Intro
A long time ago I found some files on a BBS regarding somthing called a "Glass Plate Game" (I'll post the original zip archive soon), which dealt with moving around tiles that represented ideas on a map, according to rules based on the player's interpretation of the iconic pictures on each tile. It was based on Herman Hesse's famous book "The Glass Bead Game," but I wouldn't know about this until more than ten years later. I was fascinated and wanted to learn more, but the zip archive was posted to the BBS as an accident. There was no point in playing with other teenagers, since cognitive psychology isn't talked about outside of a Science Fair. Still, the idea stayed with me, and eventually I made a pen-and-paper game out of it.
Rules for playing with Icehouse pieces
- Equipment: an Icehouse stash for each player (15 pyramid pieces, 5 1-pip, 5 2-pip and 5 3-pip), each player having a different colour, as well as a pad of Post-It(tm) notes, a pen, and a flat, level and smooth surface the notes and Icehouse pieces can rest on.
- Legal. Post-It and Icehouse are trademarks owned by people who aren't me.
- Terms used below. An Idea in the context of this game is a Post-It note affixed to the play area with text written on it; the text can be either a subject("a firetruck", "Daphne's boyfriend," "that time we went swimming"), or a predicate ("is red," "eats bugs," "made everyone laugh."). An Indicator is an Icehouse piece resting on it's side on an Idea. An Indicator Indicates another Idea.
- Players agree on a single Idea to start. This Idea isn't owned by anyone, so no Indicator will be placed on it. It is called the Root Idea or Theme. Put the idea at one of the edges of the playing area (this is to limit the direction the game will be played). Agree who will go first, and turn order: roshambo works, or odds and evens.
- On a player's turn, a player take the post-it notes pad, writes an Idea and places it on the play area with an Indicator. The Player has much lattitude on where the Idea can go, so long as it follows these rules:
- Ideas may not overlap other Ideas. Post-Its usually come in squares, so you can rotate a square so it's corners don't overlap another Post-It.
- You must place the Idea at least 1 Post-It edge-length from the indicated Idea for every pip on the Indicator. (i.e.: with 3-inch Post-Its, an Idea with a 1-point indicator must be placed at least 3 inches away from the indicated Idea. 2-point indicator, 6 inches, and 3-points mean nine inches.
- Ideas are either subjects or predicates; the Idea placed must have an indicator that points to an Idea of the opposite type. Subject ideas will have Indicators pointing to predicate ideas, and vice-versa. (note: if you're playing in Lojban, all Ideas are selbri so you don't need to worry about type) It's a good idea to point to your own Ideas or the Theme, to get a better score in the endgame.
- A newly placed Idea, with it's inidcated Idea, forms a statement: (subject-Idea) is (predicate-Idea)". All players must agree that this statement is true, true in come cases, or at least more likely than not to be true. If the current player cannot come up with a convincing example of this statement, then they must take back their Idea, forfeit their turn, and take a penalty of the number of points on the indicator they tried to use.
- An example of the previous rule: The Idea "grass" is on the table. Another player puts down "is green" and uses an indicator to point this idea at "grass." No argument. The next player writes "is a euphamism for drugs" and indicates "grass." Some naive players may not understand, but more worldly players can cite the documentary "Reefer Madness."
- An Idea can have at most three other Ideas indicating it.
- It is possible (and rewarded) to place a new Idea in such a way that another Idea's Indicator will point to it. There is no limit to how close a newly placed idea can be to other ideas, so long as they do not physically overlap if viewed from above the table. Ideas thus placed must be the opposite type of the indicating Idea, and form valid statements.
- The game ends when no more ideas can be placed, either because there are no more indicators left, or no more usable space on the table. Scoring is as follows:
- Lose points for unused pips
- Lose points for pips of indicators pointing to other player's ideas, except the theme idea that started the game.
- Gain points of pips of indicator on ideas, when some other player's idea indicates yours
- sudden idea: what if we turned this over, and you could only point at opponent's ideas? Would avoid the problem of players feeding only on their own thoughts... wait, that means you'd never wish to place an interfering piece. Maybe would work with limited play surface.
ExamplesSee the example games in the right sidebar. Most are of earlier versions, but the one that uses Icehouse pieces as a competitive game is Ray's Sausage game. The game is meant for cooperative play; there's a small competitive angle, but it's not meant to start fights, just to keep people on their toes to look for connections and ideas overlooked by other players. if there's too much arguing, start over and be more open-minded. |
Developments
2002-04-20: I'm working on a Glass Plate Game file format for recording Games. Here's two examples from games we played one night at Dumb Board Games night: Italian Home Design and Pigment. Ideally, one could write a script that would re-assemble a game board using only this file format.
2002-05-02: I did make something that will read the Glass Plate Game transcriptions I make and turn them into java applet graphs like the ones on the side. [Although cute, it does make them difficult to read, so I removed them and replaced them with the graphviz examples]
2004-06-06: Someone's already dubbed [the game rules I initially had here] "HipBone Games" (I'm not sure if that's a trademark, or merely a label), and tried to make some business from the idea, but the Hipbone Games website doesn't mention any maps other than the Waterbird and the simple 10-node triangle, nor has there been any activity on that site in years. Still, acknowledgement is due, because it looks familiar and I may have forgotten it as the original inspiration for these games.
2005-08-08: I've been reading Lewis Carrol's books on logic and it's inspired me to revisit this idea. I found that there is already an accepted file format for describing graphs, and software tools to render them as images. I've also been thinking of a way of formalizing the relationships between nodes with a limited and elegant set of labels for the edges. Mark P. Line has already covered this ground in his Waldzel Canon Ontology, although nothing more was said about it since 1997. If I may pose my opinion, I think his attempt at making a new written language for the sake of his glass bead game is too much: forcing players to learn a new lexicon will keep away all but the most dedicated enthusiasts. Perhaps it would be better to use a language that already exists?
2005-11-23: I've got it, the bit I was missing was the glass beads themselves, which are Icehouse pieces, used with blank cards people can write on instead of circles to write in. Add some scoring method to give incentive to players, and I've got it. It's not the solo game Hesse imagined, but I'd prefer something with more appeal outside of ivory towers.
2007-03-26: I've been stressed out lately, and it's exhibiting in obsessive behaviour... in recreational mathematics. Aside from discovering a new space-filling fractal curve I call "R", I came up with a new cognitive toy that resembles the Glass Bead Game more closely than other things I've seen. It makes use of a feature of the language Lojban, in that brivla, are nouns, adjectives and predicates simultaneously (the concept is called selbri in the language). This might be the very language that the Waldzel Canon was looking for.
2007-04-14: Wrote something to generate random games where the nodes are Lojban "selbri" (predicate-words) and each link is a "bridi" (Lojbanish metaphor, which is also a "selbri"). Sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes banal. Could be a teaching tool for Lojban at the least.