[s-d] A different rule-making game that might be of interest.

[Jonatan Kilhamn <jonatan.kilhamn@xxxxxxxxx>]

A friend on an RPG forum wrote this, and I felt that I should share it
with nomicers. The only ones I know are the Agorans and the Bns (and
I'm not even very active there anymore), so here you go. It's about a
game mentioned by name and described only as "being about creating and
interpreting the game while you play it" in a swedish fantasy RPG. I
translated it into English but I can't think of a good name for the
game. In Swedish it's called "Smickelbräde". The "-bräde" part simply
means that it's a game played with a board, but noone seems to know
what writers of the original RPG where the name appeared first meant
with the "smickel-" part, since it's not really a word. In this text
it's called the game of Ideas, but that's just because I needed
something other than <insert name here> to allow you to read it.
Hope you like it.

---
Every game of Ideas i played in three phases, in which the players
take on the symbolic roles of Gods, Poets and finally Kings. (This
implication that kings stand lower than poets tells us something about
where and in which social classes the game was invented and is most
popular, and may also be the reason for it not being very appreciated
by the ruling class, in some places even banned)

A game of Ideas can be played with any set of pieces and with any
board, but due to tradition local standards often come up which means
that different setups from the same place are mostly or completely
alike. Though in places where merchants from distant lands gather
setups can display radical differences from each other; something some
people like and mean is one of the points of the game, while others
say that it can lead to unfair advantages. It's not uncommon that
players demand the local standard to be used, hoping that it will mean
a more fair starting position for both parts.

When the game starts there are no rules for how the pieces may be
moved or even what the goal of the game is, but even more surprising
(and more important, in an ideaplayer's eyes) is that neither the
board or its pieces represent anything yet.

This is where the game starts, with the players taking turns to - just
like the gods are said to have done - name the world. A common first
move might for example be "I say that the board represents the
far-stretching ocean" or "I decide that black pawns represent the lost
and lonely" or even "This here ugly piece - is your mother!" (A
psychological feint that has brought more and better players off
balance than one might think)

As more and more of the pieces recieve names, the players start to
make more and more moves in the roles of Poets, whose task is to give
meaning to the game - just as the poets are held to (or at least hold
themselves to) give meaning and significance to the world and life.
This - according to any xplayers worth the name - is the most
important part of the game, and the part where the outcome is de facto
decided. This is where the rules, objectives and winning conditions
are created, based on discussions and reflections on the games' spaces
and pieces as they have been named and thereby taken shape.

In this phase a move can be, for example, this: "If this row along the
side of the board represents Life, as you decided, and this piece here
is a Knight, then one could hardly argue that he could ever be moved
backwards? Since even the boldest knight - who without fear enter dark
caves or charges ahead on battlefields against innumerable opponents -
could ever manage to move any other direction than forwards on the
path leading from cradle to grave, could he?"

Thus fragments of game rules appear after it has been given shape,
until an increasingly complex set of rules has emerged. No player can
simply present a rule like "the bishop can move five spaces in either
direction and can never be taken off the board"; the rules have to be
argued by the Poet until they cannot be refused.

When enough rules have been established to allow actual moves in the
game a player can choose to use his turn to make such a move rather
than continue with the godlike naming or the poetic search for
meaning. He has then entered the third phase and taken on the role of
a King - that is, a simple manipulator of the rules and laws that
exist in the world. But for a truly skillful player of ideas it is not
uncommon to stay a Poet throughout the game, to finally make a single
move (or none at all!) in the role of King to seize victory.

It is without doubt in the Poet phase that the game reaches its
pinnacles of strategic maneuvers, entertainment for the onlookers,
insightful reflections on the nature of the world and simple drama. In
some circles they still talk about when Riddlemaster Aaron Dove won a
game by irritatedly running out of the inn - all innstayers following
him - down to the marketplace to purchase a specimen of the exotic
frog that one of the pieces in the ongoing game represented, which he
proceeded to hand to his opponent saying "Please try tasting it
yourself, if it really is as appetizing as you claim it to be!" His
opponent declined and accepted that his Bishop was blocked by the Frog
piece in question, which allowed Aaron to shortly thereafter make the
winning move (the rumor of the other player taking a bite of the frog
and dropping dead right before Aaron could claim victory I'm afriad is
only a myth).

In another game Riddlemaster Dove gained the higher ground through
another unexpected, but less tangible, move: moving a handful of Woman
pieces along with one Man piece out of the Pleasant Dreams half of the
board and into the opposite half. After his opponent protested he
ended the discussion with the following now-famous words: "Don't you
see - if there are two girls for every man, it's a wishful dreamworld,
but this - four hags bickering and pestering every man - that's a
nightmare!"

But if you were to ask Aaron himself, he would say that the best game
of ideas he's ever seen was with a simple street urchin, in whose
company he had found himself after taking refuge from the rain under a
bridge. They had been playing with the boy's own improvised set, which
only with much imagination could be called a game set at all, as it
was not more than a bent, murky old plank with engraved lines and
crosses on it, along with a handful of pinecones and pebbles for
pieces. Aaron had set out to defeat the boy by mercilessly - and to be
honest, quite unfairly - naming the pieces as great kings of old, of
whom the poor boy didn't know anything and thus had only been able to
reflect upon in the most general way. Not having met any real
resistance Aaron had lead the piece named by the boy with "this is
you" onto the path he himself had named as his path to illumination,
and it was only a matter of time until the game would be over.

The ragamuffin had looked gloomily on the board, but all the Wolves,
Dragons and Trolls he had named had been removed from the board or
locked up in positions where they couldn't hinder the Aaron-piece's
road to victory. As it had been long since there was any pieces left
to name, it felt hopeless and impossible to introduce anything new
that could turn the game to his advantage. But as a desperate measure
the boy had produced a rock that had been under the plank - to stop it
from wobbling - and named it as "this is your cruel, unpredictable
fate: a fatal accident."

"Hold it!" Aaron had protested. "That's not part of the game, is it?"
"Why not? It has been there all along, and I places it there just as
deliberately as I placed all the other pieces when I set up the game.
It's not just a rock like any other from the forest around us."
"That may be so," Aaron had been forced to admit, when the boy had
quickly added ".. and isn't it just as pretty and finely crafted as
the rest of my game set?" which had made Aaron laugh. He had tried one
last time to divert the move, but his argument: "But I didn't know
that it was there, because I didn't see when you put the rock under
the plank" had been countered with: "... and that is just as it should
be. It's your unpredictable fate. Your fatal accident. How could it be
anything but unexpected?"

A lesser player than Aaron Dove would probably have persisted and kept
arguing stubbornly, but what distinguishes a truly skilled xplayer is
how quickly and creatively he changes course and twists his opponents
arguments into a new offensive:
"Unexpected, you say? Very well, but if it's an unexpected accident,
then it can only strike when I don't expect it to.
"Alright" the boy had said, surprised at this new chance of going for
the victory.
"My turn then: if that is my fate, it means you can only place that
piece on the same space as my piece."
"And when I do, you're dead" the boy had been quick to finish.

And this had been where Aaron had carried out what he thought to be
the clever plan whit which he would secure his victory: "Of course.
But as stated before, you can only do it when I don't expect it. Thus
you can't do it when I'm on the last square, because if I reach the
next to last square without having suffered the accident, I would be
sure that it would strike when I step onto the last one. Do you
agree?"
The boy had had to agree to this, but he had not lost hope, since
there had been many other squares left to play the accident on.
"And that means," Aaron had continued, "that the accident cannot
strike on the next to last square either, because if I had reached the
square before that one without the accident having struck, I would
know that it would have to strike on the next one, since we agreed
that it can't be placed on the last square."
By this point the boy's face had started to whiten a little.
"And from that follows that the accident can't strike on the square
before that one, or the before that one, and so on until we can
ascertain that it cannot strike me on any square at all."
The boy had been forced to agree and had placed his piece back under
the board under silence.
In triumph the Riddlemaster had then moved his piece another step
along the path and started lighting his pipe, content to once again
have won the game he so loved.

Imagine then his surprise when the boy immediately afterwards picked
up the accident piece and placed it on Aarons square.
"No, no," Aaron had protested. "We just decided that's not a valid move."
"Not valid?" the boy had delighted. "You yourself just proved that
it's completely unexpected?"

-- 
-Tiger
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