Playable Game of Ur

Playable Game of Ur

While looking for a fun scripting project for Morrowind, I came across the game The Royal Game of Ur, or The Game of Twenty Squares. This was one of the world's first known board games. It was played in ancient Mesopotamia and has since seen somewhat of a revival through the work of archaeologists and museum curators. (See Wikipedia article.)

I was going to try creating some basic assets for the board and pieces, but fortunately, LordBerandas beat me to it in 2017 with the mod "The Royal Game of Ur", which has assets, a book of rules, and some item placement, but no gameplay. LordBerandas gave me permission to derive from this work. I have avoided to the extent possible redistributing the assets of the mod, choosing to keep it as a requirement so that this mod serves as a complement. The only asset included here is a fixed version of the board mesh, which had a display issue in OpenMW.

The game includes a full AI to play against. It is not designed for two multiplayer users.

Be sure to check out my other minigame mods, Thirteen Telvanni, Nine-holes, and Imperial Billiards, which nicely complement the locations of this game.

Neither MWSE nor OpenMW are required. This mod uses only native Morrowind scripting.

Assets from the mod The Royal Game of Ur are required (loading the .esp is optional).

How to Play

This game is simple but has a lot of depth to master, which is perhaps why it proved so popular in the ancient world.

The game is for two players. Its basic game loop consists of a dice roll and moving one figure, with a goal of adding all figures to the board and moving them to the end. It's an early form of Backgammon. In the Morrowind version, one side plays as the Dwemer and the other as the Automatons.

Shown below is a diagram of each player's route that they move their figures, as well as the "ellipses" mentioned later marked with a star symbol. The green row is a shared "combat row".

• []Four dice are rolled, each one adding either 1 or 0 to the total. Therefore, the probabilities of rolls are:[/]

Roll 1 — 1/4th

Roll 2 — 3/8th  (most common)

Roll 3 — 1/4th

Roll 4 — 1/16th  (least common)

[]On a player's turn, they may either add a figure to the board from their stack or move a figure already placed. In either case, figures advance as many squares as the dice roll value.[/]

[*]The first four spaces closest to the player are not shared with the opponent. After the fourth square, figures turn and enter the shared comba