[Spoon-business] Tafl anyone?

["Craig" <ragnarok@xxxxxxxxx>]

I propose a rule, to be called "Political Tafl":

{{
[[This rule establishes a subgame which is a variant of Hnefatafl. The rule
is, by and large, a clone of the Go rules, with the relevant parts changed.
I hope to make this game multidimensional, but think we should get used to
these rules in a two-dimensional form first.]]

A. The Game
There exists a Subgame called Political Tafl.

The game is played on a board 13 spaces on a side, which is initially empty.
At any given time, every position on the board is either empty, or occupied
by a Tafl Piece, either a Pawn or a Hnefi, belonging to a certain player.
The gameboard has two dimensions, so every position may be represented by an
ordered pair of numbers.

[[This rule is deliberately written to make a multidimensional extension of
Tafl possible; so far, however, the gameboard is two-dimensional.]]

Each player has a Tafl Score, which is a quantity of Tafl Points (possibly
negative), which begins at 0. A player's Tafl Score may only be changed as
defined in this rule. Tafl Score is a quantity independent from the "Score"
and "Points" referred to elsewhere in the ruleset.

Players may place and move Tafl Pieces on the board in accordance with the
rules of this subgame. To "place" a Tafl Piece means to create a Tafl Piece
in a certain position on the board. Tafl Pieces do not exist when they are
not on the board.

B. Alliances
For the purposes of this rule, a Player is either a Player as defined in the
rest of the Nomic, or the Admin.

Every Player has a set of Allies, who are other Players.

Anyone who is not an Ally to a given player is considered an Opponent of
that player.

Alliances are not necessarily transitive. Player A can be allied with player
B, and player B with player C, while player A remains an opponent of player
C.

C. Moving
A Move consists of doing one of the following:

1. Placing a Tafl Piece on the board. A player who does this has eir Tafl
Score decreased by three. If the player has no Hnefi currently on the board,
then eir piece is a Hnefi. Otherwise, it is a Pawn. Tafl Pieces may not be
placed adjacent to other Tafl Pieces, nor may any of their coordinates be 1
or 13.

2. Moving an existing Tafl Piece belonging to that player. Tafl Pieces move
in a single dimension during each move, and are considered to pass through
all of the spaces between their original space and their destination,
inclusive. There are two limits on the distance a Tafl Piece may move. It
may not move off of the edge of the board, and it may not pass through a
space containing another Tafl Piece.

3. Forming or breaking an Alliance with another Player.

4. Passing.

After any Move, some pieces may be Captured (as defined below).

To form an Alliance, both players must publically consent to do so. (The
first player consenting does not count as a move; the second player consents
by actually forming the Alliance, which counts as a move.) The two players
then add each other to their list of Allies.

Anyone in an Alliance with another player can break the Alliance at any
time. In that case, the two players remove each other from their list of
Allies.

A player may move at most once per Checking Period, and may not place a
Stone if one of eir Allies has made the most recent move.

D. Capturing
Two positions on the board are considered adjacent to each other if one, and
only one, of their dimensions differ by one. In other words, "adjacent" is
taken to mean "horizontally or vertically adjacent", and diagonal adjacence
does not count.

When the following rules refer to Tafl Pieces being adjacent, it means the
same thing as the positions of those stones being adjacent.

If a Tafl Piece has two Pawns which are adjacent to it and whose positions
differ from it in the same dimension, it is captured.

In the event of a Tafl Piece being Captured, the players having Pieces whose
presence was part of the Piece's capture are considered the Capturers. The
Capturers each receive one Tafl Point per Tafl Piece of theirs involved in
the capture. Each player whose Tafl Pieces are being Captured loses two Tafl
Points for each Piece that e loses. When a Tafl Piece is captured, it ceases
to exist.

You may not play a Piece in a position where it would be immediately
Captured.

Multiple Tafl pieces may be Captured in one turn, and these Captures occur
simultaneously.

E. Ko
Two states of the board are considered "equivalent" if the only difference
between them is that, at any number of given positions, a Piece belonging to
one player is replaced by a Piece belonging to another, and those two
players are allied in either state. Only the positions of pieces on the
board are considered when checking for equivalence; differences in the state
of alliances or in who made the most recent move are not considered.

A player may not make a move if that move would change the board position so
that it is equivalent to a previous board position.

[[Tafl does not traditionally have a Ko rule, but it is being incorporated
into Political Tafl because the game does not automatically end when a Hnefi
escapes.]]

F. Escaping
If a player makes a move such that a Hnefi of eirs has as any of its
coordinates either 1 or 13, that Hnefi is considered to have Escaped.

When a Hnefi escapes, it ceases to exist and the player who controlled it
gains ten Tafl Points.

[[The size of this bonus may need to be tinkered with a bit.]]

G. Ending the Game.
The game ends during a Checkpoint when the most recent move was to Pass, and
nobody has made any other move for more than an nweek.

[[If this ever happens, it indicates that the current game has become
boring. If this occurs, one possibility is to add a dimension or simply
clear the board.]]

H. Displaying the Game
When a player makes a Move, e does so by posting a message to a Public Forum
describing the move and displaying the state of the game in an agreed-upon
format. Such a message may look like the contents of the following comment.

[[
I move my pawn from (5,13) to (10,13)

    1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 11 12 13
  .---------------------------------------.
13| .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  t  .  .  . |13
12| .  .  .  .  T  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |12
11| .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |11
10| .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |10
 9| .  .  .  .  .  .  .  s  .  .  .  .  . |9
 8| .  .  f  .  .  .  .  .  .  f  .  .  . |8
 7| .  .  .  .  .  t  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |7
 6| .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |6
 5| .  .  .  .  .  .  s  f  .  .  .  .  . |5
 4| .  F  .  .  .  s  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |4
 3| .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  f  .  . |3
 2| .  .  .  .  S  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |2
 1| .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . |1
  '---------------------------------------'
    1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 11 12 13

[T] Teucer               0 points   Allies: Someone Else
[F] Rob the Voting Fish  0 points   Allies: none
[S] Someone Else         0 points   Allies: Teucer
]]

A visual representation of the board is strictly optional; the following
comment is a perfectly valid expression of the same move as above.

[[
I move my pawn from (5,13) to (10,13).

Teucer               0 points   Allies: Someone Else
Hnefi: (5,12) Pawns: (10,13) (6,7)

Rob the Voting Fish  0 points   Allies: none
Hnefi: (2,4) Pawns: (3,8) (10,8) (8,5) (11,3)

Someone Else         0 points   Allies: Teucer
Hnefi: (5,2) Pawns: (8,9) (7,5) (6,4)
]]

If a Move as posted is illegal, then it is not considered to occur. If the
state of the game displayed in the message does not accurately reflect the
result of making that Move - for example, because the board does not reflect
another Move made just before that - then the described Move takes
precedence.
}}

 -- Teucer

"Well, perl can do pretty much anything as long as it is hard to read."
 -ShawnF

ragnarok@xxxxxxxxx
teucer@xxxxxxxxxx


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