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The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

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Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#21

Post by Someone »

a1369209993 wrote: post #17
cjslep wrote: post #4

How many modern games are two-player asymmetrical? I only know of Android: Netrunner. I hope we can continue learning more concrete rules for the ancient version of this game. It would be nice to have its history understood like chess'.

Strictly speaking most modern (two-player) games are two-player asymmetrical, since one player has a first-mover advantage. Not what you meant of course, but worth considering; it's somewhat hard to make a game that's strictly symmetric.

Rock-paper-scissors is strictly symmetrical. Diplomacy would be, if started on a symmetrical map.

Also, take any two-player game, and create a new game where the players play the original game twice, switching sides, and you end up with a symmetrical game.

If you play both games in parallel, where each player can choose in which source game to play on each turn, I think you still end up with a symmetrical game (in some sense)

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#22

Post by INTPenis »

DrHuman wrote: post #5
mrec wrote: post #2

It's an interesting game, mostly because unlike most modern games it's massively asymmetrical. Goals, strategies and attitudes are very different for the two players, and despite the numerical lopsidedness in pieces it's much easier to win as the defender, and a slow cautious style is much more important for the attacker. See Fetlar Hnefatafl for a modern codification of the (very vague) historical rules: http://tafl…

I actually wrote a toy app recently following the Fetlar rules as a React exercise: https://htafl.herokuapp.com/ Not sure how it renders across machines but it looks ok on my Mac.

If you could add a rooms feature and online game like http://tafl.herokuapp.com/ then I think you'd see some real use of that app.

The one I linked looks much worse than your board.

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#23

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Hnefatafl (and possibly other, similar games) inspired a fictional game played in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, Going Postal and Thud!. From wikipedia:

The game, supposedly called in Dwarfish "Hnaflbaflwhiflsnifltafl" (a reference to the Viking game Hnefatafl which it resembles), represents the famous "Battle of Koom Valley" between dwarfs and trolls.

The game was first directly referenced in Going Postal, being played by Vetinari, and became a central concept in the immediate sequel Thud!. (...)

Terry Pratchett devised a fictional history of how Thud was invented similar to the Shahnama theory of the origins of chess. In short, the clever dwarf who invented the game was asked by his king to name his reward. The answer was that he wanted his board filled with gold: One small gold piece on the first square, two pieces on the second, four pieces on the third, etc. Needless to say, this is more than all the gold of the Disc combined. The king then got angry and threatened to kill the dwarf who was 'too drhg'hgin clever by half'. The inventor then hastily changed his reward to 'as much gold as he could carry', whereupon the king agreed and simply broke one of his arms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_of_the_Discworld#Thud

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#24

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

UnderProtest wrote: post #9
kwhitefoot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a bit like Thud in which each player has to take a turn playing each side. See https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Thud .

It does sound a bit like Thud, doesn't it? From your link: Thud is a board game based on the earlier dwarfish game of Hnaflbaflsniflwhifltafl. It is played mainly by Dwarfs and Trolls... The game itself echos the game played by Vikings and Anglo-Saxons "Hnafletafle"- which literally means "Kings Table". Hnafletafle echos go beyond just the name. Like 'Thud' it is unusual in that it is an 'asymmetrical' game... In tha…

Note that Thud! is a real-world version of the game, that is never precisely described in the books. Er, as far as I remember :)

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#25

Post by mrec »

DrHuman wrote: post #18
mrec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I did the same (VanillaJS) a couple of years back, and started thinking about implementing a computer opponent, but it's really not clear what the evaluation function should be.

Agreed. The only thing I could think to do would be look for pieces to capture in any given turn, but that would never get it to an end game condition. It's beyond my current capabilities to make a proper computer opponent, but it would be a good exercise.

> look for pieces to capture in any given turn

Not as a general rule. If you're playing as the attacker, you don't always want to take defender pieces even if they're "free" - they're more useful boxing their own king in.

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#26

Post by mrec »

formalsystem wrote: post #12
mrec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I did the same (VanillaJS) a couple of years back, and started thinking about implementing a computer opponent, but it's really not clear what the evaluation function should be.

You need only codify the victory and loss conditions to build an AI using standard Reinforcement learning algorithms. Feel free to message me if you want more detail on how this would work. We should be able to hammer something out in less than a day.

Thanks for the pointer, but I'm afraid I have zero knowledge of ML and wouldn't be any help.

I have to say I'm a bit sceptical that this approach can work purely based on win/loss conditions - an attacker victory in particular can often take hundreds of moves in Tafl games.

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#27

Post by DrHuman »

mrec wrote: post #25
DrHuman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The only thing I could think to do would be look for pieces to capture in any given turn, but that would never get it to an end game condition. It's beyond my current capabilities to make a proper computer opponent, but it would be a good exercise.

> look for pieces to capture in any given turn Not as a general rule. If you're playing as the attacker, you don't always want to take defender pieces even if they're "free" - they're more useful boxing their own king in.

Yea, it's not even a good strategy really. Just the only thing that I felt like I could code that would be a step up from just making a random legal move.

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#28

Post by DrHuman »

INTPenis wrote: post #22
DrHuman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wrote a toy app recently following the Fetlar rules as a React exercise: https://htafl.herokuapp.com/ Not sure how it renders across machines but it looks ok on my Mac.

If you could add a rooms feature and online game like http://tafl.herokuapp.com/ then I think you'd see some real use of that app. The one I linked looks much worse than your board.

I would like to flesh it out at some point. Not sure how to go about doing the back end though. I'm currently taking a Node course so maybe after that I'll give it a shot.

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#29

Post by jamesgeck0 »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #19
hollerith wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starcraft (provided the players aren't both playing the same species).

Although even then both players pretty much have similar tools, similar resources, and similar goals. ("Gather minerals and gas, build a base and an army, destroy the other player's base and army.") I can't offhand think of any videogames that are radically asymmetric (e.g. one guy is playing an RTS, the other is playing a shooter), though I'm sure there's something.

There are a few of them.

_Spy Party_ is a game in which one player is a sniper and the other player is a spy at a cocktail party pretending to be an NPC.

In _Who's Your Daddy_, one player is a father whose goal is child-proof their surroundings on the fly to thwart the other player, a suicidal baby.

_Evolve_ was a game in which a team of four hunter players hunted a single monster player.

_Natural Selection_ is close to what you describe; one player on each team is playing an RTS and their teammates are playing a FPS. One side is space marines, the other are aliens. Marines have guns, but aliens can move through vents, scuttle up walls, etc.

Re: The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

#30

Post by INTPenis »

DrHuman wrote: post #28
INTPenis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could add a rooms feature and online game like http://tafl.herokuapp.com/ then I think you'd see some real use of that app. The one I linked looks much worse than your board.

I would like to flesh it out at some point. Not sure how to go about doing the back end though. I'm currently taking a Node course so maybe after that I'll give it a shot.

Or release the source. I'm good at backend but only a hobbyist with node. Perhaps I could do something with your ready-made frontend code.
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