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"I am still a victim of Chess. It has all the beauty of art and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position" (Marcel Duchamp)
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In an attempt to return IAGO to intended goal of promoting abstract games I am offering this challenge without compensation (No Prize) to the game designers both professional and hobbyist of this group. The challenge is to create a word game in the traditional sense of spelling or arranging words as part or all of a winning condition. The games then will be evaluated using the IAGO’s IAR system to determine which is the most abstract. Game quality on the other hand is a more subjective matter and will be left up to individuals. We can have them added to Board game Geek and do rating there for example. Here I would simply like the games listed with their IAR.
This will be an ongoing challenge without a deadline, if you would like to participate simply post information on the game you created including links to rules (preferably with illustrations).
Lets the games begin!
Dralius, I have consider word games out of scope for IAGO. There are multiple reasons for this. For one thing, it is language dependent (this causes pools of players to be smaller). Secondarily, it brings in multiple other skills besides strategic and tactical thinking. Third, unless you have something that is purely a combinatorial game theory game (word games usually aren't) the IAR is going to be beyond 3. Fourth, if you look at the acceptance criterion, word games are excluded from IAGO:
http://abstractgamers.org/wiki/acceptance-process
Also note here the genres:
http://abstractgamers.org/wiki/game-genres
The reason for this is to prevent definition creep from happening. Done wrong, then eventually you have the likes of Caylus and Carcassonne becoming part of IAGO. IAGO might as well be a mind sports association that also has duplicate bridge in it. In this, abstract strategy games get lost.
However, if you want to push the envelope on this, and see if perhaps you can create a word game for 3 or less, then this could be a test of that.
Please let me know how exactly you have strategic and tactical thinking in a word game.
As far as I go, I am not going to be part of it, and personally feel it pushes IAGO places it shouldn't go. However, if you can come up with a game using words that is a combinatorial game theory game, there might be something there. Yes, Scrabble is an abstract word game. And yes, it has strategy, but I don't see it as part of IAGO. Neither would word jumbles.
The fact that word games tend to be out of the scope is the point of the challenge. I am asking designers to think outside of the box to make a game using word that is truly an abstract game by the IAR definitions. I think it is possible to produce a game that scores 3 or less.
I don’t think just because a game does not look like an abstract we are familiar with it should be excluded. What is the difference between games with a winning condition of getting 5 stones in a row and one that requires 5 certain letters in a row?
Dralius, the difference between getting 5 stones in a row vs getting 5 certain letters in a row is one is language independent. Being language independent makes a game more accessible. The only way I see you getting 3 or less here is if you have chess like pieces with letters, all exposed, and you try to arrange them a certain way. Maybe it works out.
Anyhow, people are free to try this if they like.
Yes i would like to see what can be done and how low a score can be attained. I hope we get at least a few adventurous designers that wish to challenge themselves and come up with something unexpected.
Dralius, the way the IAR is set up now, any word game has an automatic default of 2. You throw any randomness into it of any sort, and it is right out of IAGO.
Please feel free to review the IAR again.
Dralius - I offer "Cat Cannon"
The rules are identical to "Cannon", with the following exceptions.
Each soldier on the board has a symbol on it.
There are a list of sequences that consist of three symbols. (We'll call this list a "dictionary".) In order to form a "cannon", the soldiers must not only line up 3 in a row, but the order in which they appear must line up in a specific pattern that is found in the dictionary.
The starting positions are the same as for "Cannon", but players take turns placing tokens, one at a time, into position on the board. When placing tokens, a player may place any symbol he wishes onto his token as he places it.
Now, as described, the game is a perfect abstract with an IAGO rating of 0. Or is it? If the symbols just happen to be letters in the English language, and the dictionary just happens to consist of all three letter English words, then maybe it's IAR is greater than zero. Even if the symbols are more like slot machine symbols, if the dictionary is large then someone with a good memory will have a huge advantage over someone who constantly has to refer to the dictionary to find legitimate cannon-forming sequences.
I do not think I would enjoy such a game. On the other hand, with just a bit of extra thought, I am sure I could come up with a somewhat similar game, in which pieces are moved around a board, and bonuses are given for maneuvering those pieces into specific patterns, which patterns happen to consist of words, I suspect quite a good game could come of it. Try this one: The rules are exactly like those of Pentago. However, instead of trying to form five in a row using his own pieces, each player places a letter, then turns one of the blocks. The first player to spell a legitimate five letter word is the winner. Players may use blocks placed by either player in order to form their words. I think, actually, that that could be quite a good game, and it would be played more like an abstract strategy game than a word game, but it would still be a word game, because skill with words would provide an advantage.
Cat Cannon would have an IAR rating of 0. The dictionary would not qualify as hidden information, even if players were denied access to a dictionary during play. The dictionary would be part of the rules, which are expected to be memorized. Now of course nobody is going to memorize the dictionary but it's still part of the rules, and not part of the play. There's no limit to how complex rules can be. It could be all dictionaries in all languages and it still wouldn't be hidden information.
I agree with Mark. He produced an elegant, eloquent, and ultimately convincing and true argument.
At this point, the IAR is set up so that any skills besides strategic and tactical thinking, ding the game. This includes memorization of anything that doesn't have to do with lines of play. Word memorization has nothing to do with strategic or tactical thinking, and would end up being pushed higher as a result.
Of course, please review the IAR again, to see if it would be otherwise. As it is constructed now, if you start saying word games (with memorization of words) is a Zero IAR, is you can then go with 2 player Scrabble being in IAGO. It would be a 2 or 3, but it is still there. You have the random drawing of tiles, which makes it a 2. It could go three if the rule length is different. There is also, if it fits another genre it isn't in IAGO. This is the first filter.
The concern here is definition creep. That things don't spiral out of control and IAGO ends up a mind sports or table games association. Of course, if you want to do a contest based on, "ok, if we allow for word games, what would be the purest abstract strategy version of it", that would be doable. It just is an exception to the norm. I think also, you likely want to take the quality criterion for Thompson's document, which has drama and so on, and also rate the game by that. Call this the IQR (IAGO Quality Rating). So, the winner would be the one that scores high in the IQR and low in the IAR.
Well, feel free to comment on these risks here, and if you can see you can prevent definition creep, go ahead and do it.
Rich, I thought IAR was supposed to measure how far a game was from the CGT definition. If any CGT games get dinged there's a problem. (I apologize in advance for the self promotion, but...) take Scribe for example:
http://www.marksteeregames.com/Scribe_rules.pdf
You aren't strictly required to memorize 17 glyphs. You could just keep a chart handy. But it helps to memorize them. 100% CGT.
As far as Scrabble is concerned, and as far as IAR is concerned, you could take the square of the number of points as the final indicator. So games with one point would have a score of one. Games with two points (like Scrabble) would be a four. Games with three points would be a nine. Just intuitively that seems to make more sense to me. A game with two points seems more than twice as bad as a game with one point. I don't know if this'll really help. It probably just takes you back to your original proposition of only allowing one point games.
Is Taikyoku Shogi a Japanese word game?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi
I had thought about this. I guess you can do a word game, but the list of words better be readily available when playing (this act causes a game to drop two points in the IAR). I also guess you can have any genre in IAGO, but the deviation needs to be far less than what would be a no-theme game that really doesn't fit anyone else. The target for zero is 2 player combinatorial game theory games. I am not sure the squaring is the right approach here regarding deviation.
As for Taikyoku Shogi, I swear someone must of created that game to push the envelope :-)
Cat Cannon –LOL
That’s a great title and it seems to conform to the guidelines as long as the dictionary does not require memorization. Well done.
I’ll have to get hold of Keith Carter; he is Cannon’s un-official variants tester.
Could maybe go with Cannonical:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical
Well, Cat Cannon will need a "canonical list" of words :-)
Could also go with Lexicannon (like Lexicon, which is a a list of words).
They key is that people don't need to memorize anything that doesn't relate to strategy and tactics.
So, how does this work, you have a group of letters and your opponent, and you score by blowing away their letters and forming words? Most 3 letter words wins?
Reading the letter/word material on this page stirs up the sarcastic center of my brain (this is not to say any of the word/letter game ideas are bad... just, I am sorry to admit, that they triggered a sarcasm-mode within me) -- for I instantly envisioned a fictional game: Scrabtego - a cross between Scrabble and Stratego. Make words out of your captured opponent's pieces (which are letters). Making words out of the captured pieces is symbolic of "forcing them to talk." Whoever extracts the most valuable information wins. Again, this resulted from sarcastic thought - I am certainly not suggesting such a game for IAGO consideration. Though I suppose I'd play it if I saw it sitting on the table.
My suggestion of Cat Cannon was actually a reaction to Rich's assertion that a word game couldn't have a zero IAR. Cat Cannon demonstrates that it could. However, it probably would not be a very good game. (Please, though, take the idea and run with it, and if Keith can make it a good game, more power to him.)
On the other hand, I suspect that Word Pentago could actually be a good game. If you publish it, and become rich and famous, please give me a design credit in the rules. Better yet, send money.
My further discussion was an illustration of the limitations of the IAR as a decision making tool for deciding whether a game "is abstract" or "is not abstract". The elements of it are, and will necessarily always be, subjective to some extent, and it will never be possible to come up with some list that will always be able to classify games through the use of some numerical value. Ultimately, there will always be judgement calls to be made.
As I have said to Rich in different ways and in different forums, if we have people trying to sneak inappropriate games into IAGO, we have a good problem.
There's been a lot of discussion of objectivity but there's no law that says the screening process has to be objective. If you're just talking about a list of a few hundred games that will be actively represented, Rich can pretty much just choose the ones he wants. If he has some uncertainty about a particular game he can ask for opinions on the forums.
I am thinking here that we could have abstract genres here for like wordgames and so on (IAGO wants to focus on combinatorial game theories, with some deviance, and particularly in favor of 2 player only). My concern is just the definition creep happening. Outside of that, whatever people want as stable, we can do it. So, let's do the abstract strategy word game. What we likely need is each of these genres has its own modified version of the IAR most likely.
The IAR isn't a complete process for acceptance. It is just a tool. It needs work. The whole acceptance process needs work, and we are going to need a standards board also to review things. As of now, we don't have a standards board, so I am doing this. If people want to be involved in a standards committee, please say so, and we can end up reviewing these things.
We should have a standards "committee", but it can be a few people just playing the questionable game and discussing it, and it doesn't have to be the same people all the time. As long as we play the game among a few people - at least 3, say - then put results and discussion points on the forum, how we decided should be seen as obvious and transparent, if not totally objective. A "review committee" [of different people?] could take up a request for re-evaluation. I believe the only real way to get a good feel for a game [that is legitimately questionable by "IAGO standards", or any game at all for that matter] is to play it. And this way we could be seen to be giving the game "a fair shake".