The Royal Game of Ur
In this essay I will be discussing the ancient game ‘Ur’ (aka ‘Game of Twenty Squares’) refering to one of two game boards, and was one of the earliest board games discovered and played my pre-historic man. The game was created in between the years 2600BC – 2400BC during the Early Dynastic III period and was discovered in the Royal Tombs of Ur in Iraq by Sir Leonard Woolley during the 1920’s. Both boards date from before 2600BC, which was the First Dynasty of Ur, making the game of Ur to be the oldest board game equipment ever found. Due to its playability the game is still played in Iraq today, one of the boards is exhibited in the British Museum to this day.
The Royal Game of Ur has on hard and fast rules to go by; the reason for this being is the earliest translation of the rules was found by RH Hammond. The rules were found on a stone tablet in Iraq. And on this tablet were several variations of the rules hence why there are no set rules. Also in the British museum there is the first found board of the Royal Game of Ur on display.
The Royal Game of Ur is played with two sets of markers (during its original period it would have been played with sea shells or other stones or items) one white, one black and four tetrahedral dice (sometimes both players would have had a set of tetrahedral dice each depending on the rules at the time and availability). The tetrahedral dice would have some form of distinguishing mark on two of the points or corners of them, probably some form of paint or other method. The marking would represent one unit or space in which the player could either add one of their games pieces to the board or they would be able to advance a selected piece on the game board. The other points that were unmarked on the dice represented a zero value adding an element of luck to the game so if the players threw, and the unmarked points appeared those would be void. So for example if one player threw all four dice and three of them showed a marked point that would mean they could either add a piece to the board if they hadn’t already and more it two placed forward, or they would be able to advance a piece already existing on the board three squares.
Another mechanic to this game is that when a player has their turn, due to the limited amount of spaces on the game board only one counter in this version is, is allowed to take up the entire space of a single square on the board. So to tackle this problem there is a rule that is a player already has a counter on a space and the other player has rolled to that space the existing player’s piece is sent off the board and the piece has to start all over again. This is what is call in the gaming world a ‘negative feedback loop’, this is useful because when the game has been going on for some time the players may become bored so this penalises the losers by sending them further back on the board and rewards the winners by giving them a advantage. This is turn speeds up the end of the game for a clear winner.
Also on the board itself there are several starred markers that are set into it, in the version that I’m describing in this essay the stars are used in order so that when it’s the player’s turn, if they land on the marked square they are entitled to another roll of the dice. This is a positive feedback in this game as it gives the player an advantage at the time so they have the chance to progress a little farther. However this is sometimes pointless because a zero roll can occur. This process also speeds up the game by giving the player an advantage and speeding up how far their pieces are on the board.
However this brings another advantage to the game, the starred squares on the board serve another purpose. When a player lands on the starred space if they roll another number not only would the player possibly be able to knock a piece further up the board off of it, but if the player scores another zero the player cannot be moved off of that space even if the other player rolls enough to move onto that piece. Meaning which ever player is on the starred space they can’t be moved off of the board (making that piece untouchable for the time being) this gives the other player a disadvantage as they can’t knock that piece off of the board, however this does mean they have to strategies with other pieces on the board.
However one must remember there aren’t set rules for this game as nobody’s found a written set in any form as of yet and during the ages the rules may have been tweaked altered and improved up on for varying reasons.
However we noticed the game was not perfect and contained a few faults with it. The first fault was on occasion one player would roll all zero’s several times in a row preventing them from progressing across the board. This had an upside and a down side. If one player was further than another it would enable them to catch up, and if one player was behind it shortened the game. When this happens to one player repeatedly it can become boring, and the last thing a game designer wishes for is their game to become boring. In order to perfect it I modified a new rule and set it into the new iteration of the game. The rule was, if one player throws three zeros turned in succession they have to keep rolling the tetrahedral dice until they roll some meaningful value. We tried this in the new iteration; this made the game much more fun to play because no matter what, this meant everyone had a go around the board. This did however lengthen the game slightly as the player had to keep picking up the dice and rolling them again, this took valuable play time. This new rule is called a (positive/negative) feedback loop. If you are asking, a positive feedback loop is a game mechanic that is used to end a game quickly fining a winner, e.g. in snakes and ladders at the end you need to go back and get the right number to finish. Although with the negative points this iteration was worth it because in the event a player has a number of zero rolls with it will eliminate frustration and boredom and generally make the game a lot fairer.
The next iteration tested was where if the player wished they could split their roll if the value was higher than one, they would be able to split the number of moves to other pieces on the board. This mechanic is used in Backgammon and it is still used today so it must have a positive impact. E.g. if one player rolled four across all the dice they would be able to move two of their existing pieces across the board two spaces each. Also this can be used with any other combination of choice at the time. When testing this iteration it proved to be an improvement because on occasion one counter would be on a starred space which cannot be moved so this allows more movement along the board and this allows the player to have more counters on the board as well. One of the downsides to this would be that it would slightly lengthen the game because if the choice was take the pieces would not progress as quickly along the board however, and this in theory can lead to boredom but luckily it’s outweighed.
The other down side is with the starred squares pieces cannot be moved off of them and if the player had no other options then their go is essentially useless. However when tested this mechanic was useful and added more strategy to it.
The next iteration introduced involved the player not staying one a single starred space over an extended length of time. Whilst playing the game a rule was noticed by my opponent. A counter can’t be knocked off the board if their counter is on a starred square and they roll enough to take up this space, one player can occupy all of these spaces making it unfair and boring for the other player. To tackle this we added a new rule preventing any counter from staying on one starred piece for more than three turns, meaning the space would be freed up at some point and allowing other players to progress along the board.
This rule did not make much of a difference to the game since neither of us used this tactic that much although we tested the playing style and it became apparent that this would make a major improvement to the game for other players. Thus we decided to keep the rule because this would be useful to other players and it made the game more enjoyable as all of the pieces had to move at some point making them move across the board.
CONCLUSION
Overall the Royal Game of Ur was fun to play and its playability is very broad. The original rules for the game are very well thought through, but they still require a bit of tweaking. But saying that this game is not that well known of to the general public and so it still needs to be discovered for its playability. On the other hand the new rules I added to the game added some interesting mechanics to it and made the game a lot more fun and strategic so in my opinion the game needed these new rules for a revamp to suit a new generation of players.
Word count: Total (not including title and the word conclusion): 1,689
