Eskgammon (d10gammon)

[Eskimo]

For various reasons I haven't been active here for five years or more but I see many of the oldtimers are still here.

All the bots made Backgammon a bit boring so some time ago I needed something that would change that. The result can be found below. So far everyone trying it have had a blast (even the most conservative people). Some reasoning and other fun stuff can be found using the link (but quote if you reply to stuff from that one).


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Eskgammon (d10gammon)


Requirements:
1 d10 dice (dice with 10 sides instead of 6), preferably per player

Rule changes:
A player rolls one 1d6 and one 1d10 dice.
At start both players roll the 1d6 dice.

Clarifications:
Your home still consists of 6 points.
Bearing off is not allowed until all your men are in your home.
Coming in from the bar is only allowed into your opponents home.

Full rules/comments/Q&A etc at

http://eskimo68.dyndns.org/misc/backgammon/Eskgammon.html

Eskimo

[Stick]

Dice is plural meaning two or more. The singular form is die.

Stick

[eski...@gmail.com]

On Monday, 13 May 2013 22:21:34 UTC+3, Stick wrote:
> Dice is plural meaning two or more. The singular form is die.
>
>
>
> Stick

Good old Stick (nothing has changed :).

Yeah, I don't like to use dice instead of die either but when I at some point looked it up 10 years ago or so one of the "main" authorities did already recommend to use dice for both single and multiple dice as that is becoming practice. Could have been Webster or... no idea really.

Wiki that wasn't big back then seems to agree by now
"A die (plural dice, which can also be used as the singular[1],"


But in any case, the Backgammon variant is pure gold :D. I guess I'll add a few pics as someone said that would be a good idea.



Eskimo

[Grunty]

On May 13, 4:21 pm, Stick <checkmug...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dice is plural meaning two or more.  The singular form is die.

Okay WD should have named it Mickey Mie.

[Tim Chow]

On May 13, 12:34 pm, Eskimo <eskim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rule changes:
> A player rolls one 1d6 and one 1d10 dice.
> At start both players roll the 1d6 dice.

Did you also experiment with d8 + d6?

---
Tim Chow

[Eskimo]

Funny, I got the d8 and d12 question when presenting this at a live tournament recently (hence the late reply :). One professor swore never to play this but it must have tickled his interest anyway as he though it would have to have the board size changed to work.

We haven't tried with d8 or d12 as I had enough reasons why it would not work as well as d10 when I was designing the change. Not that I remember all the reasons anymore but d12 would let you go too far and would also make coming in quite tricky when you roll 1/12 a few times and lose a bunch of pips to not moving. d8 doesn't do enough to change the game but would work fairly well though (and there is one variant using a d8 somehow IIRC).

Overall, with more and more games under my belt d10 seems to work like a charm. I would probably explore the board size change if it didn't work so well as it does but as one of the goals was to be able to play using your normal board (plus some fantasy/strategy dice) in addition to have a little changes as possible... no incentive.

Eskimo

[nik...@gmail.com]

If you would like to try out backgammon (and other variants) using alternate boards/dice you can download a recent creation of mine called AnyGammon from http://ai.uom.gr/nikpapa/AnyGammon. It is also available on Android devices for free.

For now I have fixed the maximum die number to be equal to the size of one quadrant of the board (e.g. on 20-point board you can only use d5 dice).

Regards,
Nikos

[Eskimo]

On Thursday, 23 May 2013 18:40:16 UTC+3, nik...@gmail.com wrote:
> Τη Τετάρτη, 22 Μαΐου 2013 8:22:04 μ.μ. UTC+3, ο χρήστης Eskimo έγραψε:
>
> If you would like to try out backgammon (and other variants) using alternate boards/dice you can download a recent creation of mine called AnyGammon from http://ai.uom.gr/nikpapa/AnyGammon. It is also available on Android devices for free.

I would certainly try it out if it's (almost) the only software one could show Eskgammon with. With multiplayer (haven't checked if Anygammon has that) one could even use it properly. For normal backgammon I've been using Bgblitz for years if I want a client-to-client game but Eskgammon is impossible for now.

> For now I have fixed the maximum die number to be equal to the size of one quadrant of the board (e.g. on 20-point board you can only use d5 dice).

Yeah, no limit or a selection of up to 12 would not be such a bad idea (no matter how the AI goes bonkers :).


Eskimo

[eski...@gmail.com]

> Full rules/comments/Q&A etc at
>
> http://eskimo68.dyndns.org/misc/backgammon/Eskgammon.html

Figured I'd better show the new link somewhere as Google has failed to recognize the dns change earlier this year.

http://eskimo68.no-ip.org/misc/backgammon/Eskgammon.html