The Royal Game of Ur

The Royal Game of Ur

For this week's lecture we looked into the Royal game of Ur (otherwise known as 'game of 20 spaces' by Irving Finkel - due to there being 20 square tiles on the playing board).

At first we briefly looked at peoples categorisation of games, namely Finkel (referring to Murray), Bell, and David Parlett.

Finkel (2008) refers to Murray (1952 - A History of Board Games Other Than Chess - Contents Page), classifies board games into five groups:

1. Games of alignment and configuration (examples such as Noughts and Crosses and Nine Men's Morris etc.).
2. War Games (such as Chess).
3. Hunt Games (such as Fox & Geese).
4. Mancala Games (such as Mancala).

Bell (1960; revised 1980 - Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations - Contents and Bibliographies) sets games into six categories:

1. Race Games (such as Pachisi).
2. War Games (such as Chess).
3. Games of Position (such as Noughts & Crosses).
4. Mancala Games (such as Mancala).
5. Dice Games (such as Hazard).
6. Domino Games (such as Ma-jong).

Parlett (1999 - The Oxford History of Board Games - Contents Page) places games into four categories:

1. Race Games
2. Space Games
3. Chase Games
4. Displace Games

We discussed the differences and similarities between each persons categories, for example Murray considered the games of Fox & Geese as a 'hunting' game but for Parlett it is a game of 'chase' while for Bell it is a 'war' game. It was at this point that we looked specifically at 'The Royal Game of Ur'.

The Board & Pieces:

The layout of the original board which was first discovered in 2600BC from the ancient city of Ur, was shaped with a larger body area (4 x 3 squares), a smaller body area (2 x 3 squares) and narrow bridge area connecting the 2 previous areas (2 x 1 squares). 7 playing pieces were used for play. The rule-set for this game was on a clay tablet dating back to 177BC - the oldest known set of game rules in the world. Both the game board and tablet are now stored in the British Museum.

The board was later found (early part of the second century BC) that the board layout had changed. The smaller area of six squares had been 'straightened out' and added to the bridge which extended the part of the board where two players were in conflict. This later version of the game was played with five pieces rather than seven, and the five gaming pieces are distinguished from each other and represented different birds (Swallow, 'Storm Bird', Raven, Rooster and Eagle).

There were two types of dice found with the game board, 'throwing sticks' which were four sided, with the upper side representing the roll. The second dice found were tetrahedral (four sided) pyramid-shaped dice (otherwise known as D4). On a four sided dice, the outcome is decided by point which is uppermost, with two pints being marked giving the player two chances out of four in rolled a marked pointed side up roll.

We then played the game ourselves to get a feel of what to do with the intention of making Iterations to the game with what we thought would increase the playability and fun.

Playing the Game:

Our first play through was the unaltered version. I found this game to be easy to learn and fairly quick to play and complete taking roughly 20 minutes. To finish the game we had to roll the exact number needed - this wasn't explained to us from the instructions, so we used this as a base rule. First game I won.

Our first Iteration was to allow 'Crowing' of pieces when pieces from the same player entered the same tile allowing movement in bulk, there was no limit to the amount of pieces on a space so we decided not to have a limit for the 'crowning' of a single piece. This second play through was even faster and easier although it made for more aggressive gameplay due to being able to finish the game with '1 piece'. Second round, I also won.

Our second Iteration was to allow a single roll to either be used for getting a new play piece onto the board OR for moving an existing piece, no longer being able to split the roll between both. The third play through revealed that this extended the duration of the game for people wanting a longer game. I also won the third game!

Conclusion:

'The Royal Game of Ur' is a fairly quick game that has the fun of games such as 'Droughts' and was easily moddable to change certain areas for increasing fun and playability.