Board games in fiction
Uri Bruck
Hi,
I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
Some examples of what I'm looking for:
Jetan, from Buroughs "The Chessmen of Mars"
(rules are given)
Star Trek 3d Chess - rules were not given in the show. Was put there
for atmosphere. Rarely figured in the story.
In Edward Wagner's "Night Winds" there is an incomplete description of
a board game Kane plays. It is used as a backdrop for a discussion.
Thanks,
Uri
Chris Markwyn
though it's been years since I read it, so I can't remember any details
about them.
--Chris M.
jtingle
news:3bd9f0a8...@news.actcom.co.il...
>
> Hi,
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
M.A. Foster's "The Gameplayers of Zan" is built around an elaborate game
with a hidden and nefarious purpose. If I tell you anymore it would be a
spoiler.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
Lois Tilton
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
CJ Cherryh's SERPENT'S REACH features the game of Sej, played with dice
and wands.
--
LT
Peter Meilinger
: Star Trek 3d Chess - rules were not given in the show. Was put there
: for atmosphere. Rarely figured in the story.
3D chess was mentioned in the Diane Duane Trek novel My Enemy,
My Ally. At least, I think that was the right one. She also
came up with 4D chess, adding time as another dimension -
pieces could be transported off the board and then brought
back at any point later on.
Another Trek book, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection,
had a chess-like game Klingons play as a major component.
Pete
Charles R Martin
> Hi,
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
Sprouts, in Brunner's _Shockwave Rider_.
--
Our enemies are never villains in their own eyes, but that does not make them
less dangerous. Appeasement, however, nearly always makes them more so.
-- Don Dixon
______________________________________________________________________________
Charles R (Charlie) Martin Broomfield, CO 40N 105W
Aaron Denney
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
Not strictly a boardgame, but Dragon Poker is featured in the Myth
Series by Asprin. Unfortunately, there aren't enough modifiers described to
get a real game going.
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Jordan S. Bassior
determined by the Mother of All Games, a computer-controlled system that used
binary classification to contain every imaginable game, and a set of alternate
choices of these binary parameters to define which game would be played by the
contestants in any particular encounter. The games ranged from the cerebral to
the luck-driven to the dangerous to the obscene.
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
John S. Novak, III
> Hi,
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
and Romulans in terms of the board games and gives some detail on the
Klingon strategy game.
Anthony's Apprentice Adept series has any number of games and
boardgames throughout it.
Jordan's doorstop Wheel of Time series has "stones" (apparently the
game of Go), "spires" (which might be chess) and in the prlogue to
_The Path of Daggers_ mentions and describes a game called "sha'rah"
which sounds vaguely chess-like. It would be insane to buy the whole
series, or even the book, just for that, but I believe the prologue is
on-line at Tor's site.
Gygax's bozarre Gord the Rogue series often lapsed into chess-like
terminology, and made allusions to bizarre, non-standard variants of
Chess. I seem to recall a story in an old Dragon magazine in that
series which gave many details-- there may even have been another
article giving rules for the silly game.
Weis and Hickman's _Fire Sea_ in their Death Gate cycle had the
remnants of a once sorcerous culture reduce their knowledge to a game
played on hexagonal tiles. (That culture's magic was runic, based on
six-pointed runes.) That's an idea so cool that I'm actually angry it
was conceived and used by such second rate authors.
Banks' _Player of Games_ in the Culture series has a great number of
board games.
It's a theme I like....
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
John S. Novak, III
> Not strictly a boardgame, but Dragon Poker is featured in the Myth
> Series by Asprin. Unfortunately, there aren't enough modifiers described to
> get a real game going.
Well, if you count card games, then Last Call has the meanest poker game
in existence. And I figure you could kill yourself playing
solitaire....
Ethan Merritt
Uri Bruck <br...@actcom.co.il> wrote:
>
>Hi,
>I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
>how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
Mary Gentle's _Golden Witchbreed_ contains rules for a board game
called ochmir (sp?)
The Kol Game in Donald Kingsbury's _Courtship Rite_ has a number
of forms, but at least one of them is a board game. It's not
described in sufficient detail to actually work out the rules, though.
--
Ethan A Merritt
Richard Todd
> br...@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck) writes:
>
> > Hi,
> > I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> > both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>
> Sprouts, in Brunner's _Shockwave Rider_.
Sprouts also appeared in Piers Anthony's _Macroscope_. (Um, assuming the
Brunner book is using "Sprouts" to mean the game I'm thinking of: the one with
dots and drawing lines with new dots between them, right?)
Richard Johnson
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
Gameplayers of Zan, by Michael A. Foster, 1976 (reissued 1985)
This was one of my favorite books as a child (and not just because I was in
hot water for doing a book report on it in Jr. High School). The game is
the society is the language.
Rules for the game played by the Ler to predict and ultimately influence (in
interesting ways :-) their and other societies are not given.
A Google search on the title is instructive for the lists which reference
the book. Linguistics, sociology, wicca, etc.
Richard
--
To reply via email, make sure you don't enter the whirlpool on river left.
My mailbox. My property. My personal space. My rules. Deal with it.
http://www.river.com/users/share/cluetrain/
Alan Raskin
No, _The Shockwave Rider_ doesn't have Sprouts (or even Brussel Sprouts
:-); instead, it has the "Game of Fencing", complete with rules.
- Alan
Jim Lovejoy
There's a Chess-like game described in some of the books of the Gor
series.
>
> Thanks,
> Uri
Morgan Lewis
Phillip K. Dick's "The Game Players of Titan" had a game called Bluff.
Board consisted of several squares (I picture something similar to MB's
Life), with "events" (Found gold mine, meteor hits house, etc.) and
corresponding gains or losses in money. First move made by spinning a
wheel. Corresponding moves made by drawing a card, then moving piece a
number of spaces. The question is -- did you move the piece the number
that the card showed or not? If you did, and your opponent called it as
a Bluff, then not only do you gain the amount (if it's a gain square),
but your opponent loses that amount. (If it was a loss square, you gain
that amount instead.) Similarly, if you Bluff and are not called, you
gain twice the amount (IIRC) on a gain square and again, gain the amount
instead of losing it on a loss square. Players in the game used it as a
means of trading jurisdiction over tracts of land.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels sometimes mention a card game called
Cripple Mr. Onion. Rules are not specifically known (except for a few),
but a version of the game has been concocted and is available, I
believe, on http://www.lspace.org
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgan Lewis m...@efn.org mle...@cs.uoregon.edu
The Eclectic Quotes Page: http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~mlewis/
DaveKDwyer
Catherine Asaro's The Last Hawk (part of her Skolian Empire series) has a dice
game called Quis that is used as a form of gambling, gaming, political-military
modeling by the powers that be. The best dice players are of course the most
valuable advisors on the planet.
Kevin J. Anderson's Gamearth trilogy features a detailed RPG in which the RPG
characters end up destroying the players who turn out to be RPG characters in a
higher level recursion. (Gamearth, Gameplay, Game's End).
Sheri Teppler's King's Blood Four trilogy which in turn spawned two trilogy's
of it's own about politics as a game (complete with chess-like pieces).
Pawn to Infinity by Saberhagen, a collection of SF stories involving chess. A
first rate anthology by various authors.
David Dwyer
Brian Palmer
> 3D chess was mentioned in the Diane Duane Trek novel My Enemy,
> My Ally. At least, I think that was the right one. She also
> came up with 4D chess, adding time as another dimension -
> pieces could be transported off the board and then brought
> back at any point later on.
So time was monotonic? Either way, this has interesting strategic
possibilities (you'd probably need an exception handling mechanism for
dealing with paradoxes that arise; probably instant forfeit arising)
-brian
Daniel P. Duffy
double goal of checkmating the other king and placing your queen at the apex
of the pyramid.
"Uri Bruck" <br...@actcom.co.il> wrote in message
news:3bd9f0a8...@news.actcom.co.il...
>
Nancy Lebovitz
at least for chess. Meanwhile, if you haven't read "Von Goon's Gambit",
I strongly recommend it.
_The Road to Corlay_ by Cowper has go.
_Assassin's Quest_ by Robin Hobb (third book in a series) has a three-
color stone game (rules not specified) which both teaches strategy/
tactics and serves as a sufficient distraction to keep people from
using psychic abilities.
There's an "anti-monopoly" (play to lose) in one of Phillip K. Dick's
stories.
Afaik, there's a lot of stories about chess/go abstract strategy games,
and rather little about running-around-a-track games like Monopoly or
Parcheesi. Any backgammon in sf? Cribbage?
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Serg
clan was (nominally) defined by rating in some vaguely described board
game featered a lot of resources managment on the world map(something
RISK -like IMO)
Michael Ikeda
In "Pebble in the Sky" by Isaac Asimov, a chess game is used as a
means of developing the plot.
Michael Ikeda mmi...@erols.com
"Telling a statistician not to use sampling is like telling an
astronomer they can't say there is a moon and stars"
Lynne Billard, past president American Statistical Association
Peter Meilinger
: Afaik, there's a lot of stories about chess/go abstract strategy games,
I just recalled one. I want to say it's by Roger Zelazney, but I have
no idea if I'm right. It's a short story about a guy who plays
chess against a unicorn for the fate of the world. Wish I could
remember which collection I read it in. Hold on...
Thought it might be in Run To Starlight, but it's not. "The Immortal
Game," by Poul Anderson, is, however.
Another chess mention I recall now is in A Matter For Men by
David Gerrold. McCarthy, the main character, talks about coming
up with several variants of chess for play on computer. The one
I remember, and maybe the only one with a detailed description,
was based on fantasy creatures. Two pieces moved alternately
and served as the feet of a really honkin' tall giant, for
example. Didn't have anything to do with the overall story,
but it stuck with me.
: and rather little about running-around-a-track games like Monopoly or
: Parcheesi. Any backgammon in sf? Cribbage?
The only game like that I can think of is in one of William
C. Dietz's Sam McCade books. I think it must have been Imperial
Bounty. The prince of the Empire had disappeared a year or
two back, and McCade was hired to find him. Turns out he'd
gone to a big casino space station and played a game that had
major effects on the players lives. You could win or lose
fortunes, or end up with a pretty nasty fate. The prince
ended up as a mining slave on some nasty planet somewhere.
Pete
Nancy Lebovitz
Peter Meilinger <mell...@bu.edu> wrote:
>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote:
>
>: Afaik, there's a lot of stories about chess/go abstract strategy games,
>
>I just recalled one. I want to say it's by Roger Zelazney, but I have
>no idea if I'm right. It's a short story about a guy who plays
You are. The story is "Unicorn Variations", and I count is as a classic.
>chess against a unicorn for the fate of the world. Wish I could
>remember which collection I read it in. Hold on...
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Mary K. Kuhner
>Afaik, there's a lot of stories about chess/go abstract strategy games,
>and rather little about running-around-a-track games like Monopoly or
>Parcheesi. Any backgammon in sf? Cribbage?
_Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse_ by Tepper has as a
major plot driver a track-with-marked-spaces game. I think she
includes a boardmap. The movie _Jimanji_ has a similar game and plot.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Geoduck
(snip)
>Another Trek book, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection,
>had a chess-like game Klingons play as a major component.
Was that the game where when played 'right' you physically destroyed
any captured pieces?
--
Geoduck
http://www.olywa.net/cook
Tabu LaRaza
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
>
> Some examples of what I'm looking for:
> Jetan, from Buroughs "The Chessmen of Mars"
> (rules are given)
>
> Star Trek 3d Chess - rules were not given in the show. Was put there
> for atmosphere. Rarely figured in the story.
>
> In Edward Wagner's "Night Winds" there is an incomplete description of
> a board game Kane plays. It is used as a backdrop for a discussion.
>
> Thanks,
> Uri
How about the Glass Bead game by Herman Hesse, if it hasn't been
mentioned....?
TR
David Cowie
> Iain M. Banks' "The Player of Games" features a number of board
> games, though it's been years since I read it, so I can't remember
> any details about them.
>
> --Chris M.
The main game in TPOG is the game of the Empire of Azad: "a game so
complex, so like life itself that the winner becomes emperor" it says
in the blurb. The game is not described in any detail, but features
elements of cardplay, strategy and gambling, and takes weeks to
complete.
--
David Cowie
There is no _spam in my address.
"You had to do WHAT with your seat?"
David Cowie
>
> Hi,
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the
> book. I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the
> game, and how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine
> too)
"Triton" by Samual Delany features a fancy board game, but I can't
remember much about it.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> The movie _Jimanji_ has a similar game and plot.
It's spelled _Jumanji_, and [ObWritten] there's a children's book
version by Chris Van Allsburg (won the Caldecott Medal in 1982).
--KG
Andrew Shepherd
<ara...@attcanada.ca> writes
There is also "The Squares of the City" by Brunner, the plot is based on
a game of chess...
--
Andrew
"It is said that the civilized man seeks out good and intelligent company,
so that by learned discourse, he may rise above the savage, and be closer
to God. Personally, however, I like to start the day with a total dickhead
to remind me that I'm best."
Charles R Martin
Oh, hell. Was it _Macroscope_ that had sprouts?
--
Our enemies are never villains in their own eyes, but that does not make them
less dangerous. Appeasement, however, nearly always makes them more so.
-- Don Dixon
______________________________________________________________________________
Charles R (Charlie) Martin Broomfield, CO 40N 105W
Nancy Lebovitz
Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote:
>Alan Raskin <ara...@attcanada.ca> writes:
>
>> Richard Todd wrote:
>> >
>> > Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> writes:
>> >
>> > > br...@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck) writes:
>> > >
>> > > > Hi,
>> > > > I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>> > > > both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>> > >
>> > > Sprouts, in Brunner's _Shockwave Rider_.
>> >
>> > Sprouts also appeared in Piers Anthony's _Macroscope_. (Um, assuming the
>> > Brunner book is using "Sprouts" to mean the game I'm thinking of: the one with
>> > dots and drawing lines with new dots between them, right?)
>>
>> No, _The Shockwave Rider_ doesn't have Sprouts (or even Brussel Sprouts
>> :-); instead, it has the "Game of Fencing", complete with rules.
>
>Oh, hell. Was it _Macroscope_ that had sprouts?
>
On the other hand, I'm as glad to be reminded of the name for fencing--
I'd been thinking of it as "that game from _Shockrider_ with the triangles".
Morgan Lewis
>
> Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote:
>
> : Afaik, there's a lot of stories about chess/go abstract strategy
> : games,
>
> I just recalled one. I want to say it's by Roger Zelazney, but I have
> no idea if I'm right. It's a short story about a guy who plays
> chess against a unicorn for the fate of the world. Wish I could
> remember which collection I read it in. Hold on...
>
The story -- and a rather enjoyable one -- is titled "Unicorn
Variations" and it is, indeed, by Zelazny. It's available in the
collection of the same name, and according to the blurb RZ wrote about
it, is also available in an anthology about unicorns (title
unmentioned), an anthology about stories set in barrooms (title
unmentioned), and an anthology about chess stories (Pawn to Infinity,
ed. Fred Saberhagen.) Zelazny had been asked by each of the various
editors if he had a story that was appropriate; RZ mentioned this to
George R.R. Martin (who, Zelazny writes, is a chess expert, BTW) and
Martin joked that Zelazny should write a story about a chess-playing
unicorn and set it in a bar. So he did.
Uri Bruck
>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote:
>
>: Afaik, there's a lot of stories about chess/go abstract strategy games,
>
>I just recalled one. I want to say it's by Roger Zelazney, but I have
>no idea if I'm right. It's a short story about a guy who plays
>chess against a unicorn for the fate of the world. Wish I could
>remember which collection I read it in. Hold on...
I remember this one. "Unicorn Variations" in a collection by the same
name. and you remember right, it's Zelazny.
Uri
J.B. Moreno
> _Courtship rite_ (don't remember author)
Donald Kingsbury.
> The dominance order in major clan was (nominally) defined by rating in
> some vaguely described board game featered a lot of resources managment on
> the world map(something RISK -like IMO)
I recently read this (good book), but don't recall a board game being a
big part of their culture.
Unless you are talking about the "predictors" -- in which case that is
based upon events in the real world; you predict that this or that will
happen and if it does your status goes up, and if it doesn't your status
goes down (kind of like the stock market and the price of goods).
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
J.B. Moreno
> Hi,
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
The Dray Prescott series by Alan Akers features a board game which is
similar to chess and which is critical to the story at several points.
Check out the website <http://www.savanti.com/>
Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder
> Jordan's doorstop Wheel of Time series has "stones" (apparently the game
> of Go), "spires" (which might be chess) and in the prlogue to _The Path
> of Daggers_ mentions and describes a game called "sha'rah" which sounds
> vaguely chess-like. It would be insane to buy the whole series, or even
> the book, just for that, but I believe the prologue is on-line at Tor's
> site.
Then there's 'Snakes and Foxes', a child's board game where you can't win
if you go by the rules.
-- vbi
Dwight Thieme
: Hi,
: I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
: both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
: I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
: how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
:
: Some examples of what I'm looking for:
: Jetan, from Buroughs "The Chessmen of Mars"
: (rules are given)
:
Try Andre Norton's "Quag Keep". Recommendations
vary greatly, but, if nothing else, it is a
quick read - pre-processor bloat, late 70's iirc.
Nyrath the nearly wise
> "Triton" by Samual Delany features a fancy board game, but I can't
> remember much about it.
It was called "Vlet", and it was a pretty wild game.
The board was a map of a fantasy kingdom.
The pieces were of various fantasy characters and
creatures.
There were also cards similar to Tarot cards, used
to bid and make melds.
Dice were thrown for movement, and to see what alien
astrological constellation was ascendant.
If one missed one's bid, the game moved to a
3-D "astral" board, with counters representing
various gods.
Henry Churchyard
Alan Raskin <ara...@attcanada.ca> wrote:
>Richard Todd wrote:
>> Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> writes:
>>> br...@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck) writes:
>>>> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>>>> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the
>>>> book.
>>> Sprouts, in Brunner's _Shockwave Rider_.
>> Sprouts also appeared in Piers Anthony's _Macroscope_. (Um,
>> assuming the Brunner book is using "Sprouts" to mean the game I'm
>> thinking of: the one with dots and drawing lines with new dots
>> between them, right?)
> No, _The Shockwave Rider_ doesn't have Sprouts (or even Brussel
> Sprouts :-); instead, it has the "Game of Fencing", complete with
> rules.
Both of them probably took their games from Martin Gardner's
_Mathematical Games_ column (along with Anthony's hexaflexagons and
Game of Life in _OX_).
There was a story, probably early 1970s-ish in vintage (that I don't
remember either the title or the author of), in which the survivors of
the first interstellar exploration mission return to earth with the
rules of a great game, proficiency in which is a condition for further
contact with and acceptance into galactic civilization; this game
becomes a great preoccupation, to the extent that sailing ships come
back into use on earth. The game wasn't really described in detail,
but was obviously very complex.
--%!PS
10 10 scale/M{rmoveto}def/R{rlineto}def 12 45 moveto 0 5 R 4 -1 M 5.5 0 R
currentpoint 3 sub 3 90 0 arcn 0 -6 R 7.54 10.28 M 2.7067 -9.28 R -5.6333
2 setlinewidth 0 R 9.8867 8 M 7 0 R 0 -9 R -6 4 M 0 -4 R stroke showpage
% Henry Churchyard chu...@usa.net http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/
Gene Wirchenko
>I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
>how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
In Kerr's Deverry books, there is mention of a game called
"Carnoic".
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
John Andrew Fairhurst
> Was that the game where when played 'right' you physically destroyed
> any captured pieces?
>
There were a number of variations of klin zha.
Most of the board games were more-or-less chess equivalents, but there is
a version called the Reflective Game which is where your pieces are your
opponent's. The version where the pieces were destroyed as they were
taken isn't named.
The game played by live 'pieces' could be seen as a rather strange
version of this.
--
John Fairhurst
In Association with Amazon worldwide:
http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk/Books/Masterworks/
Classic Science Fiction & Fantasy Releases to Dec 01
Serg
Hmm, may be I made a mistake...Was it another book ? I'll rechek ...
Tim Oliver
<mark...@chorus.net> wrote:
>Iain M. Banks' "The Player of Games" features a number of board games,
>though it's been years since I read it, so I can't remember any details
>about them.
His _Consider Phlebas_ also features Damage, a card game played in
emotion-amplifying seats. Playing appropriate cards produced various
effects on your opponents.
--
Tim Oliver
tol...@ihug.co.nz
Peter Morris
"John Andrew Fairhurst" <Jo...@johnsbooks.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.1645e9b77...@news.compuserve.com...
> In article <3bdad7f0...@news.olywa.net>, geo...@webave.com says...
> > Was that the game where when played 'right' you physically destroyed
> > any captured pieces?
> >
>
> There were a number of variations of klin zha.
>
> Most of the board games were more-or-less chess equivalents, but there is
> a version called the Reflective Game which is where your pieces are your
> opponent's. The version where the pieces were destroyed as they were
> taken isn't named.
IIRC, that's because it isn't actually a formal variant of the game.
A young Klingon has spent a long time carving the game pieces
by hand, and is proud of his work. Later, playing a game with his
adoptive father, a games grandmaster, using his own handmade set,
the father decides to teach the son his most important lesson, so
every time he captures a piece he throws it on the fire.
Wasnt't that mean.
--
______________________________
/____________________________(_)
| ___________________________ email to
| | |________________________(_) Peter_Morris_1
| |/__________________________ at Hotmail dot com
|____________________________(_)
OWK
> Hi,
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
>
Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll The Bones" features a very interesting game of craps.
- Kurt
Neil Barnes
<9f801178.01102...@posting.google.com>:
No, this is from 'Geta' aka 'Courtship Rite'. There's a scene which
describes the way the board is made from random pieces to gove a different
playing surface each time, and a minor analysis of ..um.. Oelita the
Heretic's style of play by one of the other characters. Kol scores kept
your position in the 'I'm next to be eaten' queue...
--
I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...
barnacle
http://www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk
Dwight Thieme
: Both of them probably took their games from Martin Gardner's
: _Mathematical Games_ column (along with Anthony's hexaflexagons and
: Game of Life in _OX_).
Actually, Conway's "On Numbers and Games", the first introduction
to surreal numbers, among other things. I believe there is a
second edition out now.
Brian Cooksey
> Hi,
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
>
> Thanks,
> Uri
Brust's Vlad books mention a few gambling games such as Shereba and
S'yang Stones. S'yang stones is also mentioned in the Paarfi books.
It's not technically a board game but there is strategy involved.
--Brian
Craig S. Richardson
>Another Trek book, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection,
>had a chess-like game Klingons play as a major component.
More broadly, one of the characters either stated or strongly implied
that every race/culture has a chess analogue, and that the differences
between them are meaningful when trying to understand the underlying
racial/cultural philosophies.
--Craig
--
David Collins from Burnley: 70K pounds
Luke Weaver from Spurs: 500K pounds
Matthew Etherington from Grasshoppers-Zurich: 1.2M pounds
Leyton Orient 1-0 St. Mirren in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final: Priceless
Lee DeRaud
Conway's 'Game of Life' figures prominently in Brin's(?) "Glory
Season".
Lee
Ron Henry
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
In Samuel Delany's _Triton_, several characters play a strategic/rpg
sort of game called "vlet". It's described in quite a bit of details --
a complex landscape board, small figurines, rolls of dice and card draws
to determine fates and outcomes, etc.
The game play can probably be seen to work as a sort of echo or foil to
the larger interplanetary political tensions and conflicts in the novel,
in addition to being an interesting detail of the day-to-day lives of
some of the residents of the main character's co-op housing within the
society of the city Tethys on the moon Triton.
--
Ron Henry ronh...@DENYSPAMclarityconnect.com
http://people2.clarityconnect.com/webpages6/ronhenry/
Fred Galvin
> On 27 Oct 2001 00:56:43 GMT, Peter Meilinger <mell...@bu.edu> wrote:
>
> >Another Trek book, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection,
> >had a chess-like game Klingons play as a major component.
>
> More broadly, one of the characters either stated or strongly implied
> that every race/culture has a chess analogue, and that the differences
> between them are meaningful when trying to understand the underlying
> racial/cultural philosophies.
Interesting. Does the author try to explain how the various regional &
historical chess variants relate to the "underlying racial/cultural
philosophies"? Besides modern international (western) chess, there's
Japanese chess (shogi) in which the men you capture become part of
your army; Chinese chess (xiangqi) in which the two sides are
separated by a river which certain men can't cross; the medieval
Arabic precursor of modern chess (shatranj?) in which the queen and
bishop were very weak pieces, able to move only 1 or 2 steps
diagonally; etc. Does the book show awareness of the different forms
chess has taken on this planet? Did *every* human culture have a chess
analogue? What were the chess analogues of the ancient Greeks or
Mayans? What is a chess analogue, anyway? Any old table game?
Greg Owen
br...@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck) writes:
> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the
> book.
In "Assassin's Quest," book 3 of Robin Hobb's _Farseer_
trilogy, Fitz is taught a game (whose name I forget) by the mysterious
older woman (whose name I also forget) traveling with her.
The game involves a cloth "board" marked off in some way, and
sets of three different colored stones. Each stone has particular
capabilities (some are described as "stronger" or "weaker" stones).
The player is handed a laid out pattern of stones, and control of some
number of stones, and is required to figure out how to do something in
a limited set of moves.
Sorry for the vague description; my books are at home...
--
gowen -- Greg Owen -- go...@swynwyr.com
Luke Webber
news:9rjp0e$h5p$1...@dipsy.missouri.edu...
IIRC, Anthony actually credited Gardiner, though the Game of Life is
definitely originates with Conway.
Luke
Karen Williams
main character hated math. He somehow ended up as a piece
on a giant game board, where the game was the sort of Parker
Brothers "Game of Life" type board, where you went from
one end of a path to another, and he needed to solve puzzles
to get to the other side. One of the characters was named
Marmaduke.
But that may not be what you wanted, since I didn't get the
first message in this thread.
--
Karen Williams
bra...@ix.netcom.com
Craig S. Richardson
<gal...@math.ukans.edu> wrote:
>On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Craig S. Richardson wrote:
>
>> On 27 Oct 2001 00:56:43 GMT, Peter Meilinger <mell...@bu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> >Another Trek book, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection,
>> >had a chess-like game Klingons play as a major component.
>>
>> More broadly, one of the characters either stated or strongly implied
>> that every race/culture has a chess analogue, and that the differences
>> between them are meaningful when trying to understand the underlying
>> racial/cultural philosophies.
>
>Interesting. Does the author try to explain how the various regional &
>historical chess variants relate to the "underlying racial/cultural
>philosophies"?
Actually, it's not as deep as all that. It was in the context of the
Last True Klingon Strategist tutoring his chosen protege. The protege
was familiar with the most common form of the Klingon game (klin zha)
- as befits someone who played a piece in the live-action version.
The cultural bits were mostly there as the strategist attempted to
guide the protege into thinking about the strategy behind the game.
The whole scene took no more than a couple of pages, if you don't
count the running tagline about the "Perpetual Game".
> Besides modern international (western) chess, there's
>Japanese chess (shogi) in which the men you capture become part of
>your army; Chinese chess (xiangqi) in which the two sides are
>separated by a river which certain men can't cross; the medieval
>Arabic precursor of modern chess (shatranj?) in which the queen and
>bishop were very weak pieces, able to move only 1 or 2 steps
>diagonally; etc.
His examples were, typically, Klingon, Romulan, Human, and a slave
race which no other ST race had yet met, but the above is fairly close
in detail. The strategist would say that the differences in the games
imply a difference in the underlying strategic thought. Strategists
trained in different traditions would react in different ways when
confronted with the same situation, and knowing how they play "chess"
gives one an advantage in predicting what that reaction will be. The
protege later uses this in a real battle - knowing how the "knight"
moves in the Romulan game, he predicts where a cloaked ship will be,
allowing his fleet to win the engagement.
>Does the book show awareness of the different forms
>chess has taken on this planet?
It was told from the Klingon point of view, very soon after first
contact. Chess was assumed to be the Human game, but since it seems
to be universal in the ST version of Starfleet, it's not a bad
assumption - ST has much more cultural unity than the real world.
> Did *every* human culture have a chess
>analogue? What were the chess analogues of the ancient Greeks or
>Mayans? What is a chess analogue, anyway? Any old table game?
I'm not an expert. I was thinking along the lines of "pure strategy
(no randomness) games of conquest and/or maneuver". Although this
doesn't exclude tic-tac-toe, so I'm sure a truly knowledgeable chess
expert could come up with a better one. One that would put chess and
go clearly on one side, backgammon clearly on the other, and that game
with the beans and pits somewhere close to the middle, but probably on
the "non-chess" side.
Charles R Martin
> On Mon, 29 Oct 2001 12:27:38 -0600, Fred Galvin
> <gal...@math.ukans.edu> wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Craig S. Richardson wrote:
> >
> >> On 27 Oct 2001 00:56:43 GMT, Peter Meilinger <mell...@bu.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> >Another Trek book, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection,
> >> >had a chess-like game Klingons play as a major component.
> >>
> >> More broadly, one of the characters either stated or strongly implied
> >> that every race/culture has a chess analogue, and that the differences
> >> between them are meaningful when trying to understand the underlying
> >> racial/cultural philosophies.
> >
> >Interesting. Does the author try to explain how the various regional &
> >historical chess variants relate to the "underlying racial/cultural
> >philosophies"?
>
> Actually, it's not as deep as all that. It was in the context of the
> Last True Klingon Strategist tutoring his chosen protege. The protege
> was familiar with the most common form of the Klingon game (klin zha)
> - as befits someone who played a piece in the live-action version.
> The cultural bits were mostly there as the strategist attempted to
> guide the protege into thinking about the strategy behind the game.
> The whole scene took no more than a couple of pages, if you don't
> count the running tagline about the "Perpetual Game".
I think it's a bit stronger than that, though. First of all, the klin
zha was itself not a single game but the paradigm for a number of
games, from the one with live pieces to the "reflective" version.
More importantly, Dr Tagore mentions at some point in the book about
how central the notion of the Game is in _all_ of Klingon thought, so
much so that the word for the Klingon language ("klingonaase") embeds
within it the notion that all communication is a game.
>
> > Besides modern international (western) chess, there's
> >Japanese chess (shogi) in which the men you capture become part of
> >your army; Chinese chess (xiangqi) in which the two sides are
> >separated by a river which certain men can't cross; the medieval
> >Arabic precursor of modern chess (shatranj?) in which the queen and
> >bishop were very weak pieces, able to move only 1 or 2 steps
> >diagonally; etc.
>
> His examples were, typically, Klingon, Romulan, Human, and a slave
> race which no other ST race had yet met, but the above is fairly close
> in detail. The strategist would say that the differences in the games
> imply a difference in the underlying strategic thought. Strategists
> trained in different traditions would react in different ways when
> confronted with the same situation, and knowing how they play "chess"
> gives one an advantage in predicting what that reaction will be. The
> protege later uses this in a real battle - knowing how the "knight"
> moves in the Romulan game, he predicts where a cloaked ship will be,
> allowing his fleet to win the engagement.
>
> >Does the book show awareness of the different forms
> >chess has taken on this planet?
>
> It was told from the Klingon point of view, very soon after first
> contact. Chess was assumed to be the Human game, but since it seems
> to be universal in the ST version of Starfleet, it's not a bad
> assumption - ST has much more cultural unity than the real world.
But even then, they play two or three versions of chess at various
places in the book.
>
> > Did *every* human culture have a chess
> >analogue? What were the chess analogues of the ancient Greeks or
> >Mayans? What is a chess analogue, anyway? Any old table game?
>
> I'm not an expert. I was thinking along the lines of "pure strategy
> (no randomness) games of conquest and/or maneuver". Although this
> doesn't exclude tic-tac-toe, so I'm sure a truly knowledgeable chess
> expert could come up with a better one. One that would put chess and
> go clearly on one side, backgammon clearly on the other, and that game
> with the beans and pits somewhere close to the middle, but probably on
> the "non-chess" side.
The Klingons in the book claim that every race that isn't inherently a
slave race has a "zha" game.
(I wish John Ford's idea of the Klingons had been used as a basis for
the Klingon culture. It seems _so_ much richer.)
--
Our enemies are never villains in their own eyes, but that does not make them
less dangerous. Appeasement, however, nearly always makes them more so.
-- Don Dixon
______________________________________________________________________________
Charles R (Charlie) Martin Broomfield, CO 40N 105W
Jim Toth
wrote:
>In article <9regf2$1t2$1...@news3.bu.edu>,
>Peter Meilinger <mell...@bu.edu> wrote:
>>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote:
>>
>>: Afaik, there's a lot of stories about chess/go abstract strategy games,
>>
>>I just recalled one. I want to say it's by Roger Zelazney, but I have
>>no idea if I'm right. It's a short story about a guy who plays
>
Close. The story is actually "Unicorn Variation", which can, however,
be found in the collection _Unicorn Variations_, which is no doubt
where you and everyone else remember the name from. :-)
I agree about its being a classic. Actually, I think that was the
first Zelazny short story that I ever read. Certainly the first
Zelazny collection I bought.
--
Jim Toth
jt...@acm.org
Richard Horton
wrote:
>
>Hi,
>I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
>how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
_The Game-Players of Titan_, by Philip K. Dick, is built around a
board game (called simply the Game) that seems to resemble, if
anything, the Game of Life. Though with more extreme consequences,
such as marriages, actual real property exchanges, and so on.
It is played both by humans, and by the alien "vugs" from (you guessed
it) Titan.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>I'm pretty sure that there's been at least one previous discussion here,
>at least for chess. Meanwhile, if you haven't read "Von Goon's Gambit",
>I strongly recommend it.
"Von Goom!"
[snip]
Dwight Thieme
:> More broadly, one of the characters either stated or strongly implied
:> that every race/culture has a chess analogue, and that the differences
:> between them are meaningful when trying to understand the underlying
:> racial/cultural philosophies.
:
: Interesting. Does the author try to explain how the various regional &
: historical chess variants relate to the "underlying racial/cultural
: philosophies"? Besides modern international (western) chess, there's
: Japanese chess (shogi) in which the men you capture become part of
: your army; Chinese chess (xiangqi) in which the two sides are
: separated by a river which certain men can't cross; the medieval
: Arabic precursor of modern chess (shatranj?) in which the queen and
: bishop were very weak pieces, able to move only 1 or 2 steps
: diagonally; etc. Does the book show awareness of the different forms
: chess has taken on this planet? Did *every* human culture have a chess
: analogue? What were the chess analogues of the ancient Greeks or
: Mayans? What is a chess analogue, anyway? Any old table game?
ObF: Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities"
David Goldfarb
Uri Bruck <br...@actcom.co.il> wrote:
>I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
>how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
John M. Ford's story "Scrabble With God" explores some of the problems
involved in matching wits with an omnipotent being.
The same author's novel _The Scholars of Night_ features the real
board games _Diplomacy_ and _Kingmaker_, although since I've not
read it I can't say exactly how much.
William Sleator wrote a novel called _Interstellar Pig_, in which
the title refers to a board game of galactic conflict (as well as
a piece therein) that may just be more real than it seems.
Joanna Russ wrote a story called "A Game of Vlet" in which a
specially-made set of a chess-like game has great magic power. Delany
seems to have stolen her name for his novel _Triton_.
--
David Goldfarb <*>|
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | "Boom. Sooner or later. Boom!"
|
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Babylon 5, "Grail"
Nancy Lebovitz
David Goldfarb <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:
>In article <3bd9f0a8...@news.actcom.co.il>,
>Uri Bruck <br...@actcom.co.il> wrote:
>>I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>>both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>>I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
>>how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
>
>John M. Ford's story "Scrabble With God" explores some of the problems
>involved in matching wits with an omnipotent being.
>
>The same author's novel _The Scholars of Night_ features the real
>board games _Diplomacy_ and _Kingmaker_, although since I've not
>read it I can't say exactly how much.
>
>William Sleator wrote a novel called _Interstellar Pig_, in which
>the title refers to a board game of galactic conflict (as well as
>a piece therein) that may just be more real than it seems.
>
>Joanna Russ wrote a story called "A Game of Vlet" in which a
>specially-made set of a chess-like game has great magic power. Delany
>seems to have stolen her name for his novel _Triton_.
There's at least one other quote between them,
[approximate] "The red sun is high, the blue..." turns up in a Delany
essay about how each word in a sentence affects the possible meanings
pf the subsequent words and in a Russ story about the only person
of normal intelligence (modern standards) in a world where everyone
else is a good bit brighter.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Robert Carnegie
> In article <slrn9tk39o...@barter.ugcs.caltech.edu>, Aaron Denney wrote:
> > Not strictly a boardgame, but Dragon Poker is featured in the Myth
> > Series by Asprin. Unfortunately, there aren't enough modifiers described to
> > get a real game going.
>
> Well, if you count card games, then Last Call has the meanest poker game
> in existence. And I figure you could kill yourself playing
> solitaire....
My first posting may have been eaten:
I think card games are officially out, but if not then there's
sabacc in _Star Wars_ novels (I think it has funky variations like
rules changing on days of the week) - mostly the game is just a
way to start fights - fizzbin in _Star Trek_ (which _does_ have
rules changing on days of the week, but that's because Captain Kirk
apparently makes up the game off the top of his head to distract
the guards holding his away team prisoner), and of course
Star Trek Next Generation's poker school, mostly used to present quick
sketches of characters' relationships, I think, for viewers who weren't
keeping up, and also as a way to include Stephen Hawking in the show
(in person).
There's the chess-like holographic game played on the
_Millennium Falcon_, where C-3PO's final strategy advice to R2-D2
is "Let the Wookiee win", which tells us something about Wookiee
temperament, or Chewbacca's temperament in particular - he's loyal
but he isn't particularly civilised.
But I mostly wanted to talk about the use of "hop-board" (checkers,
draughts as we call it) in the two books of "Mordant's Need" by
Stephen Donaldson. The king has retreated from active government
and sits playing hop-board all day with his mad adviser and any
visitors, including the heroine. The mad adviser later complains
to the heroine that the king doesn't play well because he tries to
protect every game-piece instead of sacrificing to win the game,
and when the heroine demonstrates resolving a stalemate problem
by knocking the whole board over, the king wigs out. All of this
is a clue to what's going on in his head.
I don't know whether Donaldson figured that an alternative to chess
would be refreshing, what with that game being done to death by Lewis
Carroll and all before and since, or whether he made an educated guess
at the intellectual development of his readers :-)
John S. Novak, III
> John M. Ford's story "Scrabble With God" explores some of the problems
> involved in matching wits with an omnipotent being.
> The same author's novel _The Scholars of Night_ features the real
> board games _Diplomacy_ and _Kingmaker_, although since I've not
> read it I can't say exactly how much.
Ooh.
I must find this.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Lois Tilton
> analogue? What were the chess analogues of the ancient Greeks or
> Mayans? What is a chess analogue, anyway? Any old table game?
The Greeks certainly had a game which is commonly referred to now as
"draughts", involving a board with tokens placed on it and moved.
There were many vase paintings showing Achilles and Ajax playing this game
in armor during the Trojan War, and sometimes using dice. The
significance of the scene does not seem to be known, it is not in the
extant literature, but it seems to have been important at one time.
--
LT
raycun
> Iain M. Banks' "The Player of Games" features a number of board games,
> though it's been years since I read it, so I can't remember any details
> about them.
>
'Walking on Glass' also has a number of boardgames, though they are a
form of torture really. Games included (IIRC) Scrabble with blank
pieces, one-dimensional chess, Go on an infinite board. The players
had to figure out how to play the games themselves...
Ray
Alan Anderson
> More importantly, Dr Tagore mentions at some point in the book about
> how central the notion of the Game is in _all_ of Klingon thought, so
> much so that the word for the Klingon language ("klingonaase") embeds
> within it the notion that all communication is a game.
My specialty is the "official" Klingon language (invented to spec. for
Paramount by Marc Okrand), not Ford's Klingonaase, but I do know
enough to contradict this point.
The "aase" suffix means something like "tool". The word "klingonaase"
is supposed to be "tool for manipulating the embodiment of the 'klin'
principle". There's nothing in there about any sort of a game; in
fact, it's the "zha" in "klin zha" (and "Rom zha" and "Hum zha" and
"khomerex zha") which carries the "game" meaning.
In Ford's Klingon culture, language is a tool, not a game.
(By the way, http://www.fyi.net/~kordite/klinzha.htm details a
playable (and frequently played) set of rules for Klin Zha, derived
from the snippets of description in _The Final Reflection_. I
occasionally play it online using a MUSH-coded game board.)
David Tate
> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
The classic has to be "Second Game", the 1959 Hugo-nominated short
story by Charles V. de Vet and Katherine MacLean. A human chessmaster
becomes a spy, infiltrating the alien culture the humans are at war
with. In that culture, authority and social status are commensurate
with skill at The Game, a complicated board game. The chessmaster
plays well enough to draw the attention of the highest authorities,
who immediately take him into custody. The setup, and the twist
ending, are delightful.
Another example is Robert Sheckley's 1953 short "Fool's Mate", last
published in _The Wonderful World of Robert Sheckley_ (1979, Bantam)
and _The Future at War, Vol. 2: The Spear of Mars_ (Reg Bretnor, ed,
Ace 1980). This one features computers playing a chess-like game to
decide the outcome of a space-based war.
A board game in the Monopoly family is central to the plot of Philip
K. Dick's 1959 short "War Game". Both this one and "Second Game" can
be found in the Asimov/Greenberg/Waugh collection _The Thirteen Crimes
of Science Fiction_.
Cheers,
David Tate
Arne Gabriel
news:24f07aba.01103...@posting.google.com...
> In Ford's Klingon culture, language is a tool, not a game.
A game is a tool, too. So it may be both?
My definition of 'game' includes the notion that is is *about* something
real, but not in itself that which it is about. Meaning, in a game you can
do stuff without the risks you would have to take if you took same actions
in reality.
In which case language couldn't be a game, unless there is some other (and
more important) form of communication. Which incidentally can be argued to
be the case, in form of facial gestures and other stuff our ancestors used
to communicate before there were spoken words. Though that could be called a
language in its own right.
Definitions are usually soft but hard to make.
Arne Gabriel (who happens to be a game designer)
Theresa Ann Wymer
: I read a children's book about twenty years ago where the
Hah! Someone else has read this! _The Great Joke Game_ (maybe _The Big
Joke Game_?) and I don't know who the author was, dammit.
The hero, Ozzie, needed to get to Square Eleven, right? And had a
Guardian Devil named Bub? (Yes, there was a Marmaduke, but his identity
is a spoiler.)
"Go to Troy...go directly to Troy."
--
Theresa Ann Wymer twy...@efn.org
Robert Carnegie
> Charles R Martin <crma...@indra.com> wrote
>
> > More importantly, Dr Tagore mentions at some point in the book about
> > how central the notion of the Game is in _all_ of Klingon thought, so
> > much so that the word for the Klingon language ("klingonaase") embeds
> > within it the notion that all communication is a game.
>
> My specialty is the "official" Klingon language (invented to spec. for
> Paramount by Marc Okrand), not Ford's Klingonaase, but I do know
> enough to contradict this point.
>
> The "aase" suffix means something like "tool". The word "klingonaase"
> is supposed to be "tool for manipulating the embodiment of the 'klin'
> principle". There's nothing in there about any sort of a game; in
> fact, it's the "zha" in "klin zha" (and "Rom zha" and "Hum zha" and
> "khomerex zha") which carries the "game" meaning.
>
> In Ford's Klingon culture, language is a tool, not a game.
No dispute, I am not qualified. But there can be a point of view
that a game is also a tool, to rehearse useful skills, mental or
physical. Frex, Janet Kagan's _Uhura's Song_ mentions Vulcan
hide-and-seek as "a child's practice" which is explicitly _not_
a game played for fun, but which I presume that they enjoy, anyway.
Of course they don't just count up to a hundred and then go and look...
Uri Bruck
Lots of great references turn up in this thread.
A bit more than I expected (that a good thing :)
and if anyone comes up with more - shoot
Thanks,
Uri
ps - someone also mentioned in this thread that there was one a whil
eback specifically about chess in sf, so I looked up that one on
google - thanks for the pointer.
Karen Williams
>
> Karen Williams (bran...@home.com) wrote:
> : I read a children's book about twenty years ago where the
> : main character hated math. He somehow ended up as a piece
> : on a giant game board, where the game was the sort of Parker
> : Brothers "Game of Life" type board, where you went from
> : one end of a path to another, and he needed to solve puzzles
> : to get to the other side. One of the characters was named
> : Marmaduke.
> Hah! Someone else has read this! _The Great Joke Game_ (maybe _The Big
> Joke Game_?) and I don't know who the author was, dammit.
>
> The hero, Ozzie, needed to get to Square Eleven, right? And had a
> Guardian Devil named Bub? (Yes, there was a Marmaduke, but his identity
> is a spoiler.)
>
> "Go to Troy...go directly to Troy."
That's the one! I thought I was the only one who had read this.
I don't remember who Marmaduke is, just that there is a character
named that, but I remember the Guardian Devil.
--
Karen Williams
bra...@ix.netcom.com
Andrew Plotkin
I (barely) remember that book.
Same author as the "trick" series, about a kid who has a Chemistry Set
of Marvels (but most of the reagent vials are nearly empty, which is
good, since if he could repeat any book's trick he would rapidly
become either filthy rich, emperor of the planet, or dead.)
Author was... let's see, second rack in the library, would start with
E or F... oh, I'll go look it up.
Scott Corbett. _The Big Joke Game_. I was close.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Luke Webber
news:3be02620...@news.actcom.co.il...
> Hi Everyone,
> Lots of great references turn up in this thread.
> A bit more than I expected (that a good thing :)
> and if anyone comes up with more - shoot
> Thanks,
> Uri
>
> ps - someone also mentioned in this thread that there was one a whil
> eback specifically about chess in sf, so I looked up that one on
> google - thanks for the pointer.
Has anybody mention the game of Gobstones from the Harry Potter books? I'm
sure I wouldn't like to play a game in which the pieces actually spit at the
players, but there's no accounting for tastes.
Or how about the holographic boardgame palyed by R2D2 and Chewbacca in Star
Wars? A bit like a souped-up version of Battle Chess.
Luke
Theresa Ann Wymer
: I (barely) remember that book.
: Same author as the "trick" series, about a kid who has a Chemistry Set
: of Marvels (but most of the reagent vials are nearly empty, which is
: good, since if he could repeat any book's trick he would rapidly
: become either filthy rich, emperor of the planet, or dead.)
I remember those...cute.
: Author was... let's see, second rack in the library, would start with
: E or F... oh, I'll go look it up.
: Scott Corbett. _The Big Joke Game_. I was close.
*jaw drops* (though I shouldn't be so surprised, given the respondent)
YEEHAW! This has been bothering me for TWENTY YEARS.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Robert Carnegie
> "Alan Anderson" <aran...@netusa1.net> wrote in message
> news:24f07aba.01103...@posting.google.com...
>
> > In Ford's Klingon culture, language is a tool, not a game.
>
> A game is a tool, too. So it may be both?
>
> My definition of 'game' includes the notion that is is *about* something
> real, but not in itself that which it is about. Meaning, in a game you can
> do stuff without the risks you would have to take if you took same actions
> in reality.
>
> In which case language couldn't be a game, unless there is some other (and
Well, you can talk about things that you might actually do, but
then you don't do them. Fencing with words is a game, and a safer
game than fencing with swords. And of course there are word games.
"Game theory" refers to techniques to analyse various economic or
strategic puzzles; calling them "games" is a convenient abstraction.
Klingons have a word or particle which is translated for us as "game",
but its range of meanings is - of course - likely to be different from
the wide uses of "game" in English, and in particular it seems also
to translate as "philosophy". Hence the Reflective Game?
Mike Simone
> In article <3bd9f0a8...@news.actcom.co.il>,
> Uri Bruck <br...@actcom.co.il> wrote:
> >I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> >both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> >I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> >how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
>
> John M. Ford's story "Scrabble With God" explores some of the problems
> involved in matching wits with an omnipotent being.
>
Human: "'Kwijybo' is not a word!"
God: "It is now."
Andrew Plotkin
> : I (barely) remember that book.
> : Same author as the "trick" series, about a kid who has a Chemistry Set
> : of Marvels (but most of the reagent vials are nearly empty, which is
> : good, since if he could repeat any book's trick he would rapidly
> : become either filthy rich, emperor of the planet, or dead.)
> I remember those...cute.
> : Author was... let's see, second rack in the library, would start with
> : E or F... oh, I'll go look it up.
> : Scott Corbett. _The Big Joke Game_. I was close.
> *jaw drops* (though I shouldn't be so surprised, given the respondent)
(looking quizzical)
> YEEHAW! This has been bothering me for TWENTY YEARS.
You're welcome, but this respondant merely went to bookfinder.com and
searched for "great joke game" and "big joke game". 'Twas very nearly
nothing.
Mark Jason Dominus
>: I read a children's book about twenty years ago where the
>: main character hated math. He somehow ended up as a piece
>: on a giant game board, where the game was the sort of Parker
>: Brothers "Game of Life" type board, where you went from
>: one end of a path to another, and he needed to solve puzzles
>: to get to the other side. One of the characters was named
>: Marmaduke.
>
>: But that may not be what you wanted, since I didn't get the
>: first message in this thread.
>
>Hah! Someone else has read this! _The Great Joke Game_ (maybe _The Big
>Joke Game_?) and I don't know who the author was, dammit.
_The Big Joke Game_, by Scott Corbett. He was also the author of a
long series of books, starting with 'The Lemonade Trick', about the
mishaps occasioned by Mrs. Greymalkin's old chemistry set.
It's funny how all of a sudden everyone is talking about my favorite
books from childhood. This one is hard to find used, but I jut got a
copy last week.
>The hero, Ozzie, needed to get to Square Eleven, right?
Yes. You can go anywhere from Square Eleven, because it looks the
same backwards, forwards, and upside down.
--
@P=split//,".URRUU\c8R";@d=split//,"\nrekcah xinU / lreP rehtona tsuJ";sub p{
@p{"r$p","u$p"}=(P,P);pipe"r$p","u$p";++$p;($q*=2)+=$f=!fork;map{$P=$P[$f^ord
($p{$_})&6];$p{$_}=/ ^$P/ix?$P:close$_}keys%p}p;p;p;p;p;map{$p{$_}=~/^[P.]/&&
close$_}%p;wait until$?;map{/^r/&&<$_>}%p;$_=$d[$q];sleep rand(2)if/\S/;print
Karen Williams
I adore this story, mostly for those two lines. If I wasn't already a
John M. Ford fan, I would have bought his story collection just for that
story.
--
Karen Williams
bra...@ix.netcom.com
Jerry Friedman
> br...@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck) wrote in message news:<3bd9f0a8...@news.actcom.co.il>...
> > Hi,
> > I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
> > both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
> > I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
> > how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
>
> The classic has to be "Second Game", the 1959 Hugo-nominated short
> story by Charles V. de Vet and Katherine MacLean. A human chessmaster
> becomes a spy, infiltrating the alien culture the humans are at war
> with. In that culture, authority and social status are commensurate
> with skill at The Game, a complicated board game. The chessmaster
> plays well enough to draw the attention of the highest authorities,
> who immediately take him into custody. The setup, and the twist
> ending, are delightful.
I was going to be so proud of myself for mentioning that one!
John Crowley's _The Deep_ shows signs of being some kind of allegory
of chess or a similar game. I didn't try to figure it out because if
that's what it was, I didn't want to know. Not recommended (unlike
the rest of Crowley's books).
In Pratchett's _Small Gods_, there's a board game among the gods at
the end. Unimportant or crucial to the plot, I'm pretty sure.
Since there was apparently a chess thread recently, I don't need to
mention Fritz Leiber.
Does the "patterning frame" in Ursula Le Guin's _City of Illusions_
count? It may be based on Hesse's "glass-bead game", but it's
apparently not competitive.
--
Jerry Friedman
Paul David John Andinach
> In Pratchett's _Small Gods_, there's a board game among the gods
> at the end. Unimportant or crucial to the plot, I'm pretty sure.
Also mentioned in _Interesting Times_, and shown in detail in _The
Colour of Magic_.
It's a variant of those games you get where you move little figurines
about a model landscape. (Warhammer, etc.) The main variation, of
course, being that the board is the world and the figurines are real
people.
In _Small Gods_, it's used to illustrate the point that most of the
gods have stopped thinking of their worshippers as real people.
Paul
--
The Pink Pedanther
Robert Carnegie
> "Uri Bruck" <br...@actcom.co.il> wrote in message
> news:3be02620...@news.actcom.co.il...
> > Hi Everyone,
> > Lots of great references turn up in this thread.
> > A bit more than I expected (that a good thing :)
> > and if anyone comes up with more - shoot
> > Thanks,
> > Uri
> >
> > ps - someone also mentioned in this thread that there was one a whil
> > eback specifically about chess in sf, so I looked up that one on
> > google - thanks for the pointer.
>
> Has anybody mention the game of Gobstones from the Harry Potter books? I'm
> sure I wouldn't like to play a game in which the pieces actually spit at the
> players, but there's no accounting for tastes.
Harry Potter also has chess with talking pieces, and later with live
ones, giving Harry's friend Ron a high-achieving and self-sacrificing
scene in the book - Harry isn't a strong player. Otherwise we're told
it's "exactly the same" as ordinary chess but when a game is actually
described all of the moves are wrong; q.v. alt.fan.harry-potter .
I suppose it'll all be rehashed for the movie...
> Or how about the holographic boardgame palyed by R2D2 and Chewbacca in
> Star Wars? A bit like a souped-up version of Battle Chess.
I'm rotten at chess, but there was this 8-bit game where when a piece
attacked you you went into a combat sequence and could actually win.
Is Battle Chess like that? Nearly as satisfying as the cheat keys
in Windows Solitaire Las Vegas mode; I've spent years winning back
"money" that I previously lost to the machine.
David Tate
> dt...@ida.org (David Tate) wrote in message news:<9d67e55e.01103...@posting.google.com>...
> > The classic has to be "Second Game", the 1959 Hugo-nominated short
> > story by Charles V. de Vet and Katherine MacLean. [...]
> I was going to be so proud of myself for mentioning that one!
I compliment you on your taste. :^) I was fairly sure that nobody
else would know of it, much less remember it. Old short stories are
almost by definition obscure, except for the tiny minority like
"Nightfall" that have been anthologized to death.
The ISFDB says (and ABE Books confirms) that this story was later
turned into a novel by the same authors. I had no idea! I'll have to
buy one of those ABE copies and give it a try. DAW UE1620 #435 1981.
Who'da thunk it?
David Tate
Robert Sneddon
.edu.au>, Paul David John Andinach <pand...@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> writes
>On 1 Nov 2001, Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
>> In Pratchett's _Small Gods_, there's a board game among the gods
>> at the end. Unimportant or crucial to the plot, I'm pretty sure.
>
>Also mentioned in _Interesting Times_, and shown in detail in _The
>Colour of Magic_.
>
>It's a variant of those games you get where you move little figurines
>about a model landscape. (Warhammer, etc.) The main variation, of
>course, being that the board is the world and the figurines are real
>people.
In the latest book "The Last Hero", Paul Kidby has illustrated the Gods
of Discworld playing this game (on a circular gameboard, of course). On
the following page there is a Guide to the Gods of Discworld based on
the painting. Blind Io is particularly impressive.
--
Robert Sneddon nojay (at) nojay (dot) fsnet (dot) co (dot) uk
Jerry Friedman
> jerry_f...@yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman) wrote in message news:<96efe132.0111...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > dt...@ida.org (David Tate) wrote in message news:<9d67e55e.01103...@posting.google.com>...
>
> > > The classic has to be "Second Game", the 1959 Hugo-nominated short
> > > story by Charles V. de Vet and Katherine MacLean. [...]
>
> > I was going to be so proud of myself for mentioning that one!
>
> I compliment you on your taste. :^)
That's almost as good. :-) Unfortunately, it's not my taste but the
book (_Great Short Novels of Science Fiction_, ed. by Silverberg) that
the young woman across the street lent me when I were a lad, which I
then reread many times.
> I was fairly sure that nobody
> else would know of it, much less remember it. Old short stories are
> almost by definition obscure, except for the tiny minority like
> "Nightfall" that have been anthologized to death.
> The ISFDB says (and ABE Books confirms) that this story was later
> turned into a novel by the same authors. I had no idea! I'll have to
> buy one of those ABE copies and give it a try. DAW UE1620 #435 1981.
> Who'da thunk it?
While you were looking at the ISFDB, did you also notice an _Analog_
story called "Third Game"?
--
Jerry Friedman
aRJay
Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> writes
Cheat keys what are they then?
--
aRJay
"In this great and creatorless universe, where so much beautiful has
come to be out of the chance interactions of the basic properties of
matter, it seems so important that we love one another,"
- Lucy Kemnitzer
Konrad Gaertner
>
> I'm rotten at chess, but there was this 8-bit game where when a piece
> attacked you you went into a combat sequence and could actually win.
> Is Battle Chess like that? Nearly as satisfying as the cheat keys
> in Windows Solitaire Las Vegas mode; I've spent years winning back
> "money" that I previously lost to the machine.
Sounds like Archon; different pieces had different attacks, and some
squares on the board would periodically change giving a bonus to one
player or the other, and to win you had to occupy certain key squares.
--KG
Uri Bruck
>I'm rotten at chess, but there was this 8-bit game where when a piece
>attacked you you went into a combat sequence and could actually win.
That would be Archon
>Is Battle Chess like that?
No. Battle Chess was regular chess, except that the captures were
animated. The animations depended on the identity of both pieces.
Knight takes knight alludes to the black knight scene from Monty
Python's Holy Grail.
Uri
John Andrew Fairhurst
says...
> IIRC, that's because it isn't actually a formal variant of the game.
> [bits snipped...]
> using his own handmade set,
> the father decides to teach the son his most important lesson, so
> every time he captures a piece he throws it on the fire.
>
Thought Admiral Kethas comments that it's least often taught, which might
indicate that it does have some official validation, though it could also
mean that he was sort of softening the blow for Vrenn.
--
John Fairhurst
In Association with Amazon worldwide:
http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk/Books/Masterworks/
Classic Science Fiction & Fantasy Releases to Dec 01
Ruchira Datta
DaveKDwyer <davek...@aol.com> wrote:
>Games in fiction:
>
>Catherine Asaro's The Last Hawk (part of her Skolian Empire series) has a dice
>game called Quis that is used as a form of gambling, gaming, political-military
>modeling by the powers that be. The best dice players are of course the most
>valuable advisors on the planet.
>
You don't mention, perhaps because you think it is a
SPOILER (IMO a very minor one, if at all)
*
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The game encodes laws of physics which were known to the ancient
starfaring civilization which seeded the planet but which have
long since been forgotten. This makes me wonder: has anyone
made up a game based on Feynman diagrams?
Ruchira Datta
da...@math.berkeley.edu
Gene Wirchenko
>gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (David Goldfarb) wrote in message news:<9rluij$1sic$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>...
[snip]
>> John M. Ford's story "Scrabble With God" explores some of the problems
>> involved in matching wits with an omnipotent being.
>>
><snip>
>
>Human: "'Kwijybo' is not a word!"
>
>God: "It is now."
He should have picked an eight-letter word. With the cross
letter, he would have emptied his rack and gotten a fifty-point bonus.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Christian Gadeken
wrote:
>In article <9ro7h3$g55$2...@news.efn.org>,
>Theresa Ann Wymer <twy...@garcia.efn.org> wrote:
>>Karen Williams (bran...@home.com) wrote:
>>: I read a children's book about twenty years ago where the
>>: main character hated math. He somehow ended up as a piece
>>: on a giant game board, where the game was the sort of Parker
>>: Brothers "Game of Life" type board, where you went from
>>: one end of a path to another, and he needed to solve puzzles
>>: to get to the other side. One of the characters was named
>>: Marmaduke.
>>
>>: But that may not be what you wanted, since I didn't get the
>>: first message in this thread.
>>
>>Hah! Someone else has read this! _The Great Joke Game_ (maybe _The Big
>>Joke Game_?) and I don't know who the author was, dammit.
>
>_The Big Joke Game_, by Scott Corbett. He was also the author of a
>long series of books, starting with 'The Lemonade Trick', about the
>mishaps occasioned by Mrs. Greymalkin's old chemistry set.
>
>It's funny how all of a sudden everyone is talking about my favorite
>books from childhood. This one is hard to find used, but I jut got a
>copy last week.
>
Mark down one more person who's read all those. I think Corbett
had one other continuing series? Or am I mixing him up with
E. W. Hildick?
--
"I go online sometimes, but everyone's spelling
is really bad, it's depressing."
-Tara
Christian Gadeken
chr...@stic.net
Robert Carnegie
> msim...@hotmail.com (Mike Simone) wrote:
>
> >gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (David Goldfarb) wrote in message news:<9rluij$1sic$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>...
>
> [snip]
>
> >> John M. Ford's story "Scrabble With God" explores some of the problems
> >> involved in matching wits with an omnipotent being.
> >>
> ><snip>
> >
> >Human: "'Kwijybo' is not a word!"
> >
> >God: "It is now."
>
> He should have picked an eight-letter word. With the cross
> letter, he would have emptied his rack and gotten a fifty-point bonus.
God moves in mysterious ways?
Dwight Thieme
: br...@actcom.co.il (Uri Bruck) wrote in message news:<3bd9f0a8...@news.actcom.co.il>...
:> Hi,
:> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
:> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
:> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
:> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
:
: The classic has to be "Second Game", the 1959 Hugo-nominated short
: story by Charles V. de Vet and Katherine MacLean. A human chessmaster
: becomes a spy, infiltrating the alien culture the humans are at war
: with. In that culture, authority and social status are commensurate
: with skill at The Game, a complicated board game. The chessmaster
: plays well enough to draw the attention of the highest authorities,
: who immediately take him into custody. The setup, and the twist
: ending, are delightful.
Something similar (though it's not strictly sf) was done
in Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities", wherein some cities
are 'explored' by games of chess.
Laura Geyer
>> Hi,
>> I'm looking for info on board games played in works of fiction.
>> both real board games, and games invented for the purpose of the book.
>> I'm interested both in whatever description is given for the game, and
>> how it is used in the plot. (games in SF films are fine too)
I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but in David Brin's Glory Season,
all the men (and some of the women) are obsessed with a game they call
"Life". From the description it sounds a bit like the game GO (where you
lay black or white tiles on a board and any that get surrounded by the
other color get claimed by the other side. Simplistic explanation I know,
but I've only ever seen it played, never played myself). The difference
is that the pieces in "Life" interact and flip each other over so that in
setting up the board you can create little organisms and weapons that
interact in specific ways so that when the game is started, the groupings
of pieces fight it out independent of the players. It's supposed to be
based on ecological/evolutionary principles.
It's been a while since I read the book, so I forget exactly why, but
playing the game is supposed to give the protagonist some sort of insight
into how their society evolved. It's got this weird structure where most
of the women reproduce by cloning themselves, but every once in a while
they reproduce sexually with the men and produce a "Var" or variant who
then gets kicked out of the colony of her family when she comes of age to
find her own way in the world and establish her own clonal line. That's
how they keep their world from stagnating. The men are all variants and
live completely separately form the women.
It was an interesting scenario if a little heavy handed.
Cheers,
Laura
--
"Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as
evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever
students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is
generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A."
--Good Omens
Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman