The Games Preserve Reports

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the following articles originally appeared in Simulation/Gaming/News 1971-73

 

Pachisi, national game of India

 

Pachisi, according to R.C. Bell (Board and Table Games, Vol. 1, Oxford, 1969, pp. 9-12) is the national game of India. The game Parcheesi is a derivative, but basically the same game.

It is played on a cross-shaped board. Each arm of the cross is a grid, 3 squares wide by 8 squares long. The following is quoted from Bell:

Each piece enters the game from the central space, known in Hindustani as the Char-Koni, and travels down the middle of his own limb, and then round the board, returning up the center of his own limb and back to the Char-Koni..... Pieces can only reach home by an exact throw.

There are twelve "castle squares." When a piece is on a castle square, it cannot be taken. Anywhere else on the board, a piece can be taken if landed on. A player may refuse to play a round. Pieces may be doubled up, but doubled-up pieces can also be captured if they are landed upon by as many pieces of the opponent.

The moves are determined by chance. The Indian game uses cowry shells, but there is no significant difference between using shells or dice to determine the number of moves.

The relationship between the players, therefore, may be said to be a race against chance. Each player has four pieces and, consequently, has at most four options. So , the race is changed slightly by the fact that the player is confronted with a restricted alternative.

The Home (the central space, or Char-Koni) is the place where the game begins and ends. It is difficult to leave home and to return. There is a rule that I must throw a 6, 10, or 25 to leave home. (Using cowries, a 6 is all cowries with mouth up, a 10 is one cowry with mouth up, and a 25 is all cowries with mouth down. When using dice, throwing doubles should be sufficient for leaving home.) Consequently, I may not be able to leave home when I wish. Then there is the rule that I must throw the exact number to get back home. Again, I may not be able to return even though I am close.

The Castle Squares are safe zones, or shelters. If need be, I can find some respite there. But the shelters are some distance from home, and if I want to win, I must eventually leave their safety.

If I can double up my pieces on any square, I am safe from attack by any single piece. But I am not safe from a force equal to mine. Thus, there is some safety in numbers, as long as my numbers exceed yours.

In order for me to win, I must get all of my pieces home. Thus, if you jump on a piece of mine, I have to get it out of home again, and have it safely complete the entire tour before I can win the race.

The game is generally played by four players. This makes the model more complete (and, perhaps, even more suitable for simulations) because the four play as two teams.

Again, I quote from Bell:

If a player's partner is behind in the game it may be wise to keep pieces back to help him by blocking the way to opposing pieces, or by capturing them if they threaten him. Both partners win or lose together, and if one rushes ahead and out of the game, the opponents have two throws to the remaining partner's one, and they can keep just behind him and send him back to the beginning again with a capturing throw. Sometimes, when a leading player reaches his own limb, he will continue on a second circuit to help his partner instead of .... moving up the center.

If we combine the elements described, we can begin to evolve a fairly accurate depiction of the relationship defined by Pachisi. Briefly, it features:

• A race against chance
• With limited options
• More difficulty in leaving and entering home.
• Safe zones, distant from home
• Comparative safety in numbers
• All pieces must complete the full circuit without getting caught
• Help from a partner

So:

• You and your partner know that I and my partner are going to try to get there first.
• If we can keep you from making it, we will. We'll send you back to try to keep you from getting ahead.
• We want to play safe whenever we can, for as long as possible. We do that by keeping away from you, staying where you can't get us, or having more pieces in an area than you. We also know that we can't stay safe forever. Sooner or later, we've got to take the risk and dash home.
• The winners are lucky.
• Whoever gets there first winds up where they started from.

This is the relationship defined by Pachisi, and conveyed by the structure of the game to the players. It is similar, in structure, to the race games like: TROUBLE, BACK-UP THREE, and BACKGAMMON.

It parallels other kinds of relationships than those classically defined as games. For example: You want to buy a house. There are other people who also want that house. You go to the realtor, and he tells you the price. If you buy at that price, you've got the house, but you might have spent too much. If you bargain, the realtor might sell to someone else.

The game becomes a race. You win if you get there first with the best offer. Every offer you make that the realtor is willing to consider provides a temporary reassurance. Obviously, there are more elements to the house-buying game than there are in the structure of Pachisi. Time, resources and bargaining are factors which are not embedded in the Pachisi structure. But these are elaborations of the game. The winner is still lucky, vulnerable to be sent back whenever his offer is met or exceeded, and engaged in a race.

Just for the fun of stretching a point, imagine the search for truth as a kind of Pachisi game. Home is the place of enlightenment. To reach home, you must gain experiences which will provide you with wisdom. You discover various gurus: children, parents, friends, teachers. These are the safe zones. You feel that these are your private gurus.

At certain points along your path, you get yourself together. If someone comes along who is more together than you, you might get sent back home. Getting sent back does not provide enlightenment for you. You must make it yourself. You want to become one of the enlightened as soon as possible, so you are, in fact, engaged in a race. Whether or not you discover the right experiences seems arbitrary to you, determined by the chance of being there at the right time.

Of course, what I described is only one relationship to search for truth. But it does, rather comprehensively² well, at least, enjoyably² depict a structure. Obviously, if someone were designing a Truth game based on Pachisi, that simulation game designer would have to believe in the relatedness of the model to the experience of the search.
 

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Tag, Like Pachisi, is model of interaction, even evolution

In the first Games Preserve Report, published last issue, we looked at Pachisi, the national game of India. If we were playing Pachisi on a block-wide board, using people instead of pieces, and terrain instead of dice, we'd be playing tag.

There'd be two teams. We'd all line up at the starting line. Then we'd run around the field and back. While we are doing that, if anyone can tag somebody from the other team, the tagged person has to cut across the field, touch the starting line, and start over again. The first team whose people are all back at the starting line wins.

Tag, like Pachisi, is a model of an interaction. Playing the game allows people to explore the parameters of that interaction. Tag can be reduced to very simple form:

1. Somebody's IT.

One person is singled out and assigned a goal different from everybody else's. This makes his actions so predictable that we call him IT, because in order to do what he's supposed to, he has to move like a madman² or a thing.

2. IT Doesn't Want to Be IT.

In fact, his goal is to make somebody else IT.

3. If IT Tags You (All it takes is contact)....

4. You're IT (Instantaneous reversal of roles).

An even earlier form of tag is Monster. This is played by very small children, almost as soon as they are old enough to waddle. Somebody is Monster² usually (it's type-cast). That person chases everybody else. Everybody else runs and runs until the Monster catches them and eats, or tickles, them up. Then, everybody runs away again, and the Monster does his thing.

This game usually ends with the exhaustion of the Monster.

As a simulation, it's fairly obvious. It describes a relationship between a fear or an authority and its victims. It is an irreversible relationship. It is enforced equally, by the pursued as well as the pursuer.

By the time children begin playing tag, they have perceived that the role of authority is reversible. It resides more in position that in person.

The players are aware of their relationship. "IT" selects whom he is going to pursue. It is looking for a challenge. In like manner, the other players are looking for the right challenge to offer IT. The game only works as long as the challenge exists. If IT never catches anyone, if the same person is always IT, the game is no fun.

The game simulates a slightly more complex relationship. It is a contest for position, even though the position is, in itself, untenable.

If we identify IT as a position of responsibility, we can label a social structure with which we are still familiar. Everyone wants to be given the responsibility, if they feel they are deserving of it. At the same time, no one really wants the responsibility, and, once having assumed IT, they wish to confer IT on someone else. (Another variation of the game would occur if IT wanted to keep his position and get rid of his responsibility.)

Thus the game of tag can easily be used as a basis for a simulation called RESPONSIBILITY. The designer would probably want to present more cues and, naturally, a means to objectify the relationship presented in the game.

There are many variations of tag, probably because it is such a dominant game in our society....as it is in most.

Let's start again, with a review of the structure and its variables, and then examples of some games which result from variations.

When you are playing tag, either somebody who is it wants to stay it or somebody who is it wants to become not it and when someone gets touched, something about what he wants to do gets changed.

When somebody who is IT wants to stay it, then everybody else is chasing him, because if they didn't, there'd be nothing to play with. IT might be given the power to decide when people can try to get him (RED LIGHT). He might even be able to tell people how they can move (CAPTAIN, MAY I?).

When somebody who is it wants to become not it, then everybody else is running away. It's usually called Tough Tag. IT might be given the power to decide when the chase is going to start (WHAT'S THE TIME MR. WOLF?). He might be able to decide whom he is going to chase (JOHNNY, MAY I CROSS THE RIVER?, DUCK DUCK GOOSE). IT might even be able to get people to help him (BRITISH BULLDOG).

On the other hand, IT might not have as much territory as everybody else (CIRCLE TAG), or people might have an easy escape (FREEZE TAG), or even substitute other players (SQUIRREL IN THE TREE). Sometimes there are people who are neither IT or NOT IT, but who are there just to make it harder for IT (CAT AND MOUSE). Sometimes, IT can try to touch people with an object instead of his hand (BALL TAG). Sometimes, IT has an object that he is trying to put somewhere (STEAL THE BACON, FOOTBALL).

When there's us and them: Sometimes, if one of us gets tagged, we lose the whole game (GUARD THE KING). Sometimes, when one of us gets tagged, we join the other team (LEMONADE, CROWS 'N CRANES). Sometimes, we and they both have the power of tagging, and if we get tagged by the wrong guys (them), we are out of the game until we get tagged by the right guys (PRISONER'S BASE, 5-10-RINGO).

If you don't know any of the games mentioned, you can find them in most good children's game anthologies. My point is that it's very useful for a simulation game designer to know the traditional games and the relationships they model.

The above games only begin to define some of the variables that can be played with. The result of each change is a new game, an expression of another aspect of the tag relationship.

Dodgeball is also a variation of tag. It can easily be seen in the game of BALL TAG. One person is still trying to reach another. Instead of touching he tries to hit the other with a ball.
 
 

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I'd like to explore some of the things that can be varied within that one particular variation of tag, dodgeball. First of all, there are at least two roles: shooter, and target. The shooter wants to hit the target, and the target wants to avoid getting hit. This is another familiar social structure.

Second, there is a separation between the areas which belong to the shooter and those of the target. The size of the areas, the number of players in each role, the object thrown, the goal of the shooter, or target, what happens as a result of success or failure² these are all variables which affect the game, though we are still playing dodgeball.

Size of Areas: The less room for the target, the easier it is for the shooter.

Success: The smaller the target, the more difficult to hit. The longer a player is in the role of target, the greater are his chances of being hit. What if the target catches the ball?

Results of Success: The target may be out of the game if hit, he may exchange roles with the shooter, or he may be assigned to a different area. The same applies to the shooter.

The same kinds of variations can be explored with any game. If we take all the possible permutations and combinations of just those elements described in this article, we arrive at an astronomical number of games. Since each game is a model of a relationship, we have an incredibly huge vocabulary with which to work.

The problem is definitely not in the lack of models. It resides in our familiarity with them. We know them so well, we don't even think of them. We design a game, and start from scratch. If we are really to develop the art of gaming, we must also take into account the science. We have experiences and data enough to allow us to build on each other's knowledge, to augment and perfect the instruments of the trade.

The relationship described by dodgeball is, again, familiar to us. First, let's define which way we're playing it.

There are two teams. The INS are the targets, and they're inside a large circle. The OUTS are the shooters. They're outside the circle. There's only one ball. When an OUT hits an IN, that IN is out of the game.

The last IN has to stay an IN for ten more throws. If he manages that, then he gets to decide what the next game will be² usually dodgeball again. The players who were out of the game now become OUTS, and the game begins again.

There are transitions in the relationship of dodgeball as the game is played. There are fewer INS as the game progresses. People who are hit become observers² they can't play anymore. The fewer the INS, the greater the challenge to everyone. In tag. the relationship is intensified by the will of the players. In dodgeball, the intensity of the challenge is increased by the structure of the game.

Dodgeball can be seen as a model for the process of selection. Let's take a theme, Evolution, and play dodgeball with it.

First of all, the process of evolution involves adaptation and transmission. Life takes on varying forms. Those forms succeed to the degree to which they are successfully able to adapt to their environment.

Secondly, according to theory as I understand it, the environment itself is a blind force, a giant random generator.

The OUTS have their eyes closed (they are the blind forces of nature). The INS may run around until they are told to freeze by one of the OUTS. While the OUT then counts to a millennium (ten will do), the INS may move anything but their feet. Then, the OUT throws. Now, the INS may move, but they must keep their bodies in the same position until the next freeze.
 
 

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A board game structure, related to dodgeball, is BATTLESHIP. I'll continue with that game in the next report.
 

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BATTLESHIP IS A SURVIVAL GAME, WITH TRANSFER POSSIBLE TO FARMING

BATTLESHIP is, in its earliest form, a paper-and-pencil game. Each player has two grids, drawn 10 squares to a side, numbered along the X-axis from 1 to 10 and lettered along the Y-axis from A to J.

Usually, each of the two players has five or six ships. On one grid, a player marks off the position of his own ships. Some of the ships are two squares in length, some three, and some four. A completed grid might look like this:

The number of ships, their size and the size of the grid can all be varied according to mutual agreement. On the grid shown here, there are ships on B 6-9, D 3-5, 7 e-f, I 9-10. The longest ships are aircraft carriers, the shorter battleships and destroyers.

After the other player has called out the coordinates of his shots, you have to report what he has hit. "Two hits on the battleship, one on a destroyer," for example. He has kept track of his shots by putting a "O" in each of the chosen squares if it is a miss, and an X if it is a hit.
 
 

There are many variations of this game, and we shall pursue some in the course of this article. One variation calls for giving each player as many shots per turn as there are cells in his largest unsunk ship. Thus, one player may call as many as five shots before the other gets his turn, and a player will try to sink the other person's largest ship first.

If you're interested in purchasing this game, you might want to consider 3M's paper-and-pencil version. It's called NAVAL BATTLE and is presented as a pad of fifty sheets, each of which depicts an "attack grid" and "deployment grid". Milton Bradley also publishes a pegboard version, called BATTLESHIP, which is more expensive, but reusable.

No matter what variation you're playing, the objective remains the same: You're trying to get the other guy before he can get you. It's a familiar theme. But what is most significant about this particular model is that neither of you can see the other.

The structure of the BATTLESHIP relationship, therefore, is as follows:

• We don't know where the other person is hiding (his ships),
• We do know that wherever the other is hiding, he can't move from that position,
• We discover the hiding places by guessing,

An incorrect guess doesn't tell us as much as a correct guess.

A correct guess doesn't give us absolute assurance that our next guess will be correct (because the ships can be placed either vertically or horizontally, and they can be anywhere from one to five units long), and the game is over when one of us has correctly guessed all of the other's hiding places.

The strategies in this game involve learning the best places to hide, and in placing shots (guesses) in the kind of pattern which will be most revealing. After you play the game a while, you will probably think that there is much more chance than strategy involved.

I would call BATTLESHIP a survival game. First of all, the objective is to get the other guy before he gets you. If you're completely discovered, you lose. Secondly, once you place yourself, you can't move. So there's no way to run. But survival depends to a great degree on chance. The relationship described is to a relatively random set of circumstances in which survival depends upon one person's ability to outguess the other.

Let's play with this model for a while. First of all, it appears to me that it would be a good model for an agricultural game. Since, when you begin the game, you must place your pieces in a permanent position, it's like planting crops² once they are planted, they can't be moved.

Suppose each player had a map of a continent. His objective would be to plant crops across his continent in places where he thinks they would be most likely to flourish. The players act on each other as forces of nature. For the sake of this particular game, let's limit the forces to rain. Each player would have a total of 400 inches of rain to deluge the other with. The map of the continent is sectioned off in states. Let's say there are a total of 60 states on our fictional continent.

Because of the different areas or different kinds of crops, let's limit the crops to corn. Each player plants corn in any of the states on his map. He can have a total of ten corn crops. Any corn crop that receives more than 30 inches of rain is flooded out.

If we want to get fancier with this game, we can include different kinds of crops with different rainfall needs. We can further stipulate that if a state is hit by a drought (the opposing player assigns no rain at all to it), then the crop there fails. Thus not only would you try to deluge certain areas, but you also could win by avoiding other areas. Stipulations would have to be made requiring certain amounts of rain to be distributed.

Suppose, however, that you feel that the model is not quite accurate. Though it does describe some of the considerations of concern to the Department of Agriculture, the relationship of mutual antagonism between the players is not desirable. Then you could make the game into a team game, in which the members of the team plant crops and then throw dice to see what area gets hit with how much rainfall. Because the interaction is primarily chance, the model of the game remains intact, even though no one is personifying the antagonist.

The BATTLESHIP model is especially well suited to a computer. A "computer-like" game called THE PLANET MANAGEMENT GAME, published by Houghton-Mifflin, uses a series of punch cards. In this game, players are given a series of projects in which they can invest a certain amount of money. After they make their decisions on which projects to invest in, they learn the results of their decisions on the economics and environment of the planet by selecting the appropriate punch cards and lining them up to reveal the effects. Though there are many issues to discuss, the game is still a guessing game.

The model I'd like to explore with you, in the next issue, is TIC-TAC-TOE. This is a radical departure from PACHISI, TAG and BATTLESHIP because it involves a purely strategic relationship. Instead of describing what this game model can simulate, I'd like to focus on the mechanics of the game, on the distinction between rules which are announced and rules which are followed. As this series continues, I'd like to delve into the gaming experience in terms of its psychological as well as cognitive domains.
 

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CONVERSATION WITH CARDS

Four players are sitting around a table. They each have a hand of 13 cards, which they have adeptly arranged in numerical sequence. The first player places one card, face down, on the table, eyes the group mysteriously, and announces "One ace."

The next player casually mutters "three twos" and places three cards, face down, over the ace. The third player, with an air of profound self-confidence, places one card, face down, on top of the pile, and states "one three." The second player sighs.

The fourth player, with a gleeful air of even more profound self-confidence, turns to the previous player, and says "I Doubt You!" upon which he turns over the top card of the pile, revealing for all to see, the telltale Jack.

As the third player shamedly picks up all the cards in the pile and arranges them into his hand, the fourth, with Sherlock Holmesian clarity, says "You see, my friend, I had all four threes."

They are playing a children's card game called I Doubt You. The game is played with anywhere from three to seven players, and the object is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. One's ability to succeed depends solely on luck and deception, for when it is one's turn, one must put down something, and that something must be at least one of the cards next in sequence to the card previously played.

The subterfuge involved in playing this game may not necessarily train someone to be a master criminal. Rather it allows players to explore a very particular social phenomenon which arises when it becomes necessary to avoid detection. It is played under an ideal condition in which everyone knows that, from time to time, in order to keep the basic rule of the game, someone must break another rule.

There are many social experiences in which a similar conflict of rules is expressed. For example, in the bartering system, both the salesman and the customer know that each participant will be prone to some kind of misrepresentation, and that there is a penalty for being discovered. The misrepresentation is itself sanctioned by the system but, on the other hand, the system also demands that the misrepresentation remain undeclared.

There is still another fold in the complexity of the I Doubt You relationship. Though a player is penalized for having been discovered, that player, by virtue of then having more cards in his hand, has more evidence to determine when someone else is making a false claim.

I wonder if this is in any way related to the idea that it takes a thief to catch a thief? It is intriguing as a dynamic study of the power and consequences of being the convict: the more you get caught the more chance you have to catch others, and yet the closer to ultimate failure you yourself are. In terms of the game itself, the increased power of the penalized provides continual involvement for all players.

In poker, the penalized (the loser) is supposed to suffer a loss of power. In order to make this obvious, the game is made "interesting" with a little betting.

Five-card draw poker evolves a rather intriguing analogy. At the beginning of this voyage into fate, each player must "buy in" or "ante." Thus the ship leaves the shore. A hand of five cards is dealt. Now, each captain must decide his initial course. He takes stock of his provisions. He must discover the most favorable wind.

Which arrangement of his cards will be the most profitable? Which has the greatest potential? And, when he makes his decision, his very commitment to it is challenged. He must bet on his powers. He must bet on his ability to discover even greater power across an uncharted sea.

But even that is not enough. Others may increase the bet. Others may be forcing him to see that they may have greater chance than he to succeed. Should he go back to shore before the distance is too great and the investment too heavy? Dare he raise even another sail?

At last the challenge is agreed upon. Those who have already met their fate, return to a poorer shore. The others, the wise and the over-confident, plunge forward. They trade whatever they feel they must risk to gain the riches of the new land. And now, the dream is almost realized, the course home already foretold.

And now they must challenge each other's victories. There is no more wind. The sea is behind us. Now, let us determine who has the greatest faith in his success.

We bid again. We bid to convince. We underestimate for a while, engage in small comparisons. But then, suddenly, we are dared to the showdown. It has become a duel of confidence between two players. The others have given up all claim. And then, when the bid is finally agreed upon, when the last volley has been fired, the merchandise, the fact of power, the deepest wound, is once and for all revealed. And to the victor belongs the spoils.

Everything the victor has risked is returned to him, along with everything everybody else has risked. Thus the size of the victory is directly contingent upon the amount each player can get the others to risk. What is recovered on the shores of the metaphor is not the riches of a new land, but the penalties exacted of those who are less fortunate, of the meek and of the foolhardy.

Poker is the archetypical confidence game. It is a contest of claims, a battle of bravado, a showdown between the rich and the clever. The opportunity for deception is augmented by the use of symbolic money² those little colored chips which breathe an air of playful innocence, until they are cashed in.

On the other hand, we have that most famous and painfully enduring of children's showdown games, War.

The cards are divided equally among the players, and placed, face down in a pile, in front of each player. Then, simultaneously, each player reveals the card on top of his pile. The player with the highest card wins the other cards.

Thus, the players are involved with a continuous showdown. No one is trying to claim or convince. The comparison is immediate and absolute. Unless, of course, there is a war.

A war occurs when two or more players have the same card, unless someone else has a higher card. When the war begins, each of the warriors places three more cards, face down, next to the original card. A fourth card is turned face up. The player with the highest new card wins all the cards played during the war.

During the war, the three cards invested are unknown. The players can't tell how much they've risked until the final showdown. What if all three cards are aces? Only after the war can the players determine what they've won or lost.

Thus the simple comparisons of power that occur as the players reveal their top cards are not considered wars. They're skirmishes, chance encounters which are resolved almost as soon as they are revealed. The real wars occur when the powers are equal; when other powers, regardless of their strength, are blindly risked; when the ultimate confrontation is delayed.

Oddly enough, this principle of confrontation is found in many adult war simulations. A battle in a game like Diplomacy is the result of a coincidence of equal powers vying for the same position. Though the format is different, the expression of conflict remains the same.

Two other children's card games in which equality results in confrontation are Steal the Old Man's Bundle and Crazy Eights.

In Steal the Old Man's Bundle, each player is dealt four cards. Four more cards are dealt, face up, to the center of the table. Each player scans his cards, and if any of the table cards are of the same rank as any of the table cards, the player displays the match, and takes the corresponding card from the table, leaving the pair, face-up, beside him.

If a player has no match, he discards any card, face-up, on the table. If a player can make another match, he places the pair on top of the face-up cards beside him. Thus, each player creates a bundle of cards. If any of his opponents has a card which matches the card that is on the top of a bundle, that player shows the matching card and takes the entire bundle. When a hand is exhausted, four more cards are dealt each player.

Since two cards are already used to create the top pair in the bundle, the chances of losing one's bundle are slightly less. Thus, it would seem that a player who has been able to gather four cards of the same rank onto the top of his bundle is secure from attack. This is true, however, only as long as that player doesn't add any more cards to his pile. And, if no more cards are added, unless the player already has a large bundle, he can't win the game.

So, in order to win, you have to risk all your holdings. In this game, we delight in the insecurity of wealth.

In Crazy Eights, instead of trying to amass power or fortune, you're trying to get rid of your holdings. When two people are playing, each is given seven cards (or five cards, if more than two are playing). The rest of the deck is placed in a pile, face down. The first card is turned over, and placed beside the deck.

A card may be played from the hand if it is of the same suit or rank as the revealed card, or if the card is an eight. An eight is a wild card, and the one who plays that card declares the next suit that can be played. The game continues. If it happens that someone doesn't have a playable card, he must draw from the deck until he gets something he can play.

Since there are only four suits, an eight or a card of the same rank (and hence, different suit) has the greatest effect on the opponent's ability to play. Thus, the strategy becomes to discover the suit which the opponent will have the most difficulty following. At the same time, however, the player must remember to protect himself with an eight or with holdings in other suits, or he will never be able to put his master plan into effect.

The cards have two functions: They serve as vehicles for getting closer to the goal, and obstacles for preventing others from achieving their goals. At the same time, the cards each have two meanings: suit, which extends the flight, and rank, which changes direction. And then there are those mysterious forces from another dimension, the crazy eights.

Crazy Eights is a race game. In order to win, you do not necessarily have to prevent others from getting there. All you have to do is be sure you get there first. You win by outfoxing, outguessing, and outlucking.

You try to prepare yourself for any exigency. You are Talleyrand, ready to move in any direction which will allow you to remain in the race. You are Napoleon astride a crazy eight, armed with a deadly string of clubs, preparing to penetrate the frozen heartland of Russia.

Your ace of clubs is met by an ace of hearts. You are forced to take on more and more. There is no escape. By the time you are able to meet the challenge with a heart of your own, you are already too burdened to flee.

You are Tarzan, and in your hand you have the diamond scepter of a fierce king. Can you return it before you are detected? You are a kid, playing a game of Crazy Eights. Are you having fun?

There are hundreds of card games. I am always amazed every time I pick up a deck of cards to realize how many relationships I can explore with such a simple tool.

In the next article in this series, I thought we might look at a game of rummy, a couple of solitaires, and then do a little speculation on the medium of cards by looking at a totally different kind of deck.
 

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SOLITAIRE: COMFORT, POPCORN AND FRIENDSHIP?
 
 

I never played solitaire until a couple of years ago. Somehow I have always thought of the game as being pointless, mindless, and generally dumb. The vision I had of a solitaire player was that of someone who couldn't think and wanted to make time disappear.

Then I met a solitaire-playing friend. I found books (including a good one, published by the US Playing Card Company in Cincinnati) and became at least academically intrigued by the fact that, for a dumb game, it certainly had a way of proliferating.

Then, when I discovered that the game was called "Patience" in England, a whole new view of the purpose of it all became revealed unto me: solitaire is an exercise of patience.

That particular virtuous view of the game eventually failed me, too. But by that time I was playing solitaire so frequently that I couldn't care less how I managed to justify it. I was intrigued, comfortably, and almost mindlessly, and definitely pointlessly.

Here I am, engaged in the attempt to construct order out of chaos. I have clearly defined rules and criteria for this order. I make choices. Each choice is made through careful weighing of probability and availability. Yet, each choice is more guess than decision. I really have no idea of what's going to come up next. I anticipate as best I can.

Though I know my choices are more arbitrary than they are skilled, I still find myself becoming desperate with blind hope. Ah, I say to my cardboard gods, if only I had a red three, how lovely, how joyous would I be. And then, ah, ah, if only a red two. Come on, red two. Please. It's all I ask or need or desire. How utterly, deliciously foolish, these prayers.

Let us assume that the demands of your intellect are too great and profound to grant you permission to play with the fates thus. There's a solitaire game that even you would enjoy.

It's called Gaps.

All the cards are laid out, face up, in four rows of thirteen. Everything is revealed to you. True, the initial order is random, but, in this game, you have ample meat for your judgments. The fate only changes through your manipulations. The problem is posed and the evidence is all before you.

The first thing you do is remove the aces, thereby leaving gaps, which are what the game is named for.

The object of the game is to get all cards in suit order, one suit per row, from ace to king.

The first decision to make is what row you want to be what suit. Some say the decision is arbitrary, others crucial. Follow your own light, and indicate your decision to yourself by placing the appropriate ace at the extreme left of each row.

In order to place a card in a gap, that card must be of the same suit and one higher than the card immediately to its left, or, of the same suit and one lower than the card immediately to its right. Thus, in the following position:

3 of clubs (gap) 8 of hearts

one could fill the gap with either a 4 of clubs (one higher and the same suit) or the 7 of hearts (one lower and the same suit).

Obviously, when you move a card to fill in a gap, you generally create another gap. Thus the dialog continueth.

Note of Caution: Nothing goes after a King (except, perhaps, the deluge). Thus, a gap to the right of a king is only half a gap, which, on the other hand, is better than none.

Eventually, you are likely to come to the realization that anything you can do is going to result in greater chaos. At that time, you are allowed another deal. The proverbial new deal is performed by gathering all the cards that are not in order, shuffling them together with the aces, laying them out in order in the spaces made by picking up the cards until you have again formed 4 rows of 13, removing the aces, placing them appropriately, and commencing continuing.

You are allowed a total of three deals.

Play the game a few times before you read the rest of this article, unless you don't like taking advice. . . .

Gaps is an extremely clear model of what happens as one blunders about with cause and effect. You want to get this from over here to over there. To get this from over here to there, you have to remove what is here. Which means that you want to get what is here over there and what is there somewhere else.

As you continue this pursuit you find yourself in the midst of such a lengthy, convoluted chain that you eventually discover that, in the process of getting that to there so that you can get there to that, you forgot why.

So you decide to put that there, even though you don't know why, and probably don't even want to be asked.

I found myself so fascinated by the game, by its life qualities, by my relationship to the problem it posed, that I was eventually led to see it in almost every kind of planning I try to put into effect. In the midst of cleaning up the kitchen, I found my internal dialog to be still another Gaps game.

Let's see, I would say to myself, I want to get the table cleared. In order to clear the table, I have to have a place to put the dishes. The sink is the logical place, but there are dishes already in the sink. So, I should wash them and put them in the drainer. But the drainer is full. So, I should put the dishes away.

Often, just keeping my appointment book together, or arranging for a loan, or trying to be economical in a supermarket, I catch myself smiling at the familiarity of the game.

One day, as I was sorting through my various aims and objectives in the grand game, it occurred to me that I might discover a slightly greater clarity were I to treat the process I was engaged in as if it were, in fact, a game of gaps. It worked, it was fun. And I'd like to share it with you in the hopes that it might lead you to other clarities.

I now call the game VALUES GAPS.

The first step in the game is to decide what cards to use. I took 16 scraps of paper and wrote on each something I valued. I chose sixteen for the sake of simplicity. I accepted that what I chose was somewhat random, and probably not easily classifiable, but I concluded that the randomness was part of the game.

My deck was composed of the following cards:
 

An extreme example of a random array, and yet, already intriguing!

My next step was to determine how I was going to make an order. I decided that my four rows would each represent a class of things I enjoyed, and that they would be arranged according to what I most frequently enjoy. Thus, though I enjoy smoking, I might enjoy it less frequently than I enjoy looking at faces.

My aces, therefore, will be those things which 1) I least frequently enjoy, and 2) appear to be of a distinct class.

I decided they would be Comfort, Silence, Freedom, and Faces. They are each of a clearly distinct kind of experience, and though I enjoy them, I find myself not generally aware that I am enjoying them even though I am experiencing them.

Pulling these aces out and placing them arbitrarily in front of each row gave me the following array:
 

I have two spaces to the right of Sex, and two to the right of Thinking. I enjoy Playing and Laughing more often than Thinking. I enjoy Laughing more often than Playing. Playing, Laughing, and Thinking all seem to belong to the same suit, so I will move Playing next to Thinking and bring Laughing next to Playing.
 

Sex and Love seem at first to be closely related. I would like to put Love next to Sex because it seems to me that I enjoy love, when I am loving, more often than I enjoy sex when I am sexing.

As I think more carefully, however, I begin to think that the two cards are not in the same suit. For some reason it seems to me that Sex belongs in the same suit as Popcorn. What a bizarre set of circumstances!

I'm going to experiment. I find that this line of thinking isn't very helpful. Since it seems to me that Popcorn, Sex, and Smoking all belong to the same suit. I'll play around with those cards a while.

Of the three, Sex is definitely an honor card (King or Queen, depending on one's perspective). I think I'll move Smoking next to Popcorn since I do enjoy smoking more often than I enjoy popcorn. Then, I'll put Sex on the end. This will open up Faces (heh, heh).
 

This array leaves me with only the one opening next to Faces. I have to find something that belongs there logically.

As I scan the cards, the only ones I can easily associate with Faces seem to be Talking and Friendship. There is a clear theme there, and I think Love might also belong to this suit. In fact, it makes a lovely progression. Observe:
 

Of the remaining cards, I can't find one that seems to fit between Freedom and Thinking, so I'll move Thinking a space to the left, and I can move Playing next to that and Laughing next to Playing.

I've actually only the top two rows left to organize. It seems to me that Chess and Solitaire should be together. Both seem to be related to Silence and Listening. And I do more often notice my enjoyment of Chess than my enjoyment of Listening. So, I'll move Chess to the right of Listening, Solitaire to the right of Chess. Then I'll move them each one space to the left.
 

Now, after moving Popcorn, Smoking and Sex each one space left, the gaps are all filled. The game is over. But, as I look at this arrangement, I'm still not satisfied. The order is right, but I'm not sure the classification is clear.

So I'll look for cards which I'm sure are in the right place. I find that I have to make a variation, because two of the cards I thought were aces turned out not to be. I'll pick up all the cards in the first two rows and shuffle them together with Freedom and Faces. Then I'll be ready to start the next round.
 

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Chance & Odds: Accounting for nature and other more or less wild things

As much as I hate to admit it, there are things beyond my control - the weather , for example. Earthquakes, forest fires, volcanic eruptions, solar eclipses and sunsets, for more examples.

Early in the origin of our species we made rather strong attempts to claim responsibility for all these bizarre phenomena. We sang, danced and sacrificed various virgins in the hopes that somehow our rites would right whatever wrongs we had wrung.

Our assumption of responsibility resulted in a profound sense of helplessness and guild. We created professionals to take the blame for us but, eventually, most of our magicians failed to bear the burden, and so we did away with them.

Thus, we gave birth to the notion of nature. The nature notion really did nothing to prevent the moon from phasing, but it did effectively free us from our sense of guilt about it all, and allowed us to evolve a slightly less passionate view of the whole thing.

We decided that, since we weren't able to do anything about the weather, we could at least make allowances for it. Somewhere in our dark past a light fell on the face of an early settler, who said, "We'd get warmer if we stopped dancing and invented a good stove." Thus, we learned to honor our opponent and to evolve a bit more equal relationship, which we later called science. We learned to predict and prepare.

It is my currently unfounded belief that the key to the establishment of civilization was the invention of the coin - not because it provided for the establishment of an alternative to barter, but because it could be flipped. This gave birth to far more than mere flippancy. It allowed us to play with the very forces that had once controlled us. We had, at long last, an effective way of symbolizing nature.

This naturally gave rise to the development of the art of gambling. Through gambling we exercised out ability to take risks. We could invest our very lives, if we so wished, in a mere prediction. Thus, we could simulate and ritualize our relationship to nature. We could play with the very thing that had once driven us to despair.

I see the new priests of our economy, solemnly sitting around the fire, tossing coins. I see the coins spinning in the flickering light like planets in their courses. I see the act of flippage as a recapitulation of arbitrary fortune, a vision of the dance between life and death, a vivid portrayal of man's destiny being given over to the winds of the unknowable.

This act was too important to be symbolized by coins. They had other , more mundane functions. Something more was needed, something belonging solely to the realm of play. And thus we created dice.

Dice. Six-sided. No longer divided into mere yes and no, life or death, heads or tails. But now able to symbolize a whole scale of significance. And we inscribed the dice with numbers in such a way so that the opposite sides always added to seven, perhaps indicating, even in this profound statement of our new conception of the irrational nature of nature, the still primitive faith in consistency.

Playing with two dice led to a higher step yet. The nature (yes, nature) of two dice is such that it tends to speak in certain combinations more frequently than others. This, of course, embodies the concept of probability, thus representing still another advance in our relationship to nature. The more we know the dice, the more accurately we are able to predict how they may fall.

The nature of evolution is such that it does not follow a single path The natural strategy is the proliferation of successful alternatives. Thus, we develop lots, spinners, cards, and the famous teetotum.

Each device focuses on a particular aspect of the relationship between man and nature, each is an embodiment of yet another element.

The teetotum, which is now almost extinct, is a four (or more) sided top. It performs the same function as does a die, except that it takes a bit longer to fall to rest. It must have been created by people who could take the time to be fascinated. We spin the top. We watch it begin to wobble. We shudder in anticipation, waiting for the universe to make up its mind.

As our technology increased, we created the spinner, upon which we could inscribe all sorts of arcane incantations. We were no longer confined by equality. We could divide the spinner into any proportions we wished, inscribing different probabilities to different possibilities.

The ultimate actualization of the spirit of the teetotum was the roulette wheel. The roulette wheel, with its proliferation of possibilities, with its long, agonizing spin, with the little steel ball which actually seals our fate before the wheel has slowed enough to allow us to discover what has already been decided - the roulette wheel is ultimate. After the lightning has struck, we must still wait until the storm has passed before we can determine our losses.

The casting of lots symbolizes yet another relationship between man and nature. Here we have a portrayal of the phenomenon of being singled out. In the earliest form of this device, the lots were bones, all but one similar. We drew blindly from the venerated skull. In trembling fingers, we grasped the bone which would indicate who could take comfort in sameness and who would bear the burden of responsibility. And then, when the last had been withdrawn, we compared.

Thus, we metaphorized the finger of fate herself: who shall live and who shall perish. Lots were a vivid portrayal of the arbitrariness by which one is chosen over others to be exalted or to be eliminated. Through lots, we evolved a paradigm of what we later called natural selection. And from the concept of lots we emerged into the glories of the democratic process and bingo.

Lots have been refined to a deck of cards which can be shuffled, and so constantly randomized. In order to assure that each player faces the same degree of chance, each card can be returned to the deck after it has been read and acted upon. Though the vision embodied in this device seems somewhat despairing, it is nonetheless accurate. For all of our science, we still must face the unpredictable.

The modern deck of playing cards is perhaps the most complex of all of our pseudonatural creations. It imposes an order onto the chaos. There are three overlapping dimensions: color, suit and number. We thereby embody the notions of kind and degree. Our universe has taken on aspects of rationality. Nature, though ultimately beyond control, once again has shape.

Probably even before we were able to admit to the concept of nature, we had inklings of yet another manifestation of the arbitrary. As we learned of events which were beyond our control, we must have also learned that there were aspects of our relationship to each other that were also, equally beyond our control. This phenomenon is what we eventually called "human nature".

Once we discovered that we do, indeed, fool each other; that we cannot completely predict how we will affect each other; that, in fact, we can fool ourselves as easily as each other - then gaming became one of our most pervasive social art forms. We evolved the shell game, we celebrated the human carnival, and man created poker.

We created boards with multiple paths. We made pieces and gave each player several so that even more choice (as to which to move) was available. And then, just as we insist on playing with the predictability of natural nature, we set out developing strategies which would allow us to predict human nature.

We can portray nature through a variety of media, each medium embodying a particular relationship between man and the arbitrary. Coins, dice, spinners, tops, sticks, wheels, shells, cards - each portraying a concept of reality, significant and whole, and yet each different.

My thesis is that a game designer needs to know this tools as well as the reality he wishes to portray. When I created my simulation of the county jail system, I looked at each interaction in terms of the degree of arbitrariness with which it was conducted. I looked at what was predictable and what was not, what presented options and what created restrictions. The success of the game, I believe, lay in the accuracy with which I chose its devices.

There are games which use several chance devices. MONOPOLY uses both dice and cards. In the face of such arbitrariness, players cannot predict with total success, but they can try to prepare. The arbitrariness of human nature is made manifest by the availability of money and property.

With the technology available to us , we are able to make chance devices which are almost infinite in scope. We can construct completely unpredictable systems (I have recently discovered that this can be accomplished by my car as well as by a computer), and then make them almost as predictable as we wish. The question is not of efficiency of the art, but of the accuracy and integrity with which we use it.

S/G/N'S OWN DEFINITIONS

LOT - an object used as a counter in determining a question by chance; to draw lots - the use of lots as a means of deciding something by chance, as by "drawing straws."

SPINNER - Everyone knows what a spinner is.

CARDS- Everyone knows what cards are.

TEETOTUM - No one knows what a teetotum is. But if you made a top with flat planes around the outside, so that when it fell over it would come to rest on one randomly, you could put symbols on each plane and spin the top to determine game action. Before spinning the first time, it is desirable to decide whether the symbol exposed at the other side is to be counted. This kind of randomizing device is much loved by theoreticians because the top can be made (theoretically) to produce just about any odds. It could have just about any number of sides, whereas it is difficult to turn out dice with anything but six. (Anyone starting a teetotum factory, especially if the teetotums are to have 9 or 13 faces, should hire only teetotalers.) Should you look up teetotum in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, you will find a much less informative explanation than this, although the Merriam-Webster one excels in succinctness.
 
 

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THE BELT: REPRESENTING REAL POWER

Twenty children on a street in the city. It is Spring, just after dinner. Suddenly, something begins pulling them together. They cluster near a wide stoop. There is a cry of "Not It!" One body is released: a boy, about ten. He has a belt in his hand. He is running back and forth across the street; stopping every so often - near steps, a truck, an abandoned car, an apartment door. He circles around the group. I can hear some giggles, some "hurry-ups." The boy is now walking on tiptoe towards the group. His hands are empty. I realize why the group hasn't reacted to him yet - their eyes are closed. He is right next to them now. "Hot Bread and Butter," he says, "come and get your supper."

The children scatter like an exploded bb atom, screaming . Some stay close to each other. Others gallop into the frontier, probing the darkest secrets of the street. A scream. Someone has found the belt and is hitting everybody who dares be near. Now she is rushing around, twirling the belt over her head like a lariat. Everyone is running back, trying to touch base before getting beaten. The last one has been herded into the cowering mass. Silence. Eyes closed. Darkness. She hides the belt.

In school, I asked a group of children if they wanted to play "Hot Bread and Butter." The response was enthusiastic and unanimous. I brought out a Boffer, which is part of a set of plastic foam swords. There were a few mutters of disapproval. I asked what was wrong and one of the boys told me that I was supposed to use a belt. In my best voice of adult wisdom, I expounded on the Dangers of Belts. I then rolled up a section of newspaper. More mutters.

"All right," I said, we'll try a belt. But first, whoever doesn't want to play, whoever realizes how dangerous a belt can be, move up to the Safe Area." No one moved. "You all understand what I mean," I said. "It's really O.K. to watch a game if you want. A belt can really hurt. I'll just wait a little longer to see if anyone wants to change his mind." I waited. "I'll go out of the room and come back." I went and come back. No one had moved. And then we played a game - with the belt.

This was the first and clearest lesson I learned about the nature of social games as simulations. I realized the belt was crucial to the game - not because of tradition, but because of the real power it represented. The possibility, the potential for danger had to be there for the game to be fun.

I was impressed, first of all, by the equilibrium of the game, the justice of the mechanisms for conferring power: whoever was brave enough to stray away from the base and lucky enough to find the belt became the master of the game and the next hider. Whoever wished to be cautious could stay as close to the base as necessary. Some children never got hit. They also never got the belt.

"Hot Bread and Butter," among other things, represents an idea of power. To gain power, you must 1) take certain risks, and 2) be lucky. To use your power effectively, you must not use it too strongly. Only on one occasion did I see a child hit others too hard. The next child who found the belt went after the tyrant - and for the rest of the game the offender never wandered more than ten feet from the base. Alliances didn't seem to be of much help. The overcautious don't have much fun. And, finally, when there are no more worlds to conquer, you set the sword in the stone and watch.

But what does the game simulate? I suppose, without much interpretation, we could point out parallel methods for the acquisition and transference of power in various tribal societies and in certain industries.

But "Hot Bread and Butter" is not played to simulate or gain insight into other cultures. It is played because 1) it is fun, and 2) because it simulates a social theme which is becoming evident to the society of children who play it.

I have learned to see games as social fantasies. They are, to me, recurrent dreams in which certain themes are being toyed with - investigated and manipulated for the sake of some future reintegration into a world view. They are reconstructions of relationships - simulations - which are guided by individual players, instituted by the groups in which they are played or abstracted by the traditions of generations of children.

In "Hot Bread and Butter" you gain power through risk and luck - not through direct confrontation - but only once the power has already been abdicated. As a child grows towards adulthood, he is approaching the time in which adult power is left to him - if he can take it. It is the opportunity that he must seize, not the person that he must confront. The power of the adult cannot be taken from an adult, it must be discovered within the person of the child.

Most children who play "Hot Bread and Butter" are between the ages of nine and fourteen. When I tried to play it with younger children, the equilibrium was lost. Many children didn't leave the base. Those who found the belt either hit too hard or spent the round trying to keep the belt for themselves. I had to teach the game I had to control. I had a lousy time, and so did most of the children. "Hide and Seek" however, which is related in structure to "Hot Bread and Butter." was a total success.

In other words, when children chose to play a particular game - when they establish a contract for what they are going to play with - they do so because the game is related to other experiences, because it provides them with a platform upon which they can create and explore a model which helps them define their relationship to other experiences, experiences which they are beginning to perceive as themes in their daily lives. They call this pursuit "Fun."

They play with toys because toys are models in which they can explore their relationships to their physical environment. They play with games because games are the only vehicle they have available to them in which they can explore their relationships to the social environment.

When the problem of the game is solved, when you know what to do to win, the social fantasy is ended and the game is no longer fun. Fun is present when the possibility of win is as great as the possibility of loss; when the challenge is strongest; when opportunities to learn are widest. When a game is won, it is over. Winning and fun are not always congruent. When a game is won repeatedly, it is abandoned.

But what amazed me the most about working with children and games was that somehow problems were being solved. Most of the groups I worked with could be characterized as follows: The first session was always choked with tension. Children couldn't decide on a game to play. If someone bumped into someone else, there was a fight. The gentlest game I could come up with, even "Simon Says," ended in chaos, pain and tears for all of us. Only if I insisted on maintaining control at every moment of the session - if I never allowed a game to develop for more than a few minutes - was there any sense of joy. Eight sessions later, in almost every group I worked with, I was able to play along with the children. They made and reinforced the controls. Fighting was the result of only the most dire breach of trusts. Accidents were treated as accidents and not as invitations to confrontation.

And this transformation occurred no matter what games were played. There was no such thing as a better game; there appeared no logical scope and sequence for violence didn't need to be explored again.
 

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A TAXONOMY OF BOARD AND TABLE GAMES

reprinted from Outlook # 14

In board and table games such as checkers, marbles, and cards, the players focus more on the interaction of pieces than on each other. Such games differ from might be called "social" games such as hide-and-seek, tag, and dodge-ball. The board and table games require an indirect, or symbolic, interaction between the players. While in a social game the state of the game is indicated by the relationship among the players, in board or table games it is recorded by the position of pieces. These could be called "symbolic" games.

I have selected twenty board and table games for analysis, each of which is unique in some way and is representative of a class of symbolic games. Marbles, for example, has at least fifty variations; one of these, pool, has at least another ten. All the marble variants involve shooting an object toward a goal - a hole or another object. The game of tops is related to marbles in that two or more tops interact, while it differs in that the goal is duration rather than place.

In order to classify relationships between games I have selected for analysis three dimensions of the structure of games. These are reward, interaction of players, and distribution of power.

Reward

The evidence of success or failure that players get from the interaction of pieces varies from constant in some games to eventual in others. In some games the player is not sure whether he or she has won or lost until the last, or next to the last, move. In other games the players have continuous evidence about winning or losing.

For example, in jacks, every time you throw the ball and pick up "onesies" or "twosies" you demonstrate to the other player your success an at the same time determine his or her challenge: reward is continuous. In dominoes you have evidence of success or failure as your hand becomes depleted -- with the possibility that you may not have the required domino and may be forced to pick and thus increase your hand. You are not positive that you've won or lost until most of the dominoes are played, but you have some evidence to allow you to think you might be winning or losing during certain periods of the game. The reward, therefore, can be called periodic.

In chess you may eventually win even though at a given moment you are down a few pieces. You aren’t sure of the outcome until the combination which leads to checkmate or draw is absolutely certain. The better player you are the earlier you know whether you’ve won or lost, but even in a game between masters the significance of a position is not certain until the final combination appears. Thus, in chess reward is eventual and certainty is delayed until the conclusion of the game.

The nature of reward also seems to be related to the nature of the goal. In jacks, where the reward is constant, the goal can easily be varied. Children graduate from a game which requires the performance of "sixies" to a game requiring "twelvsies" or "sixies" with handclaps. They redefine the game to make the goal always a bit more difficult to attain. Chess, with eventual reward, has a fixed goal. The only way to win is by checkmate and the rules are never adjusted to the capabilities of the players..

Here is how I would rate the twenty games on a five-point scale from constant to eventual reward:
 

The difference between adjacent columns in the taxonomy is rather fine but can easily be justified. For example, the reward in puzzles is neither constant nor periodic. In a picture puzzle every piece you can fit together brings you an intimation of success but if it takes you too long to find the appropriate piece you begin to think you have failed. Some puzzles, such as those with sliding pieces, take you through a maze of possible solutions in which the longer a path seems open the greater is your sense of success. Once you’ve reached the solution, however, you may feel compelled to start again and make certain that you know the solution.

In all puzzles success or failure is constantly hinted d at but, some puzzlers find satisfaction only when the puzzle is completed, In a sense, then, players as well as games might be located at various points along a continuum, depending on whether they feel constant, periodic, or eventual reward.

Interaction of Players

Solitaire is played alone! Though you and I may be playing simultaneously, each with his own deck of cards, my win or loss in no way affects yours. This is also true of puzzle-solving. In bingo and hangman, although two or more people may be involved in the same game, the players feel relatively isolated as they play. The roles of caller, or problem poser, are not exchanged until after a game.

In jacks, concentration, marbles, and similar games the players take turns within the game but it may happen that one player has several turns before the other has a chance to play.

In tic-tac-toe, checkers, and chess, alternation of turns is strict, while in tops and war both players play at the same time.

The twenty games can be ranked as follows on a five-point scale from no interaction through interaction at intervals to simultaneous play:

INTERACTION OF PLAYERS

Distribution of Power:

In games such as marbles we have the power to influence the other player’s success. If we shoot properly we make it easier for ourselves and harder for our opponent. In chutes and ladders, on the other hand, neither player has the power to influence the other -- all "power" resides in chance. In still other games, such as hangman, only one player, the problem poser, has the power to determine the challenge the other player must meet. (Though one player has the power, he also has the responsibility to answer questions properly: otherwise the game is considered unfair.)

Power can be rated on a five-point scale from bilateral (each player having the power to influence the other) through external, to unilateral (one player having all the power for the duration of the game). My rating of the twenty games is shown at the top of the next page.

POWER

The use of this three-fold taxonomy allows us to relate a game to other games. For example, dominoes is characterized as follows: reward is periodic, interaction falls between interval and simultaneous, and power is between bilateral and external. You can make the following three statements about dominoes: 1) you know fairly soon that you’re getting close to winning or losing although the tide may turn, leaving room for hope or doubt throughout the game;

2) you take turns, hoping that what your opponent does will help you succeed and that what you do will make him fail; 3) you know that while a mistake might cost you the game, the results are not totally within your control since a lot depends on luck.

The game of I doubt it is similar to dominoes except for the distribution of power. In I doubt it if you guess right or lie will you have a better chance of winning. You win or lose not because of luck but because of chances you take deliberately.

A final note on these two games is that in dominoes the strategy is recorded by the arrangement of pieces. The strategy in I doubt it is not recorded in pieces but takes place between the two players. Thus, I doubt it is, in part, a social game.

Conclusion

The suddenness with which children get caught up in a particular game can be baffling to onlookers. One day it is marbles and the next there are no marbles left in the world. One week Terry and Melanie play nothing but cards while the next everything except checkers is considered childish.

Children’s game-playing seems to follow a kind of spiral pattern in which the game that appears at the first turn reappears in modified form at the twentieth turn. The process of learning and playing games is one of exploring many kinds of relationships -- mathematical, linguistic, physical, and social. The experience of a game at the twentieth turn of the spiral will reflect the child’s development in his or her ability to understand and control these relationships and the game will have evolved to incorporate new complexities of physics, chance, strategy, and social discourse.
 

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OUTDOOR GAMES FOR PLAYFUL PEOPLE

The following are all traditional games, but include some very untraditional suggestions for making them more fun for the kids playing.
 

ACTIVE
 
 

Ball Tag

This is a free-for-all tag game. After the children have decided who’s IT, takes a ball (a large, playground ball) and tries to hit someone with it. The player who is hit becomes IT. (elements to vary: the ball (ping pong ball, balloon, bean bag, etc.). create a safe zone, when a player is hit, both that player and the one who hit him, become IT, until everyone is IT; give a time limit, define boundaries, start with several balls and several ITs.)
 
 

Stealing Sticks

The area to be played on is divided into two parts, with a clearly defined center line. Piles of 4 or 5 sticks are placed towards the center back of the two areas. A prison is marked off on each of the two sides. The object of the game is to capture the opponents’ sticks without being caught. As soon as a player crosses the center line, he may be caught by the other team and put into prison. If a player gets to the opponents’ sticks and secures one, he is safe to return home with it. A player can be freed from prison if one of his teammates touches his hand; he is freed to go back to his own side without being tagged. The team which has all the sticks and all its players out of prison wins. (vary the amount of sticks, try it with three or more teams, change the location of the prison to a more distant or more accessible place, eliminate prison altogether, thus, anybody tagged becomes part of the other team).
 
 

Catching the Dragon’s Tail

Team members form a line, each person holding on to the shoulders of the person in front of him. The head of the "drag" tries to catch the tail. All team members continue holding shoulders and may do whatever is in their power to keep the head from catching the tail. Once the head catches the tail, roles are reversed, the former head moving to a position behind the new head. (play this game with several teams at once, or have each team try to catch the tail of the other team, or make it into a tag game so that everyone not part of the dragon has to hop, or take baby steps, and anyone tagged by the head or the tail becomes part of the dragon).
 
 

Protecting Eggs

One player is the protector of the eggs. The other players are robbers. The protector has a pile of small stones or balls near his feet. The robbers try to steal the eggs from that pile. If the protector tags a robber with his hands or feet, they exchange roles. If the robbers succeed in stealing all the eggs, the protector serves again in the next play.
 
 

Bear Pit

The players form a circle with clasped hands. This is the bear pit. One player is the bear, and stands in the center of the circle. The bear tries to escape by breaking through clasped hands or by going under or leaping over them. If he escapes, all the players chase him and the person who catches him becomes the bear for the next game.

(have several bears, have the bear break in instead of out of the circle, and give the bear time to hide so that the players have to find him and trap him into a circle first.)
 
 

Insect Soccer

Three children stand back to back with their arms linked. Several insects are set up in this manner. A soccer ball is placed equidistant from the insects. A goal is set up at the other end of the playing area. First team to kick the ball through the goal, while remaining intact, is the winner.

(form soccer teams of five or two insects each, have two, four or five children in each insect, play like regular soccer, have an insect to defend the goal, have several goals, several balls, balloons, cage ball, etc.).
 
 

Flycasting

Team members hold on to a rope. The group stands in a small area known as the pond. The front player throws the end of the rope into the pond. Any player in the pond may grab the rope and try to jerk it away from the team. Once a player touches the rope, he is caught. Players in the pond may call for help. Any member of the group pulled out of the pond becomes part of the team. If any member of the team steps into the pond, all of the players in the pond who are holding on to the rope may let go. (make a very large pond or a very small one, start out with only one player as fisherman, have several players with several ropes).
 
 

Chieftan’s War

Each team picks a chief. The two chiefs meet in the center and choose a form of hand-to-hand combat (thumb wrestling, rooster wrestle, arm wrestling, etc.). Teams may also pick medicine men to harass the other team or encourage their own. The team whose chief has lost it chased and tagged by the other team. Those players now join that team. (encourage dramatization, make the combat into a race, have the winning team impose a penalty on the losing team, let each team have two chiefs.)
 
 

Line Pull Tug of War

A line is drawn down the middle of the playing area. There are two teams. With one team standing on either side of the line and with each player facing a man from the opposing team. A player grabs hold of his opponent facing him and tries to pull him across the line. Teammates may help a player. A player does not become part of the opposing tam until his whole body has been pulled over the line. He must then join the other team in trying to pull players across the line. He must then join the other team in trying to pull players across the line. The team that has the larger number of players at the end of a time period is the winner. (play it with no time period, the last person being given the honor of naming the next game, try it with a circle instead of a line, or with players on hands and knees).
 
 

Crows and Cranes

Two teams form lines facing each other. Both teams have their own goal lines a certain distance behind them. One person is the leader and decides which team is the crows and which the cranes. The leader then calls one of the team names. If he calls crows, the cranes chase the crows to the crows’ goal line. Any crow tagged by a crane becomes a member of the cranes’ team. Game continues until all the players are on one team.
 

Kick the Can

One person is IT. A home base is selected. To start the game, one person kicks the can. IT must retrieve the can, and, walking backwards, place it on the base. All the other players hide. As soon as IT has placed the can in the base, he goes out looking for other players. When he sees one, he calls " I spy ----- (person’s name)." That person must try to get to base before being tagged. What is especially annoying about this game, at least form IT's perspective, is that any of the untagged may, by sneaking back home and literally kicking the proverbial can, free everyone who has been tagged.
 
 

QUITER GAMES
 
 

Scavenger Hunt

Each team is given a list of objects to find. The first team to complete its list and return the objects to the leader wins. (play with several teams, with one team trying to beat the clock, try rhymed lists, lists by categories, lists with double meanings).
 
 

Grass Blade War

Each player selects one piece of grass. He loops a piece of grass through a loop held by another player. They have a tug of war, and the person whose blade breaks, loses. (make a mock tournament out of this, let kids make braids out of the grass for the contest, reverse the goal so that the player whose grass breaks wins).
 
 

Stalking

The player who is IT sits down and counts to 15, with eyes closed. Other players run and conceal themselves. Players try to get as close to IT as possible without being seen. At 15, IT opens his eyes and names any people he can see. These players must drop out of the game. The person who is IT closes his eyes again and counts to 14.

Again, he opens his eyes and names whoever he can see. IT continues counting to one number smaller each time. When IT has counted to one, all the other players still in the game reveal themselves. The player closest to IT becomes IT for the next game. (try playing in an open or wooded area, try having several ITs at the same time; let IT hide first, then let the players try to find him, hiding as close to IT as they dare).