Traditional board games

For many years, I've had an interest in traditional board games. Not so much with the aim of playing them, but an interest primarily fueled by their origin and history. I guess this may at least partly come from me being a biologist, and seeing board games as 'species', subject to mutations and subsequent evolution. 

You may be aware that I already have two board game related blogs: Chess creations & collection focuses on my collection of sets for Chess in its many variants. And Hnefatafl collection has a focus on Hnefatafl and other tafl variants. While focusing on games from these 'chess' and 'tafl' families, on occasion I did pick up examples of other games. I felt I should bring these together in a more formal collection of traditional board games, and create a blog for them, with posts including notes on their origin, age and history. And no doubt, going along, I'll add a few more to the collection ...

Why study board games from more than a purely playing perspective? Board games are often being considered as too trivial a subject for serious study. But people across the ages and across civilisations play board games; some of the board games that pretty much everyone is aware of nowadays go back thousands of years and have spread around the world. So playing board games is clearly an intrinsic part of human nature, and, therefore, worthy of study. Ideally, this study (often referred to as 'ludology') should be multidisciplinary, combining anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and, dare I say it, evolutionary biology.

A few classic books from my own 'board game studies' library that evidence serious study of board games are shown here, in chronological order.

Stewart Culin's extensive study of the games of native Americans, originally published in 1907; the first part deals with board games:

Harald Murray's monumental 'A History of Chess', published in 1913:

Followed in 1952, by, basically, a history of 'the rest': 

Robert Bell's two books on board and table games, published in 1960 and 1969:

And, much more recent, and still too young to be referred to as a 'classic', David Parlett's attempt to update Murray's '... other than Chess' book, published in 1999:

One year prior to that saw the start of the academic journal "Board Game Studies":

Issues 1-9 of BGS can be found here (issue 3 has my article on using phylogenetic methods to try and shed light on the origin of chess!), while issues 10 and further are accessible here.

Murray, Bell and Parlett each present a classification of traditional board games, based on fundamental aspects ('ludemes') such as the aim of the game, the way in which pieces interact with each other and with the board, and the balance between chance and strategy. For instance, race games have the aim of being the first to get their piece(s) off the board. These games are often fully dependent on chance (as dictated by rolling dice or similar; think 'Snakes and Ladders') but may also allow a balance between chance and strategy (think 'Backgammon'). War games have the aim of capturing one or more of the opponent's pieces, and are often fully strategy-based (think 'Chess'). Bean games (think 'Mancala') are unique in that the pieces while in play aren't differentiated as to who owns them. 

The classifications used by Murray, Bell and Parlett show some overlap, but differ in other ways, and any such classification will be faced with games which just don't fit well into the suggested categories ... As I present the board games in my collection, I will include comments on where they fit into the various classification categories.

Before finishing this introductory post to my new blog, I want to mention one more board games researcher. He is a curator at the British Museum, an assyriologist passionate about the study of board games. His name is Irving Finkel and the best way to introduce him is simply to let him talk for himself; enjoy!