Rediscovering rules for ancient board games | Hacker News Reader

Rediscovering rules for ancient board games

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> the oldest known board game is an Egyptian game that dates back to 3100 BCE called Senet. “We almost never have the rules for these early games,” Browne said. “The rules have never been recorded, so our knowledge is largely based on historian’s reconstructions.”

I live near the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, CA. The group behind it owns the whole square city block, so besides the museum itself there's also a research library, other related buildings, and a nice park area all around.

Included in the park space is a reconstruction of the Senet game, along with an approximate reconstruction of the rules; it's explained that the rules are an approximation with a rough reason as to why.

Whether the rules were simply "lost to time" or due to a subset of this as "they were never written down because everyone knew them" I'm not sure, but it was nice to see the game available in person.

As more powerful AI computation capabilities become available to hobbyists, I hope someone takes up researching new board games similar to Go, Chess and the other giants of abstract strategy games (ASG).

Basically, train really strong AI players using the AlphaZero method with the rules of the game changed by a human author (either some variant of Go, or a completely new game). Then take a look at the games the AI plays at its strongest level and let people decide if the game looks interesting enough for them to try play competitively. With the strong AI player already in place, human players would have something to learn from and a serious competitive culture could be born.

In the absence of something like this, I don't think it's surprising the only popular ASGs are very, very old. Modern commercial board games are fine, but they supply a different demand than ASGs.

There are countless Abstract Strategy Games out there.

You’re unlikely to see another game very similar to Chess or Go, because they have each evolved over time to be the pinnacle of their particular niche, and there’s really only room for one king of each of these hills. There are newer games that are starting to show similar signs of longevity, though: Scrabble, Poker, and Bridge come to mind.

Modern commercial board games and some genres of video game have communities that could continue for a similar length of time, but they’re still too young to have reached a consensus on one or two games; I suspect that’s a few decades out. The good news is that there are some older titles that are still holding their own in the market— to beat out the newcomers hints that there’s some kind of staying power there.

I don't agree with your premise that chess has evolved to be at the pinnacle of its niche (I don't know enough about Go to comment on it). There are a number of interesting variations in chess-like games that, while maintaining the general theme of killing the enemy king, offer aspects of gameplay that chess does not.

Two of the more well known variations are shōgi and xiangqi: Shōgi allows the redeployment of captured pieces, whilst xiangqi limits the movement of a few pieces and has a mechanism for representing artillery. I find that each game has a very different character to that of western chess, even despite the fact that they share a large number of tactical motifs.

Western chess may be the most popular variant world-wide, but that's no indication that it is at any kind of pinnacle.

I think it's fair to call it the pinnacle when talking about the Western world. Both shogi and xiangqi developed from the same base game as chess historically, so I'm not sure how far they venture from the theme compared to something like hnefatafl (which is chess-like but varies considerably in game mechanics when compared with shogi and xiangqi).

Just like Like Go and Poker each have a number of variant rule sets in common use, I mentally group all of these as “chess” based on their common ancestry. I haven’t really studied them enough to know if this is truly justified.

I've been wondering, how closely could a future/alien civilization recreate Magic the Gathering's rules given nothing but a collection that included every card and several (100? 1000?) valid decks for different formats.

I imagine they could get fairly close, especially thanks to reminder text. But I wonder how older/erattaed cards or old templating might hinder those efforts.

For those unfamiliar with Magic, the comprehensive rules are about 190 pages of 10-20 rules each, plus a glossary/index. On top of that, the golden rule of Magic is that if a card and the rules disagree, the card takes precedence. And there are over 20,000 unique named cards, though a small number are functionally the same card as another with a different name.

See this link for the comprehensive rules, but note that the vast, vast majority of games don't require an exhaustive understanding. You can learn enough to play in 10 minutes, though you'll probably need to learn something new each game for a little while.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/game-info/gameplay/rules-and-fo...

IMO you wouldn't be able to come close. I'm not familiar with how much reminder text modern cards have but surely there is no way you'd be able to work out anything close to the timing rules from just cards alone.

There are plenty of cards that reference sorcery speed, there's a card that lists all the phases in order and has players skip one, there's the Split-Second keyword which says you can't put things on the stack until it finishes resolving.

The fact that the game is fundamentally about overwriting its own rules is why I think it might be possible.

Older cards have more expressive text. So, you can probably link modern vocabulary to older vocabulary to explain play and rules.

However, there are certain rules that are arbitrary. For example, the fact that resolution order follows a "stack" is specified nowhere on cards.

> For example, the fact that resolution order follows a "stack" is specified nowhere on cards.

There are actually several things that reference the stack. For example the reminder text for Split second ("As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities.") and end the turn ("Exile all spells and abilities from the stack, including this card..."). From this we learn that normally people can cast spells and abilities, and that these go onto "the stack". And if you know what a stack is, then the resolution order follows from that.

No, you only learn there is a thing called "the stack". You have no idea how things get there.

I don't think there's a single person today that knows all the rules. If you want to annoy any judge just ask about an interaction between 3+ cards involving Opalescence and Humility. On top of that the rules get more complex with every set, though they do attempt to cut things down. Fortunately for competitive play you only need to worry about a few hundred strong enough cards or so.

> I don't think there's a single person today that knows all the rules.

Knowing the rules won't even save you, the game has undecidable interactions.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.09828

I don’t know the game, but skimming https://media.wizards.com/2019/downloads/MagicCompRules%2020... (not the best organized of texts, IMO. ‘Normal’ game rules start describing the goal of the game (https://www.fide.com/component/handbook/?id=171&view=article:

”1.1 The game of chess is played between two opponents who move their pieces on a square board called a ‘chessboard’. The player with the light-coloured pieces (White) makes the first move, then the players move alternately, with the player with the dark-coloured pieces (Black) making the next move. A player is said to ‘have the move’ when his opponent’s move has been ‘made’.”

Similarly, the rules for bridge (http://www.worldbridge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2017La...) start

”Duplicate Bridge is played with a pack of 52 cards, consisting of 13 cards in each of four suits. The suits rank downward in the order spades (), hearts (), diamonds (), clubs (). The Cards of each suit rank downward in the order Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2”

As another example, couldn’t those “in a Emperor/Commander/multiplayer game,…” sections be grouped by type of game?), there are decks, stacks, sideboards, zones, one of which is the battlefields, and libraries. Presumably, they all behave differently.

If those aliens don’t know what these words mean in this world, are they going to figure out what they mean in the game from reading the cards? For example, rule 405.2 ”The stack keeps track of the order that spells and/or abilities were added to it. Each time an object is put on the stack, it’s put on top of all objects already there.” isn’t hard to infer if you know what a stack is, but if you don’t?

Similarly, I read ”An effect may state that a player wins the game.”. Chances are those aliens will think that’s the only way to win.

Also, that text is full of extremely weird rules (“A card’s name is always considered to be the English version of its name, regardless of printed language”) that, I guess, are impossible to discover from the cards only.

> Similarly, I read "An effect may state that a player wins the game.". Chances are those aliens will think that’s the only way to win.

This is vanishingly unlikely, because of the lich-flavored cards that explicitly state "You don't lose the game for having 0 or less life."

See e.g. https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive... .

> Also, that text is full of extremely weird rules ("A card’s name is always considered to be the English version of its name, regardless of printed language") that, I guess, are impossible to discover from the cards only.

Again, with access to every card, it's pretty well guaranteed that this rule would be noticed. The only reason this rule exists in the first place is because of different cards sharing the same name in non-English languages. I don't know how to look up the foreign names of cards, but there's one pair in particular that I imagine is a real offender here:

Roc Egg: https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

and Rukh Egg: https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

> The only reason this rule exists in the first place is because of different cards sharing the same name in non-English languages.

I'm sure that's not the only reason. Some cards cards explicitly reference each other by name (rare, but it happens). More significantly, imagine you created a deck using both English and French versions of the same card! That would break several rules, including "name a card" effects. More significantly, the uniqueness restriction on Legendary creatures is technically defined by name.

That's a fair point, but it isn't the reason for the rule.

It's just assumed, by everyone, that it doesn't matter if you refer to playing pieces using a foreign language. They're still the same pieces. I don't think there's a lot of confusion, if you're playing chess in France, whether you're permitted to promote your pawn into a bishop or only a fou. As long as you pick the tall piece that moves diagonally, you're fine.

”Again, with access to every card, it's pretty well guaranteed that this rule would be noticed”

How? Is this game so meta that they would mention this on a card? The text I quoted isn’t from a card, so the hypothetical aliens wouldn’t have access to it

As a matter of fact, they might not even know what “language” means. Aliens are alien, but we would be alien to them.

Some example cards that don't spell out the rule, but do hint at its existence:

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

> Draw a card, then draw cards equal to the number of cards named Accumulated Knowledge in all graveyards.

Graveyard is just a fancy name for discard pile, just like Library is a fancy name for deck.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

> As Alpine Moon enters the battlefield, choose a nonbasic land card name.

> Lands your opponents control with the chosen name lose all land types and abilities, and they gain "Tap: Add one mana of any color."

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

> Choose a nonland card name. Search target player's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with that name and exile them. Then that player shuffles their library.

Exiling is roughly just a more permanent form of discarding/putting in the graveyard. It used to be called "Remove from game".

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multive...

> Relentless Rats gets +1/+1 for each other creature on the battlefield named Relentless Rats.

> A deck can have any number of cards named Relentless Rats.

This one even hints that there's a limit to how many cards with a certain name can be in a deck.

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?printed...

> 2, Tap: Sacrifice Apocalypse Chime to destroy all cards from the Homelands expansion.

This one I didn't even know existed, this is super weird to me. Completely unplayable in the modern day, but it talks about the fact that there are expansion sets. That's something I thought would only happen in the joke sets they release every 5-10 years.

Also note that this was early enough in the game's history that they didn't realize they would reprint cards with the same name in newer sets. It makes it much harder to use because instead of looking for the Homelands set symbol, instead you have to look up whether a card from any set was in Homelands. That's why they don't use this mechanic anymore, but I'm still kind of shocked to find out that they ever did.

> ”The stack keeps track of the order that spells and/or abilities were added to it. Each time an object is put on the stack, it’s put on top of all objects already there.” isn’t hard to infer if you know what a stack is, but if you don’t?

From that I think you could learn quite a lot about what a stack is. A stack is something you can put objects into, and it preserves order to some extent. If you pair that with a rule or card spelling out the other half of the API (what happens when you retrieve objects from the stack?) you've got it pretty much figured out.

The text I quoted is from the ”See this link for the comprehensive rules” link, not (AFAIK) from any card.

The hypothetical aliens wouldn’t have access to it.

> As another example, couldn’t those “in a Emperor/Commander/multiplayer game,…” sections be grouped by type of game?

That's an interesting question. As a fairly casual but very long term player, I think I like it this way. If I have to go look up a specific interaction about attacking, and I'm playing an Emperor+Commander game, I definitely want to look in one place but see the other game modes there.

If the game modes were substantially different, then it'd be a lot better to split them out. But typically they're relatively small layers overtop the base rules. Magic is a complex enough game that very small changes result in a different experience.

Imagine a chess variant where you couldn't perform an En Passant capture. Do you want that to be a separate rule book or section, or do you want it to be specified next to the rules for En Passant? Or what if your pawns could only be promoted to pieces you've captured from the enemy, or pieces your enemy has captured from you?

Ludii was presented at 2019 IEEE Conference on Games this past week in London. Lot's more interesting stuff in the rest of the conference program ;)

http://ieee-cog.org/assets/program-full.pdf

I spent a couple of months last year researching Liubo and constructing/play-testing a crude recreation. Of course, we don't even know what a full game set looks like, much less how it was played. But the result was a decent game, and I like to think there's enough overlap between board game enthusiasts and history nerds that someone could crank a few of these out on Kickstarter.

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