thread: 2011-06-13 : A roleplaying game has two centers
On 2011-06-20, Vincent wrote:
One more example. Tablut (pdf) is an ancient game, a member of a Northern European family of board games called Tafl. What we're here to do in Tablut is tantalizingly like what we're here to do in Chess, but cut in half: I'm here to beseige and capture your king, and you're here to win your king to safety. What we're doing right this minute is a little like in Chess too, but all our pieces are like Chess rooks, certain places on the board have special significance, and most excitingly our sides aren't symmetrical. Your king starts at the center of the board, surrounded by your pieces. I get twice as many pieces as you do, and they're surrounding yours.
I've written a tiny bit before about what it's like to play, here.
So where Hearts and Spades are very similar at the moment-to-moment but different in the full-term point of play, Tablut and Chess are similar in the full-term point of play but pretty different in the moment-to-moment.
