iterations of the royal game of Ur

During this essay I will be discussing the history and background of the Royal game of Ur and the problems encountered in tweaking the dynamics and game mechanics in The Royal Game of Ur. 

The royal game of Ur was originally found within a collection of other game boards during a excavation at the royal tombs at Ur in Mesopotamia, at that time it was estimated to date back to 3000 B.C. One issue that arose was that no rule set was known at the time, this lead too many variations of the game being created as people only had the board to work out how the game was played. (R.C.Bell, 1979,  p. 23) (H.J.R.Murray, 2000, p. 20)

There were many variations of the board these ranged from a more elaborate variation in which the board is completely covered with shell plaques inlaid with lapis lazuli and red limestone, and is divided by lapis lazuli strips. (R.C.Bell, 1979,  p. 23)

This recovered game board was 8 by 3 squares. It was played using four sided dice, with two of their sides having a jewelled corner, and the other two being plain. The layout of the board found in Ur is shown below. (R.C.Bell, 1979,  p. 24)

R.C.Bell first suggestion for a rule set for the royal game of Ur were that each player had seven tokens and three dice, the players would bet money before the game. Both players' tokens would all start off the board and would enter onto the tile indicated on the image. Each player each player then takes turns at rolling their 3 dice.

scores:

3 Jewelled corners up - 5

3 Plain corners up - 4

2 Plain corners up - 0

1 Plain corner up – 1

A score of 5 is then needed to get a counter onto the board the players would then move there counter towards the first rosette, once it got to the 5th square it risked the chance of it being removed from the board by having the opponent landing on the same square. The final objective was to reach the end and get your counter over the end but you had to roll exact number to finish. Other rules included you can have as many pieces on the board at one time but they must not be on the same square. (R.C.Bell, 1979, p 25)

A later iteration of the game was found in Egypt dating to around 1500 years after the creation of the royal game of Ur however many thing had change by then was the board layout, it had been modified to allow for a longer combat phase this would of increased the tension whilst playing the game.

According to Finkel the designs on the board show ether a individual or neutral style the only exception of this is the five rosettes which always appear in the same place on the board this would indicate that the rest of the board’s designs are independent of game mechanics. (Finkel, 2008, p 11-12) 

In 1880, a small Babylonian stone tablet from 177 BC was excavated, and this tablet then appeared in a 1956 journal article. In the same article was another tablet which was very similar, and upon closer inspection by Finkel, they were both in fact the rules for the Royal Game of Ur. When compared with the tablet Bell’s rules seem to closely match the description of the rules on the tablet. Finkel states that the squares in the battle ground are linked with astronomy. This supports Becker’s theory that the game could be used for divination purposes like many games of that period. (Finkel, 2008, p 14, 17-20) 

Throughout this next part I will be referencing to mechanics dynamics and Aesthetics

Mechanics describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.

Dynamics describes the run-time behaviour of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each other’s outputs over time.

Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.

(Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek, 2004, p 2)

Are first iteration was the ability to group units together this modifies the dynamics of the game by increasing the speed it takes to win but adding a risk reward mechanism into the game, the reward being that you could get all your counters finished a a short time however could be sent back to the start with all five pieces (Brenda Braithwaite & Ian Schreiber, 2008, p 86-87) this shortened the run time of the game making it a more fast passed game.

According to Braithwaite trade-offs are when a player must make a choice to gain something and lose another, none of the choices are entirely right or wrong, but it is up to the player to decide which one to make. This principal can be applied to the risk reward mechanic we input into the game.

After play testing for a few times we found that the risk reward function wasn’t properly balanced. The risk was to weak and made it a simple decision to group all your counters together

For are second iteration we decided to modify a mechanic by adding another event that happens on certain squares around the board. The change we made was to add a death square where if you landed on it and counters you had on that square would be taken out of play, This reinforced the risk factor in the game from grouping making the game more balanced.

After play testing the game with the new iterations it was clear that the game had become tenser and that by having your units got sent back to the start a few time made the player more cautious and went away from grouping it was clear at this point we had made the risk too great for the reward. 

For the third iteration we decided to focus on the context but continue to balance we did this by changing the mechanic again, once again we added a different event this one stayed within context of a battle by adding a fall back mechanic that your counter would have to move back to the nearest previous units on the board. This added a bonus for grouping all of your counters together as you would be immune from that event thus getting an advantage.

After play testing the iteration we found this had improved the balance of the game and that the risk reward mechanic was working as intended.

For the fourth iteration we decided that you were not landing on each other enough and that the board was sending you back a lot more that the other players and that this got rid of the competitive atmosphere between the players. We changed the rule from landing on the square sends the enemy back to simply overtaking those sends there units back.

After play testing this new iteration we discovered that this had improved the competitive nature of the game. Also the difficulty of the game and the likelihood of failure made the game often open ended till the last move as on bad dice roll can send you back this kept people interested as the game was a lengthy one.

For the fifth iteration we were considering if being able to split your move for example you rolled a 4 you could move to independent counters 2 spaces each. From a theoretical standpoint we assumed it would add more strategy to the gameplay.

However after testing it for a few games we found it had the opposite effect, we found that it had unbalanced the risk reward system and had made the previous iterations obsolete and lowered the tension in the game for those reasons we decided not to implement them into the game.

In conclusion when compared with Bell’s rules and the ones Finkel managed to recover from the tablet I feel that the iterations made above have improved the competitive nature and also increased the gameplay speed and made the game tenser. However I feel that the context surrounding divination purposes has been ignored and deemed as not important. I still feel that the game needed to include more conflict. 

Bibliography

Bell, R. C. (1979) Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Revised edition. New York. Dover Press

Finkel, I. L. ed. (2008) Ancient Board Games in Perspective: Papers from the 1990 British Museum colloquium with additional contributions. London. British Museum Press.

Hunicke, R., Leblanc, M. & Zubek, R. (2004) MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research.

Brenda Braithwaite & Ian Schreiber, Challenges For Games Designers, 2008

H.J.R.Murray, A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess, 2000 ,