Tweaking The Royal Game of Ur

The Iterative Process

Since there are two boards, I had to choose which one to start iterating. I started playing on both boards and got a feel for both of them. To begin with, I chose to use the board discovered by Finkel, for that ‘sprint to the end’ feel than the other board where there are safe zones at the finish line. This board also greatly compliments the rules translated by Finkel. These rules were adopted for play testing, found in the book “On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur” by Finkel.

Game Rules

• Each Player begins with 7 tokens
• Each player starts on opposite sides of the board.
• Players decide who starts first, with any desired method
• The player who starts rolls four d4 die, each coloured on two tips.
• The player moves a single token forward according to how many coloured tips are rolled
• If a player’s token lands on a “Rosette” square, they get another turn.
• The purpose of the game is for each player to get all of their tokens off the board, following the pathway shown in the diagram below.
• If a player’s token is moved on top of the opponents token, the token that was first on the square is returned to the player.
• A token on a “Rosette” square is safe and cannot be taken.
• If a player cannot move that turn, that turn is lost
• For a piece to leave the board, you need to roll the exact number of space needed to exit. If this is not possible, then that turn if forfit.

To begin with, I decided to add a mechanic to the game by allowing players to stack counters on top of each other. This allowed for faster game play as multiple counters can leave the board at the same time. It also allowed strategy into the game, in the form of which tactic to go for (To rush single counters to the end or build up and amassing forward). This added some dynamic to the game other than just moving a single piece forward at a time. It also added some realism to the game in terms of modern war games, where it feels you are stacking an army of units, rather than single lone soldiers moving out. This gave the feel that the player is playing a role of a General, commanding his troops in a turn base strategy style. With a little a aesthetics to the board and counters, I would be able to theme the game successfully for those types of gamers.

After play testing this new rule, the game quickly became tenser as the pace of the game was much quicker than before. It wasn’t long before a dominant strategy occurred where the pace of the game at the start would sbe extremely slow as both players would stack all their counters into one giant stack and then relying on one dice roll to get all their counters to the end of the board, which the frustration of losing all your counters

It was apparent that the random aspect of a dice roll could be manipulated to increase “funativity” (Noah Falstein, Gamasutra:Natural Funativity, 2004).

To keep inline with my initial idea to appeal more to the modern gamer, I wanted to add a battle mechanic that is more engaging rather than just landing on a piece. I looked into other board games to see what I could come up with that can be interesting whilst easy to implement.

I landed on the game of Risk and how its core battle mechanic allowed for engaging battles with a fairly easy mechanic.

By introducing the battle mechanic to the game, stacks which are smaller than other stacks have a chance of taking out the bigger stack by a few lucky dice rolls. The rule I added was the following:

           

‘When a counter (or stack of counters) landed on an opposing counter (or stack of counters), each player rolls a dice for the first counter on the stack. The player with the lowest dice roll removes their counter from the board. If there is more counters (e.g. two stacks clashing) then the process happens again until only one player is on the space.’

Much like the battle system in Risk, a losing player can still win by a few lucky dice rolls. This addition made the game even more nerve-wracking then before, allowing small victories and losses impact the game entirely.

This aspect not only relates to similar divination methods of previous games but also provided the losing players to keep playing and fighting, without the feeling of total defeat. (Mark LeBlanc, Salen and Zimmerman's The Game Design Reader p438 - p459).

After play testing with this rule in place, I knew that it was a much needed addition to the game; not only did it allow the losing player to snatch back up to the winning square, but also nulls out possible boredom and negativity to the game. Due to the randomness of die rolls, it added a lot of tense effects. This also allowed some strategic methods of play due to the chance of a single counter being able to take out an entire stack of seven tokens.

This is the exact type of reaction I was hoping for when I started iterating the game, by making players think about what tactic to use and how to counter the opposing player which another.