these spaces, so choose the time to leave them wisely.

Senet
A game originating from ancient egypt around 3100BCE, Senet sits alongside Ur as one of the oldest board games on earth. A game about passing through the netherworld, the board is made up of a 10x3 grid, the first fourteen of these squares are filled with a game piece, alternating between one player and the other.

The aim is much like the Royal game of ur: get your game pieces off the table before the other. when pieces land on the opposing players piece, they change places, instead of removing them. Another notable
mechanic in this game is the blocking system, where having three pieces together in a row prevents any pieces behind from progressing.

Treasure hunt! A wealth of fun!

We had participated in an enjoyable pervasive game; a treasure hunt, one that took us to the furthest flung corners of the Arts and humanities building.

Initially, we were split into three groups and given one sheet of paper with a QR code on it. This code, when scanned with a special application on our phones, gave us directions to other QR codes, displaying their message in a variety of ways, from text, to sound files, and video, hyperlinks and the like. The quest eventually took us to the library, where we had to find a specific book section. When we found the QR code, we had found it displayed a very cryptic message. for a while, we were unsure what it meant, until Eddie himself appeared (seemingly from nowhere, from what I saw) and told us that it actually was the end. The fault was that he didn't make the end clear enough for us, but once we knew, we could finally say we had finished the hunt.

The moral of this story? Pervasive games (Like Treasure Hunts and 'Killer') can be a very engaging experience, as it lets the players interact in the real world, unlike board games and video games.