#dice games

[katerinaaqu]

so uh- I have a silly question. I heard and sort of read that Patroclus accidentally killed a kid when he was younger over a dice game. I was wondering if you knew if the dice game is something we still play today and what type of dice they would’ve played with back then if it was any of these

I also think there was a vase painted of Achilles and Ajax(??) playing a dice game too? So were there different dice games? I’m sorta curious. (I pulled the images from google 😭)

I am so sorry my friend for being late! It is not silly at all! How can you call a question about such a fascinating subject such as games in antiquity silly?

Definitely the dice games existed and still exist across the world such as the greek famous board game Tavli (English: Backgammon) which traces its origins all the way back in Mesopotamia which involves players move little plaquettes across a wooden board according to the number indicated by the dice.

There are also many different variations of this game in Greece alone such as Portes ("Doors") or Plakoto ("plated on top of another") or "Fevga" ("run away!" "go!"). The ancient Greeks called the dice "Astragali" ("ankle bones" or "knuckle bones") because as you noticed they mostly are consisted of knuckle bones of animals.

Some of the easiest forms of gambling we expect to be that there is a bet placed and then people throw dice in turns and the one closest to the bet highest number wins or depends on the agreement of the game. There is also a form of the game that seems to be indicating the divination of a woman to motherhood or to marriage which was called "Aphrodite's Throw". Basically the dice was being thrown (four if I am not mistaken) and all of them are supposed to land on different numbers if we wanna have the ultimate result. In fact several knuckle bones were discovered in sanctuaries so there seems to be a relation between dice and divination. There is also a very simple game in which the highest throw wins. It was usually played with three dice so the highest possible and great number one could play would be 3 x 6 and was called "Aphrodite" while the worst could be 3 x 1 and was called "dog"

So yes we can expect many different types of games to exist either simple gamble predetermined throws or board games involving dice to move. I mean the essence of throwing a certain number to determine one's moves on a board is not something new here. As I said Tavli has probably variations all the way to Mesopotamia and we also have the infamous Senet game of ancient Egypt where the players throw a number of engraved sticks and depending on the way the sticks fall (from the engraved or non-engraved side) would determine a number

Just like with the divination games of ancient Greece, "Senet" means "Passage" in ancient Egyptian which indicates not only the goal of the game to pass one's pieces from one side of the board to the other but also the passage to the afterlife.

Just like with Greece, Egypt has also a myth that indicates the use of a game being important. More specifically when Nut the goddess of the sky was forbidden from giving birth to any of the days of the year, the god Thoth challenged the moon god Khonsu to a Senet game gambling moonlight with him. Thoth won and so Khonsu was obliged to give up enough moonlight so that Thoth created the extra four days in the calendar for Nut to give birth to her four children (Osiris, Set, Nephthys and Isis)

It is a bit hard to determine by the tiny bit of information Homer gives us what kind of game Patroclus was playing with his friend when the worst happened (aka if it was a board game that involved dice or just throwing dice) but judging by how Patroclus mentions dice only, I am willing to bet (pun intended XD) that he was just playing with dice. Maybe the latter version aka whether they were throwing in rows to see which of the two parts would get the highest number. Maybe Patroclus threw "dog" one too many times! But them playing a board game is equally possible!

Now as to what type of dice we can expect to see in the Mycenean army? Well my bets would go on the first set you have because the perfect cubes are by n large later times. In fact I have taken a photo of one of those when visiting the museum in Corfu:

I would say for Bronze Age, much more to a military camp, we can expect more knuckle bones to appear to the camp (also imagine a bunch of soldiers picking pieces of bones up to make dice on the spot and play a game to pass the time? There is something sad and adorable to it)

Oh yes there is! In fact not just one! But way too many. In fact it is one of the most famous themes that involve Achilles and Ajax playing a board game it is just that the most famous (and rightfully so) is the version of the grand master Exekias!

However there are many different versions of this scene by different artists and painters

This scene I even heard a funny story for its interpretation; that the two heroes were so into their game that they didn't notice a raging battle around them. That is said to be a lost incident of the epic cycle but looks more like a legend than anything else What's for sure is that the two heroes that are still young men (Achilles being the youngest and Ajax being the oldest of the two) that want to steal some time from battle to play some game. For most part of the depiction they seem to be playing a board game. Now is it some version of "tavli" for instance? Seems possible.

[hekate-brimo2]

Just Dipping Some Toes In The Water

How interested would people be in a new Superhero / Supervillain TTRPG built around investigating / perpetuating schemes, maintaining a separation between their Civilian and Caped ID, and building relationships with the masses and the press?

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

dice |2025|

[orangerful]

‘Chicken Fried Dice’ by Urban Professional Games is a clever, chaotic game for 1-5 players, coming soon to Kickstarter.

Chicken Fried Dice FINALLY launching on Kickstarter!

[arconinternet]

Poker Golf (Windows, Michael Hamments, 1997)

You can download this Yahtzee variant here - it still works on modern versions of Windows.

[99point9percentwhump]

Rolled 🎲: 2

Bromance

[alpaca-clouds]

Games to play in the Middle Ages

You know, I thought I could talk about another medieval topic that might come in handy for people trying to write anything from fanfic, over historical stories, to just fantasy with a medieval setting: The kind of games that people would have played in the middle ages. Something that might also be handy for certain TTRPGs and things like that.

But first some background: You do have to understand that for the most part in the middle ages a lot of people had mostly self-made game boards (when it came to board games) and dice. If you were good with woodworking, those might have been made of wood, but often enough game boards were often just made from patches of leather with the board painted onto it with ink of some sort.

A lot of people would use just stones in black, white and grey. Sometimes also just painted stones or rather pebbles.

Given this fact, game rules might at times have varied a lot locally, as your game did not come in a box with a set of rules inside of them. Or worse, from a historical point of view: Some game rules have not been written down at all, so actually we do not know how exactly they were played and most we have right now is guesswork.

That understood, let's talk...

Dice Games

Okay, six sided dice were used for playing game for literally thousands of years. We have dice surviving from the ancient world. And after all, they were rather handy, right? Given that you can play a lot of games with just a few dice in your pockets. Especially games of chance that you could use to gamble.

This is probably the moment to make on thing clear: Gambling for a lot of people did not really happen for money, but just for some tokens and the fun of it. Because the truth is, that a lot of people historically did not have any or if some not many coins. So, you just would not gamble for coins. Money, as this universal thing we have today, was not that common for the longest time.

Still, people would gamble. And usually the games played with the dice would go something like this: Roll two or three dice and then it would either be "if you beat a certain number, you get something" or "you make a bet before rolling". Like, "I bet the number will be even/uneven" or "I bet the number will be higher/lower than X". There are a plethora of games we know, but in the end they will boil down to something like that.

Card Games

Something to note: Card games, as we know them right now, got established probably in the late 13th or early 14th century, so clearly more towards the end of the middle ages. They might have been around a bit longer - but if they were, we do not have any proof of that.

The current assumption among historians is, that playing cards as an idea originated in Asia, but came to Europe either through merchants - or were brought here by the Romani people. The deck of cards we know as our typical kinds of cards, was probably first created in Italy, though this, too, is not entirely certain. All we know is, that in the middle of the 14th century we have descriptions of those cards come up in surviving manuscripts.

The kind of games played with those cards were not too different from our modern games - with local variations of course. While most of the modern game rules were first written down in the 17th century, we do have a good idea that games comparable to Poker, Junker and Karnoffel have been around for fairly long.

Of course, the games really took off just after the middle ages, when printing made it a lot easier to create more of the cards much more easily.

So, let's go to some of the games that were played with boards of sort.

The Fox and the Geese

A game that is still around today. Often played on a board that looked kinda like the one you can see above (though historically speaking it was often much more simple), but at times also on just a normal checker board, one player plays as the geese (in some version of the game also sheep) and one plays the fox (in some versions the wolf). The figures can move in all directions - including diagonally. The fox can also jump another figure, if the spot behind the figure (in a straight line) is free.

The goal of the game is for the fox to eat all the geese by jumping them. While the goal of the geese is to outmaneuvre the fox by surrounding it to all sides or push it against a wall.

Tablut

Tablut is a game that originates with the Norse and was important to the rest of Europe through the viking raids. Hence you will find a lot of games sold today with some viking-esque decor on the game board, like the one above.

Like Fox and Geese the game is one of unequal sides. The black pieces are the attackers, the white pieces the defenders. The central white piece is the king, whose capture will end the game.

Both sides beat opponents with the same way: They move in straight lines (not diagonally) like the rock in chess. To beat an opposing piece, you need to trap it between two of your pieces.

The goal for the attackers is, to capture the king. The goal for the defenders is to beat out at least half of the attackers.

Mills

This is probably one of the best known games from those I post here, given that it is often included in a lot of board game collections to this day.

This is a very symmetrical game, where both sides follow the same rules. The game board is empty at the start, then both players alternatingly put down one piece at a time. The goal is to get three pieces in a row. As soon as you have, three in a row, you can steal one of the opposing pieces.

When all pieces are set, you can move the pieces in a straight line and try to once again bring three of your pieces into a line and steal more pieces. The game ends, as soon as one side only has three pieces left.

Tables / Nard

Okay, let me talk about a whole genre of games. These originated probably in either old Egypt or old Mesopotamia, though we honestly do not know this exactly and frankly: I made the mistake before to ask a historian friend about it, and learned that this is a very emotional topic for a lot of historians. It is somewhere from what we today call "the middle east".

Given it is old and has travled far, there are tons of variations, but the general idea is always the same: Both players have a certain numbers of pieces, those need to be moved all around the board once. This is done by rolling either one die or two dices.

And this if the point where the common rules end. Because in the end there is a ton of local variations. The number of pieces varies. The number of dice varies. It varies whether you can beat other pieces, whether you can strategically block fields. All of that is depending on local rules.

It should be noted that there were definitely variations of this game around made for more players. Often called "Table of Seasons" (which was for four players) and "Alchemist's Tables" (which was usually for seven players).

Of course there were other games around, too. Chess was definitely around in the middle ages too, with similar but not quite the same rules we have today. And there is some evidence that Snakes and Ladders came to Europe in the 13th century.