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Senet

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Re: Senet

#51

Post by JackFr »

addingnumbers wrote: post #12

> Espen Aarseth asked if the game Senet could be said to still exist, given that the rules were unknown. In response, Alexander de Voogt of the American Museum of Natural History pointed out that games did not have a fixed set of rules, but rules varied over time and from place to place. The game is the rules. Those people played different games. If you can do anything you want with it, it's a toy, not a game. If eve…

Well technically a pinochle deck is different from a deck you’d play poker with.

Re: Senet

#52

Post by shusaku »

zests wrote: post #4

I love ancient board games. It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. The game has since been stable for about 500. The computer era is revolutionizing the game again and maybe will usher in new popular variants (Fischer random, no castle chess) as our understanding of the game evolves.

It seems like an AI can now be trained just by encoding the rules and having it play itself (no database required to bootstrap). This should be great for variants (assuming enough processing power) since you will always be able to find a partner.

Re: Senet

#53

Post by joshuaissac »

legitster wrote: post #47
zests wrote: post #4

I love ancient board games. It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. The game has since been stable for about 500. The computer era is revolutionizing the game again and maybe will usher in new popular variants (Fischer random, no castle chess) as our understanding of the game evolves.

Richard Garfield (mathematician and designer of Magic the Gathering and others) used to give a talk about randomness in games. He talked about the history of chess, and how there used to be a lot more variants of the game (some even being a 4 player game with dice!), and over time competitive players naturally will want to remove random elements from the game. But on the other hand, some amount of wild unpredictabili…

> some even being a 4 player game with dice!

Charutaji: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturaji

Re: Senet

#54

Post by lupire »

btilly wrote: post #43
zests wrote: post #4

I love ancient board games. It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. The game has since been stable for about 500. The computer era is revolutionizing the game again and maybe will usher in new popular variants (Fischer random, no castle chess) as our understanding of the game evolves.

It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. Medieval chess was a very different game. For the most stark example, the queen did not get her modern move until around 1450. The game has since been stable for about 500. And yet something as basic as, "white moves first" was first suggested in 1857.

"white moves first" is an arbitrary/aesthetic/logistic choice, that doesn't affect gameplay logic.

Left-handed players may prefer Black goes first.

Re: Senet

#55

Post by QuercusMax »

btilly wrote: post #43
zests wrote: post #4

I love ancient board games. It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. The game has since been stable for about 500. The computer era is revolutionizing the game again and maybe will usher in new popular variants (Fischer random, no castle chess) as our understanding of the game evolves.

It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. Medieval chess was a very different game. For the most stark example, the queen did not get her modern move until around 1450. The game has since been stable for about 500. And yet something as basic as, "white moves first" was first suggested in 1857.

Does "white moves first" actually affect the game, though? It's just a convention.

Re: Senet

#56

Post by rodrigosetti »

QuercusMax wrote: post #55
btilly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. Medieval chess was a very different game. For the most stark example, the queen did not get her modern move until around 1450. The game has since been stable for about 500. And yet something as basic as, "white moves first" was first suggested in 1857.

Does "white moves first" actually affect the game, though? It's just a convention.

Yes, if our definition of "game" is broadened to mean "culture" around this tradition (as historians might), rather than just reducing to the rules.

In this sense, it also includes the conventions, skill-level titles, playing etiquette, etc.

Re: Senet

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

QuercusMax wrote: post #55
btilly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. Medieval chess was a very different game. For the most stark example, the queen did not get her modern move until around 1450. The game has since been stable for about 500. And yet something as basic as, "white moves first" was first suggested in 1857.

Does "white moves first" actually affect the game, though? It's just a convention.

> Does "white moves first" actually affect the game, though?

Materially, no, though it probably makes it less complex for humans by slightly simplifying the pattern recognition issues, particularly in the opening.

Re: Senet

#58

Post by dvirsky »

QuercusMax wrote: post #55
btilly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. Medieval chess was a very different game. For the most stark example, the queen did not get her modern move until around 1450. The game has since been stable for about 500. And yet something as basic as, "white moves first" was first suggested in 1857.

Does "white moves first" actually affect the game, though? It's just a convention.

Statistically, white wins more than black.

Re: Senet

#59

Post by Jtsummers »

dvirsky wrote: post #58
QuercusMax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does "white moves first" actually affect the game, though? It's just a convention.

Statistically, white wins more than black.

Because white goes first. The phrasing and context becomes important. There are two statements that are true but without them as context you end up with a misleading notion:

First player wins more than second in chess (because there's a slight advantage).

White goes first in chess.

Therefore, white wins more than black in chess.

However, that conclusion (what you present) is valueless without the context. If you reversed which color starts the game then we'd end up with "black wins more than white in Chess" as a conclusion and your statement would be false. And if there was no specific color which always started, we'd be left with just the first statement: First player wins more than second in chess.

Re: Senet

#60

Post by dragonwriter »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #25
zests wrote: post #4

I love ancient board games. It's amazing to think about chess and how rules have been changed slightly over time for 1000 years. The game has since been stable for about 500. The computer era is revolutionizing the game again and maybe will usher in new popular variants (Fischer random, no castle chess) as our understanding of the game evolves.

> The computer era is revolutionizing the game again and maybe will usher in new popular variants… It’s going to be fascinating to see. I can imagine games getting “frozen” with hard coded rules and clear Official Rules too. I expect that to happen to word spellings, for example, with most everything we write having a layer of autocorrect in the loop. Digital games could do the same, when you can’t make house rules w…

> Digital games could do the same, when you can’t make house rules without programming your own variant.

Or go the other way, as low-/no-code customization tools and online distribution make it easier to make and share variants than it is to do so at any scale with physical games, subject to the openness (both in design and social factors like IP status) of the base game.

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