The Royal Game of Ur
Throughout the essay, I will be talking about what I had to do which involved The Royal Game of Ur. For the past number of weeks, our lecturer has been talking about this ancient game and for this unit, we will not only get to play the game, we would also be able to iterate it. I touch briefly on the history of the game, the rules of play, the iterations I did while playing the game and also my own views on the ancient game.
Starting off with the history of the game, the game was first board created in the year 2600 BC to 2400 BC and is roughly around 4,400 years old. It was first played in Mesopotamia and to this it is still played to this day. There were five game boards founded between 1926 – 1930, in the Royal Cemetery of Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley, the game boards were usually described of having 20 squares (hence getting another name: The Game of Twenty Squares) which would consist of 4x3 square grid, a ‘narrow’ bridge of two squares and a smaller grid of 2x3, on these squares there were a few designs on it, one of them being a rosette flower that appeared every five spaces and was considered to be lucky. There was also a tablet that was excavated along with the board that had the rules of play for the game that has been deciphered by various researchers each with their own interpretation of the rules. (Fig.1: What the original game board)
Before iterating the game, the rules I followed were:
- Highest throw goes first.
- Pieces enter from opposites sides of the board.
- You must always move – lose a turn otherwise.
- New pieces can be introduced at any turn.
- Pieces can “piggyback” and move together.
- Single pieces on the “bridge” part of the board can be knocked off by opponent landing on that square.
- If a player lands on the rosette square – gains another go and is considered a safe zone (can’t be knocked off).
- Knocked off pieces must start again.
- Exact throws must be thrown to leave the board.
(Finkel, 2005)
However, when looking over at the texts I read, the rules were fairly different, one article from Robert Charles Bell (see Bell, 1979 Vol. 1 pp. 23-25). One of the things Bell talks about is that a pool is involved which would indicate that the people in Ancient Mesopotamia would gamble when playing this game, it also brings up a very interesting thing about the Rosette symbol squares, which was instead of the rule where players who land on it get an extra go the opponent would have to pay a fine which would go into the pool. Also they only played with 3 D4 dice, and how they figured how the score worked is as followed:
- Jewelled Corners up = move 5 + another roll.
- Three Plain Corners up = move 4 + another roll.
- Two Plain Corners up = 0 + turn ends.
- One Plain Corner up = move 1 + another roll.
(Bell, 1979 Vol. 1 p. 24)
Another interesting thing that I came across from this reading, was that the only way to get a piece on the board was that players had to score a 5 when they were rolling three D4 Dice which reminded me of how players can get a game piece on the board when playing Ludo, which you’d get rolling a D6 die (you’d have to roll a 6 in this instance). It doesn’t mention anything in the rules about players moving two pieces at the same time, but as I said earlier, there are loads of interpretations of the rules to this game, so no one really has a proper understanding.
Andrea Becker did a symposium which was then edited by Finkel. The article had a brief summary behind the history of the board, and includes a brief explanation of the rules itself. You have two players, both have to move seven counters along the fixed path to win the game using three dice (or sticks), the flower squares can be considered as a safe zone – and you get an additional roll. These rules seem pretty similar to the ones I played when carrying out my task. The article showed a few variations of the game board, all with different designs except for the rosette flowers that appear on every board in the same places. The board itself did go through an overhaul in design, keeping the 20 squares: it 4x3 square grid, but would have a bridge of 8x1 squares.
(Fig. 2 – Picture of the board of the Royal Game of Ur in the second and first millennia)
(Finkel, 2008:20)
“...the new format would suggest a change in play in that the pieces would remain ‘at war’ all the way to the end of the track.”
Finkel, On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur, Fine led. 2008:20
Finkel made an interesting point about the board that was used in the second and first millennia. Which would suggest that with the bridge being extended; it changes the game. The game keeps the same rules as before – it’s still a race to see who will get all of their pieces off the board, but the main change is that the level of competitiveness has increased because now you’re going to be “at war” for the most part of the game and you’ll want to make sure that it’s your piece that gets the before your opponent.
I am now going to talk about the iterations I made when playing. My first iteration was that if a player rolled a 0, they could get another chance to roll. The main reason for this was when first playing it, there was a period where all me and the person I was playing against were just rolling zeroes and it was just slowing down the pace of the game so we figured to help speed it up a bit we’d have a second chance like feature which did help.
The second iteration was one that I or the person that was playing didn’t know was an actual rule, but we did add bits and pieces towards that iteration. It was the piggybacking rule. But we both agreed that of you do piggyback you cannot land on the rosette square on the board. This was mainly because if you could land on those particular spaces with two pieces, the game would be broken, you’d have two pieces saved and it wouldn’t be very fun if you had both players doing the exact same tactic of having two pieces on the “safe” zone, it wouldn’t be as fun. Which would then go onto an iteration that we decided would help benefit from this a lot is that you can un-piggyback pieces whenever you want too. I do feel that this was a bit of a silly iteration, looking back on why we added this rule, it didn’t really make much sense at the start but later on, you’ll see where it came in handy.
The next change we decided on was to do with the rosette spaces. One of the things that myself and my iterating partner noticed was that whenever we got on the rosette square, we didn’t want to move those pieces, we’d just leave them there and move the other pieces that wasn’t occupying one of those spaces. So, we agreed that if you are to land on the rosette, the extra roll you get you will have to move that same piece. This was clearly done to fasten up the play, as I mentioned earlier we wasn’t moving from those squares, and in the rules it states that only one piece allowed on that square, which means that if you rolled and you want to move onto one of the safe zones, you couldn’t. Of course, if the player was to move onto a space occupied by piggyback – then the player would end their turn but would have to move that piece on their next roll.
The final change made was again to do with piggybacking. We both agreed that if you are piggybacking then you would have to half the result of your roll. Which was fair because it’d make the game somewhat too easy, any player would just piggyback two pieces throughout the game and there you go, easy win for one player? There is more, we also agreed that if you were to land on a rosette while piggybacking, you do not get the extra roll you would get and you cannot consider it the safe zone either – meaning an enemy piece can take both pieces off the space and off the board. This was done to try and balance out the whole piggybacking thing, two pieces in the safe squares again would make the game unfair. Apart from that, I think it adds a bit of strategy to how and when a piece should carry another piece.
In conclusion, I did feel that the game itself was fairly enjoyable to play and could see the appeal of what the people in Mesopotamia liked about it, it was competitive, had some form of “fun” elements in the game (well, the rules with the pool anyway) and seemed like something anybody could pick up and play. On the other hand, given how old the game is, and how things may have been different at the time, I could genuinely see where it would be hard to iterate the game on the original board, that being said, looking back at my iterations, I do feel that maybe I could of come up with some better ones that would of served a better purpose, so if given a chance to do this again, I’d say come up with some more innovative iterations.
Bibliography
· Becker, A. (2008) “The Royal Game of Ur” in Finkel, ed. pp. 11-15.
· Bell, R. C. (1979) Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Revised edition. pp. 23-25.
· Finkel, I. L. (2008) “On the Rules for The Royal Game of Ur” in Finkel. pp. 16-32.
· Hunicke et al (2004) describe games as 'systems that build behaviour via interaction'
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