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Topic: A new arimaa variant (Read 3227 times) |
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gatsby
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Why not? I have called it Torches Arimaa.
All the official arimaa rules apply, except in the following:
a) There are no traps.
b) In the setup phase, every player must place two "torches" of its colour on any squares belonging to his two nearest rows of the board. Two or more torches, or a torch and another piece, can coexist on the same square. Every player can only move his own torch. The torch can move one orthogonal square per step, exactly as every other piece, but only when the square it is on is occupied by a piece (not torch) of its colour. Torches don't go with pieces in their movements nor viceversa. If a torch moves to a square which is occupied by an enemy frozen piece, this piece is captured.
What do you think about it? I'd like to know your (positive or negative) opinions. 
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aaaa
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #1 on: Jul 18th, 2008, 10:15am » |
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Don't you find that concept a bit graphically disturbing, burning living creatures to their deaths? At least the trap squares leave things more up to the imagination.
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mistre
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #2 on: Jul 18th, 2008, 11:29am » |
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Sounds intriguing - kind of like moving traps.
I have a few questions:
1) Please clarify torch movement. Maybe provide some examples. Your brief description was hard to follow.
2) If a torch can only move to occupied squares with pieces of your own color then how can they move to a square occupied by an enemy frozen piece?
3) Does any enemy piece have to be frozen before it is torched?
4) Can an Elephant be torched?
General comment:
If I was playing this variant, I would keep the torches very near or on the same square as my Elephant and Camel since they can freeze the most enemy pieces. I also think this variant might be a tad too complicated, but only testing would prove that.
Maybe a simpler version would just allow players to move their own home traps around, with the rules that you can only move 1 trap 1 space per move (using 1 step, or maybe you have to use 2 steps) and you can't move traps directly on to enemy pieces.
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PMertens
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #3 on: Jul 19th, 2008, 12:26am » |
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I always imagined the opponent pieces would go to hell when killed in a trap. Naturally eternal torture awaits them there.
My own pieces went to heaven instead.
Just like some people believe in real life 
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gatsby
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on Jul 18th, 2008, 11:29am, mistre wrote:Sounds intriguing - kind of like moving traps.
I have a few questions:
1) Please clarify torch movement. Maybe provide some examples. Your brief description was hard to follow.
2) If a torch can only move to occupied squares with pieces of your own color then how can they move to a square occupied by an enemy frozen piece?
3) Does any enemy piece have to be frozen before it is torched?
4) Can an Elephant be torched?
General comment:
If I was playing this variant, I would keep the torches very near or on the same square as my Elephant and Camel since they can freeze the most enemy pieces. I also think this variant might be a tad too complicated, but only testing would prove that.
Maybe a simpler version would just allow players to move their own home traps around, with the rules that you can only move 1 trap 1 space per move (using 1 step, or maybe you have to use 2 steps) and you can't move traps directly on to enemy pieces.
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Thank you for your comments, mistre. I'll try to answer all your questions:
1) & 2) Torches can move to any orthogonally adjacent square at the cost of one step, just like any other piece. But they have some limitations: they can only move when the ORIGIN square is occupied by a piece of its colour, as if that piece picked the torch and throwed it to an adjacent square. Torches, unlike elephants, camels, etc., are not living beings, so they can't move on their own. The DESTINATION square can be either empty or occupied by any piece (including torches). For example: imagine that there is a Gold elephant on e4 holding a Gold torch. There is a frozen Silver rabbit on f4, a non-frozen Silver rabbit on e5 and a Gold rabbit on d4. Gold could throw the torch to any of its four adjacent squares. If he throws it to f4, the frozen Silver rabbit is captured. If he throws it to e5 or e3, nothing happens, but the torch becomes immobile. If he throws it to d4, the torch can still be moved, at the cost of another step, to an adjacent square. I hope I have explained myself clearly, despite my bad English.
3) Yes. If it is not frozen, the torch movement is possible, but the enemy piece is not captured.
4) Yes.
Either way, I have been thinking a bit about my idea, and I believe that it can be more elegantly developed by adding this simple rule to the original ones: traps, when empty, can be pushed or pulled to an empty, orthogonally adjacent square by any piece (Gold or Silver) except by rabbits. However, though this is certainly simpler than my first proposal, I don't know whether it would work better or worse than that one...
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omar
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #5 on: Jul 22nd, 2008, 6:33pm » |
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on Jul 18th, 2008, 9:57am, gatsby wrote:
What do you think about it? I'd like to know your (positive or negative) opinions. |
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It is really hard to tell what kind of dynamics a new rule introduces. I always play tested the rules against my self at first to get a little feel for it. Then if it still looked interesting I would try to get others to help me test it. So without actually trying it out I can't really give any opinion.
In Arimaa I tried to reduce the number of rules and keep the rules simple and intuitive as much as possible to minimize the hurdle of learning such a different game. In a variant though you might not be trying for simplicity and you do have the advantage of being able to start with the rules as Arimaa. If people already know what Arimaa is then it doesn't seem like much of a hurdle to learn a few more rules.
Please don't ask me to implement this. It's hard enough trying to keep up with just one version You might want to try implementing it in Zillions-of-Games though. It really makes playing against yourself a lot easier. There is a Zillions rule file on the download page which might help you get started.
I also have a few ideas for Arimaa variants which I haven't actually tried out yet. I mentioned them to Karl during a commute once, but he discourages me from trying variants so that I stay focused on Arimaa. He is probably right; I do have a tendency to try and do too many things and dilute my energies.
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gatsby
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on Jul 22nd, 2008, 6:33pm, omar wrote:
Please don't ask me to implement this.
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Of course not! I am too grateful to you for having offered us such a great game. I can't ask you anymore.
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gatsby
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on Jul 22nd, 2008, 6:33pm, omar wrote:
I also have a few ideas for Arimaa variants which I haven't actually tried out yet.
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Could you tell us about some of them? I am really curious about it.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 24th, 2008, 4:05am by gatsby » |
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omar
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #8 on: Jul 24th, 2008, 9:01pm » |
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Arimaa with a connection type goal. There are no trap squares and rabbits can move backwards. Goal is to create a chain with your pieces that connects your side of the board to the opponents. Pieces in the chain must be orthogonally adjacent. This variant may be even harder for computers. Aamir and I tried one game of this a few years back. It is possible this variant is flawed since there are no committal moves leading to irreversible states.
Arimaa with a dice. Some very early versions of Arimaa used a dice. I thought the uncertainty would make the game more difficult for computers. At some point I decided it wasn't needed and opted for a no chance game. In the dice variant you may not take more steps then the dice roll. If you roll a 5 or 6 you are still limited to 4 steps. Never tried this.
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mistre
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #9 on: Jul 25th, 2008, 6:08am » |
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Just thought of this one - might be interesting.
Rabbits are each assigned a number (1 through 4), two of each. Only the two #1 rabbits can goal until they are captured. Once captured, then only the two #2 rabbits can goal and so on. If a higher-numbered rabbit reaches the end of the board - it will just sit there until moved or all lower-numbered rabbits are captured.
I think this would add another layer of strategy to where you place each rabbit and WHICH rabbits you decide to advance without interfering with the basic gameplay of Arimaa.
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Fritzlein
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #10 on: Jul 25th, 2008, 9:34am » |
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If I'm not mistaken, mistre, you heard about Arimaa via the Board Game Designer's Forum where the consensus among other game designers was that Arimaa didn't have much to offer. A couple of designers decided that Arimaa was not worth bothering with before they had even played a single game of it. Why? Because the rules are so boring! (By the way, I salute you, mistre, for thinking for yourself and not taking someone else's word that Arimaa is no good without investigating yourself.)
When I was on vacation this spring, I was introduced to Khet, the laser game, the award-winning game (Mensa Select 2006, et al). The experience crystallized for me something that is deeply wrong with the game industry. Yes, the game is cool. What is cooler than getting to shoot a real-live laser at the enemy? Yes, it's mind-bending to think about where deflected and reflected beam will land. But the game is broken. In my second game from a standard setup given in the rulebook, I realized I could make a defensive setup that could never be broken, regardless of whether I moved first or second. Did the designers not play the game themselves, or did they not think about strategy when playing? How can there be a game on the market, actually winning awards, that I can bust strategically on my second play?
It used to totally amaze me that Omar could design such a great game, even though he never invented a game before, and he doesn't know anything about game design. Is he an intuitive genius? Is he the luckiest man alive? How could he do better than hundreds of professionals?
In the context of Khet and the BGDF discussion, however, I am no longer amazed. I believe that Omar succeeded with Arimaa because he was not doing what game designers do, because most game designers are barking up the wrong tree. They are trying to invent a game with interesting rules, unqiue mechanics, or a cool theme. For Omar the animal theme was an afterthough, and it's a pretty thin theme anyway. The mechanics of Arimaa are simple, but even some of that minimal complexity (such as rabbits not being able to move backwards) Omar added only very reluctantly. In other words, he wanted the rules to be even more boring than they are. He was most definitely not trying to come up with the most imaginative set of rules he could brainstorm.
What Omar did do was play test. He changed the rules again and again and again, not because the rules he had were bad-sounding rules, but because the various games didn't play well. He started very simply, with only two kinds of pieces (pawns and rooks), no capture, no freezing. He gradually added rules and complexity, not because he wanted a complex game, but because he was forced to in order to fix what was not working. In every early version there was something broken that was going to make it boring to play. The rules he finally chose were not the ones that sounded best, they were the ones that worked best.
Any and all of the variant rule suggestions that have been tossed around in the Forum have the potential to make Arimaa a better game than it is. I'm skeptical, because I don't see what is broken in the current version that adding complexity will fix, so the motivation that drove Omar to keep tweaking is gone, but you never know what improvements a rule change might bring. I think it is likely that most changes will subtract more than they add, but you never know. You never know, and that's whole point. I believe Omar's post in this thread is his gentle way of trying to nudge folks toward the procedure that worked for him. If you ask what he thinks of Rule X, his wise and proven answer is, "I think you need to play test it." He's been there, and he's done the grunt work, and there's no short cut.
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Fritzlein
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #11 on: Jul 25th, 2008, 11:02am » |
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on Jul 24th, 2008, 3:57am, gatsby wrote:| Could you tell us about some of them? I am really curious about it. |
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As a footnote, one day during the carpool I sarcastically suggested to Omar that Arimaa could have a suicide bomber bunny. At the beginning of the game each player could secretly mark one bunny as a suicide bomber, and then later use a turn to detonate it, killing any piece in the adjacent eight squares. To my horror, Omar sort of liked it, and started spending cycles thinking about how to implement it.  Since then I only suggest things I actually want him to spend time on.
For folks who like game variants, I think the best thing would be to pair off and say, "I'll play a game with your rules if you play a game with my rules." Then we would learn something about both of them, and the discussion about variants would be less speculative. For example, I guess that no-capture Arimaa would be an unplayable stalemate, but one play test is worth ten guesses. Indeed, I suddenly recally that lose-Arimaa, where both players are trying to force the other to meet a winning criterion, was busted by actual play testing rather than discussion. It turned out that a player could kill all of his own rabbits faster than the other player could prevent it, thus the game was always drawn. Perhaps we should re-play test it now that the rabbit-elimination rule has gone into effect and draws are impossible.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 25th, 2008, 11:05am by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #12 on: Jul 25th, 2008, 1:30pm » |
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on Jul 25th, 2008, 9:34am, Fritzlein wrote:| If I'm not mistaken, mistre, you heard about Arimaa via the Board Game Designer's Forum where the consensus among other game designers was that Arimaa didn't have much to offer. A couple of designers decided that Arimaa was not worth bothering with before they had even played a single game of it. Why? Because the rules are so boring! (By the way, I salute you, mistre, for thinking for yourself and not taking someone else's word that Arimaa is no good without investigating yourself.) |
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I have to admit, when I first tried Arimaa, I was skeptical. I thought it had too much of a connection with chess. I was also afraid that I wouldn't be able to process how the game worked and therefore I doubted it. But after I played a few games, that quickly went away and I found something that was truly original and amazing.
I went back and read all of the responses to the Arimaa thread - I don't think I read all of them after I made my post. Reading it now made be realize how close-minded those individuals were in regards to Arimaa. I believe it is a perception issue and not truly a game design issue. Once a game designer sees how Arimaa works, he can't not be impressed at the elegant simplicity of it. So what if it uses the same size board and the same piece count as Chess? It is NOT a chess variant, but a completely different game! I hope that when Zman starts marketing it that they don't even mention the word Chess and it can stand on its own merits.
on Jul 25th, 2008, 9:34am, Fritzlein wrote:
When I was on vacation this spring, I was introduced to Khet, the laser game, the award-winning game (Mensa Select 2006, et al). The experience crystallized for me something that is deeply wrong with the game industry. Yes, the game is cool. What is cooler than getting to shoot a real-live laser at the enemy? Yes, it's mind-bending to think about where deflected and reflected beam will land. But the game is broken. In my second game from a standard setup given in the rulebook, I realized I could make a defensive setup that could never be broken, regardless of whether I moved first or second. Did the designers not play the game themselves, or did they not think about strategy when playing? How can there be a game on the market, actually winning awards, that I can bust strategically on my second play? |
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I too have played Khet. Once and never again. I found it boring with no long term strategy. There was no ebb and flow to the game and the game could end abruptly on one false move. However, I would not equate the failure of this game to the game industry at large. There are many quality games being released today both themed and abstract. There is also a lot of junk being released, but you can say the same for any media type - books, movies, music, etc.
on Jul 25th, 2008, 9:34am, Fritzlein wrote:
It used to totally amaze me that Omar could design such a great game, even though he never invented a game before, and he doesn't know anything about game design. Is he an intuitive genius? Is he the luckiest man alive? How could he do better than hundreds of professionals?
In the context of Khet and the BGDF discussion, however, I am no longer amazed. For Omar the animal theme was an afterthough, and it's a pretty thin theme anyway. The mechanics of Arimaa are simple, but even some of that minimal complexity (such as rabbits not being able to move backwards) Omar added only very reluctantly. In other words, he wanted the rules to be even more boring than they are. He was most definitely not trying to come up with the most imaginative set of rules he could brainstorm. |
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I have to disagree with you here. If making a cool game was just about having minimal complexity, then any joe schmoe could design the next great game. The rules can be boring, but the game has to be interesting! I believe that Omar is either an intuitive genius or did get lucky to invent Arimaa - I will let him decide which!
On a personal level, I really like the animal theme and I think Arimaa would suffer without it. It gives the players a visual clue as to what is going on. Would Arimaa have the same appeal using various symbols for the pieces? Visual presentation is important to making a game easy to play and fun for the players.
on Jul 25th, 2008, 9:34am, Fritzlein wrote:
What Omar did do was play test. He changed the rules again and again and again, not because the rules he had were bad-sounding rules, but because the various games didn't play well. He started very simply, with only two kinds of pieces (pawns and rooks), no capture, no freezing. He gradually added rules and complexity, not because he wanted a complex game, but because he was forced to in order to fix what was not working. In every early version there was something broken that was going to make it boring to play. The rules he finally chose were not the ones that sounded best, they were the ones that worked best. |
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Here, I agree with you again. Playtesting is very very important and any game designer would agree with that if they have any experience designing a game.
I have to cut my post short as I have to go, but there is more I want to say in regards to game design and variants that I will get to later.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 25th, 2008, 7:55pm by mistre » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #13 on: Jul 25th, 2008, 3:04pm » |
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I'm very interested to hear the rest of your response, but I can't help replying already.
on Jul 25th, 2008, 1:30pm, mistre wrote:| I have to disagree with you here. If making a cool game was just about having minimal complexity, then any joe schmoe could design the next great game. |
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A good game is certainly not just about having minimal complexity, although simpler is generally better in my mind, so that probably clouded my point. What I meant to emphasize is that nature of the rules per se should not be a driving force in game design, and ultimately playability is everything. I'm reacting against the sentiment that says, "Isn't X a cool rule?" when what matters is not the nature of the rule in itself but rather the rule's effect on how the game plays.
If I can use another example, people rave about the rule in Quarto that you get to choose which piece the other guy puts on the board. Sure, nifty, neato, original concept, and it's even simple like I prefer, but unfortunately the game is dead drawn. Interesting rule, boring game.
Quote:| There is also a lot of junk being released, but you can say the same for any media type - books, movies, music, etc. |
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That's quite true, and there is also much praise heaped on mediocre books and movies, and people get rich churning out shallow garbage. The game industry is not unique in this respect. If I had to pick on the single most discouraging thing about the game industry, I wouldn't blame the lame game designers so much. The root of evil is that Hasbro and Mattel make way more money on toys than on games, so the toy mindset infects the game industry. Toys are extremely faddish, and even some of the most successful are off the shelf in six months to a year. People get bored and want a new toy. But what I want from a game is precisely something that I don't get bored with, and don't have to replace with a new game every year because the old one is played out. That's what I get from Arimaa, at least so far!
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| « Last Edit: Jul 25th, 2008, 3:16pm by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: A new arimaa variant
« Reply #14 on: Jul 25th, 2008, 8:45pm » |
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on Jul 25th, 2008, 9:34am, Fritzlein wrote:I believe that Omar succeeded with Arimaa because he was not doing what game designers do, because most game designers are barking up the wrong tree. They are trying to invent a game with interesting rules, unique mechanics, or a cool theme.
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This statement probably stung me the most of anything you said. Like I alluded to before, I think Omar was either very intuitive or very fortunate to come up with the concept of Arimaa and get it to where it is today. To me it truly stands out as a "Classic" game in the same vein as Chess and Go. However, I disagree with your statement that designers are barking up the wrong tree. Arimaa is a 2-player abstract game. While you can make the argument that this is the purest level of gaming, it is only one facet of all the kinds of games you can design. There are war games, eurogames, RPGs, card games, dice games, social games, kids games, dungeon crawlers, economic games, etc. The list goes on and on. For each of these type of genre, there are different goals and methods to making a good game. For example, a kid's game would need to have very simple rules. On the other hand, a complex war game might have a many rules as to better simulate an actual war. The complexity of a game all has to do with its audience, but there is an audience for all types of games in the spectrum.
I see nothing wrong with a designer "trying to invent a game with interesting rules, unique mechanics, or a cool theme." To me this is what designing is all about. Otherwise, you would be just creating something that has tedious rules, copy-cat mechanics, or a boring theme. To me, Arimaa fits all of the above qualities you stated to some extent, although that may not have been your intent.
Arimaa has minimalistic rules for sure, but that does not mean that every game invented should reach that level. Arimaa is a 2-player abstract game with no luck. If every game invented met that criteria there would be a definite dearth of variety out there! I would agree that in the 2-player pure abstract strategy world, that Arimaa stands out as one of the best game design achievements of all time. But not everyone's taste is for this type of game. Some people prefer multi-player games. I will attest that it is much much harder to playtest and balance games for multiple players then it is for 2-player games as you run into all kinds of problems such as runaway leaders, kingmaking, and turtling to name a few. Some people want games that require less brain power, more luck and are fun. I am not talking about the brain-dead side of things (mass market games), but many of the current eurogames combine strategy and luck in nice doses to create fun games (Settlers of Catan for example). Some people are into the rules-heavy cutthroat strategy games with lots of interaction. I guess my whole point is that game design is a very broad field and there is no one right way to design a game, but you need to know your audience.
In my own game design which is kind of like a light-medium eurostyle game - I initially started with too much complexity and have paired it down over time to make the game tighter. This is kind of the opposite approach as Arimaa. I don't think one way is necessarily better or worse than the other, just two different ways to hopefully achieve similar results. I think one major difference is the abstract vs themed issue - In a themed game you are more apt to try many more mechanics/approaches and add complexity to give the game a story arc, while in a abstract game you are only concerned with the mechanics and therefore can keep things simpler.
I have never attempted to design a pure abstract game, but I can imagine that the difficulty lies in making it interesting rather than making it have simple mechanics. Like I said before, I can have few rules, but that doesn't make it an interesting strategy game - instead it could be the next tic-tac-toe. If you haven't heard of them - you might want to look at the GIPF series of games - they are considered to be among the best abstract games designed in recent times.
on Jul 25th, 2008, 9:34am, Fritzlein wrote:
Any and all of the variant rule suggestions that have been tossed around in the Forum have the potential to make Arimaa a better game than it is. I'm skeptical, because I don't see what is broken in the current version that adding complexity will fix, so the motivation that drove Omar to keep tweaking is gone, but you never know what improvements a rule change might bring.
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I don't think the idea of variants is to make Arimaa better than it is, at least not in my opinion. The idea of variants is to provide an alternate way to play a game for the sake of variety (kind of like an add-on). Arimaa is a rare game that really doesn't NEED a variant, it is endlessly replayable as it is. There is nothing broken about it and nothing that needs fixing. However, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be variants. I look at potential variants as just another fun concept to explore such as bot-bashing, handicap games, and contests. What intrigues me the most is Arimaa with different size boards/trap locations. This would provide new challenges and variety without even changing one rule. Any variants that involve randomness - rolling a die for number of steps or hidden suicide rabbits - is completely against the nature of a 2-player abstract pure strategy game and would just be annoying. Any variants that I suggest for Arimaa will not include randomness of any kind.
I hope that you can have an open-mind when you read this and realize that there is even more to game design then you realize. I really just scratched the surface of various games in this post and while I firmly believe that Arimaa will be a "Game for the Ages", it is by no means the only game I ever want to play again. For me, variety is the spice of life.
Mark (mistre) Mistretta
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| « Last Edit: Jul 25th, 2008, 8:56pm by mistre » |
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