A comment about testing of rules
Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2011 2:27 pm
There is in Lejre in Denmark a "Centre for Historical-Archaeological Research and Communication". Here archaeologists do live experiments like fx. building iron age houses as authentically as possible, families live iron age lives in the houses, and one day a house is burned down and left in ruins for many years, to be excavated after even many more years and compared to real iron age house excavations. The same thing is done at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, building as authentic as possible Viking ships and crossing the North Sea with a hundred men.
I think we are doing a bit of the same here with the historical Hnefatafl game. A group of experienced players try out in live games various variations and combinations of game rules known from historical sources, sometimes clearly, sometimes not completely clearly described. If a rule set turns out to work really well in such skilled games, we are on the right track. Whereas rule sets which does not work really well, are probably not valid (but can have been used in "unskilled" games between players of unequal strength).
Imagine that when a Viking had some spare time in the evening, he would certainly not turn on the TV like modern man does - he would go visit some neighbours, keep up the good relations so that they'd not kill him but he'd have their friendly support in serious situations, he'd have a good talk, tell and listen to good stories, and they'd have a good game or two of Hnefatafl or other board games for pastime.
Now, these people, using this board game for hundreds upon hundreds of years, would not come out with a rules set that doesn't work!
Neil N. Peterson in his student's research paper on Hnefatafl from 2001 gives many good considerations on the Hnefatafl rules. He and a team (fellow students?) did a series of test games using various rules variants, but an important source of error was that the test players were not experienced. Another source of error is that the team was only a few players, and the testing of variants amounted to just 48 games altogether.
aagenielsen.dk also gives some considerations on the Hnefatafl rules.
I think we are doing a bit of the same here with the historical Hnefatafl game. A group of experienced players try out in live games various variations and combinations of game rules known from historical sources, sometimes clearly, sometimes not completely clearly described. If a rule set turns out to work really well in such skilled games, we are on the right track. Whereas rule sets which does not work really well, are probably not valid (but can have been used in "unskilled" games between players of unequal strength).
Imagine that when a Viking had some spare time in the evening, he would certainly not turn on the TV like modern man does - he would go visit some neighbours, keep up the good relations so that they'd not kill him but he'd have their friendly support in serious situations, he'd have a good talk, tell and listen to good stories, and they'd have a good game or two of Hnefatafl or other board games for pastime.
Now, these people, using this board game for hundreds upon hundreds of years, would not come out with a rules set that doesn't work!
Neil N. Peterson in his student's research paper on Hnefatafl from 2001 gives many good considerations on the Hnefatafl rules. He and a team (fellow students?) did a series of test games using various rules variants, but an important source of error was that the test players were not experienced. Another source of error is that the team was only a few players, and the testing of variants amounted to just 48 games altogether.
aagenielsen.dk also gives some considerations on the Hnefatafl rules.