How, you might ask. Let me tell you a story about how I came up with this idea. Scroll down for the TL;DR.
Like many other Senet aficionados, I have been thinking about what could be done about the endgame where you go from strategic blocking to pure luck regarding how the sticks fall in order to get your last stone off the board.
It doesn't quite make sense, though it is also a great catch-up mechanism since one player could get 4 of 5 stones off the board before the other one gets any off, and then their last stone can just get stuck, either falling into the water or being pushed into the water or not even landing on the House of Beauty (field 26), just going back and forth, until the other player gets all of their 5 stones out. This has happened to me at least once, and it's incredibly frustrating. It doesn't reward the blocking and strategy that led to getting 4 of 5 stones out first. It does negate some of the luck the leading player had with their throws, however.
So how can we reduce some of the luck, and make Senet slightly more strategic, and especially do something about the end game?
This idea came to me now after commenting on another thread, where I pointed out that both Ludo/Parcheesi and Backgammon are probably descendants of Senet (at least in spirit, if not historically). Both of these involve blocking like in Senet, and they also involve sending the opponents' pieces back to the start if you land on them. In Senet this is (fortunately) not possible, as sending pieces back slows down the game A LOT.
However, one of those two modern games is notorious for the exact same problem that Senet has - it's totally luck-based when it comes to getting your last piece into the goal. Yes, I'm looking at you, Ludo/Parcheesi. Backgammon also has a similar issue, but it's not as bad. And why is that? Because it has 2 dice, not just 1 die like Ludo/Parcheesi.
Both Ludo/Parcheesi and Backgammon use 6-sided dice (D6), and the distribution of outcomes is symmetric. With one D6 it's an flat 1/6 for each outcome, and you have no choice since you get only one value to pick from. This is why Ludo/Parcheesi becomes so frustrating at the end. In Backgammon, adding two D6 gives a bell curve of 36 outcomes, which is visualized on the board of the game Can't Stop where you also add two D6. That bell curve is key to Backgammon strategy.
Now for my bright idea. I was contemplating making my own physical copy of Senet, and realized that it would be difficult to make proper throwing sticks (nice wooden Senet games are very expensive, and this is one of the reasons). The sticks need to be perfectly shaped and aligned in order to give a properly random result. But even then, the way you throw/drop/let go of the sticks can greatly affect the outcome.
So I thought about using dice instead. The 4 throwing sticks in Senet have 2 faces, so they can be described as D2, or binary values if you will. And like a 4-digit binary number has 16 values (from 0 to F in hexadecimal notation), adding four D2 gives a bell curve of 16 different outcomes. Unlike in Backgammon and Can't Stop where you can use each die of the ones you pick individually, in Senet you only use the sum of the dice.
Therefore we can replace rolling four D2 by rolling a custom 16-sided die (D16). Substituting the zero with a five, we get 16 possible outcomes for how many fields you can move a stone, and these would be the values on the 16 faces:
- 4 ones
- 6 twos
- 4 threes
- 1 four
- 1 five
That distribution is key to the strategic choices of playing Senet. Also, note that substituting the zero with a five makes the distribution of outcomes in Senet asymmetric. Even if we kept it a zero, it would still give the same kind of bell curve as in Backgammon and Can't Stop, with the associated strategic options. But with the five it gets even more interesting.
As it happens, I do not have any 16-sided dice lying around the house. But I do have 8-sided dice (D8). Why not use a pair of custom D8, as their 16 faces could represent all 16 possibilities? Both dice could have 2 faces with a one, 3 faces with a two and 2 faces with a three. The last face would be a four on one die and a five on the other die.
Well, it's obvious why that wouldn't work. If you roll two D8 you will get two outcomes, and you can pick only one. Even if you can make a custom D16 to replace adding four D2, or a custom D36 to replace adding two D6, two dice can never replace one.
And that's when I had my eureka moment.
Using two dice will increase the strategic options in Senet, just like in Backgammon. The key reason why Backgammon is more fun than Ludo/Parcheesi is because 2 dice give you a choice of what to do. Just like you can pick different combinations in Can't Stop, you have different ways to combine the dice in Backgammon.
Ludo/Parcheesi mitigates the luck from having a single random outcome from a D6 by letting you pick which piece to move, and that sort of works until you have one left - just like in Senet with its custom D16.
And not only will using two D8 help by letting you have two options for each turn when you have just that last stone left, but they will also give players more options for how to move their stones throughout the game.
A basic advice for game design is to avoid special end-game rules, in this case for when a player has only one stone left. If the rules cause a problem with the end-game, tacking on some exception for that case is far from ideal. My proposal solves that.
By exchanging the 4 throwing sticks (four D2 = one D16) with two D8 where you get an option to pick which of the two outcomes you want to use on your turn, we don't need to change any rules at all.
Implementing this on BGA should be pretty easy (I'm not a programmer, but I imagine it would be) since you roll the two D8 and then click on the one you want to use, just like in Can't Stop.
And it should also be easy to make "Use two D8" an alternative option to "Use four throwing sticks" (which should obviously be the default setting, given the historical context).
I'll make a change request (a.k.a. bug report) and post the link below. If you like it, please upvote!
Like many other Senet aficionados, I have been thinking about what could be done about the endgame where you go from strategic blocking to pure luck regarding how the sticks fall in order to get your last stone off the board.
It doesn't quite make sense, though it is also a great catch-up mechanism since one player could get 4 of 5 stones off the board before the other one gets any off, and then their last stone can just get stuck, either falling into the water or being pushed into the water or not even landing on the House of Beauty (field 26), just going back and forth, until the other player gets all of their 5 stones out. This has happened to me at least once, and it's incredibly frustrating. It doesn't reward the blocking and strategy that led to getting 4 of 5 stones out first. It does negate some of the luck the leading player had with their throws, however.
So how can we reduce some of the luck, and make Senet slightly more strategic, and especially do something about the end game?
This idea came to me now after commenting on another thread, where I pointed out that both Ludo/Parcheesi and Backgammon are probably descendants of Senet (at least in spirit, if not historically). Both of these involve blocking like in Senet, and they also involve sending the opponents' pieces back to the start if you land on them. In Senet this is (fortunately) not possible, as sending pieces back slows down the game A LOT.
However, one of those two modern games is notorious for the exact same problem that Senet has - it's totally luck-based when it comes to getting your last piece into the goal. Yes, I'm looking at you, Ludo/Parcheesi. Backgammon also has a similar issue, but it's not as bad. And why is that? Because it has 2 dice, not just 1 die like Ludo/Parcheesi.
Both Ludo/Parcheesi and Backgammon use 6-sided dice (D6), and the distribution of outcomes is symmetric. With one D6 it's an flat 1/6 for each outcome, and you have no choice since you get only one value to pick from. This is why Ludo/Parcheesi becomes so frustrating at the end. In Backgammon, adding two D6 gives a bell curve of 36 outcomes, which is visualized on the board of the game Can't Stop where you also add two D6. That bell curve is key to Backgammon strategy.
Now for my bright idea. I was contemplating making my own physical copy of Senet, and realized that it would be difficult to make proper throwing sticks (nice wooden Senet games are very expensive, and this is one of the reasons). The sticks need to be perfectly shaped and aligned in order to give a properly random result. But even then, the way you throw/drop/let go of the sticks can greatly affect the outcome.
So I thought about using dice instead. The 4 throwing sticks in Senet have 2 faces, so they can be described as D2, or binary values if you will. And like a 4-digit binary number has 16 values (from 0 to F in hexadecimal notation), adding four D2 gives a bell curve of 16 different outcomes. Unlike in Backgammon and Can't Stop where you can use each die of the ones you pick individually, in Senet you only use the sum of the dice.
Therefore we can replace rolling four D2 by rolling a custom 16-sided die (D16). Substituting the zero with a five, we get 16 possible outcomes for how many fields you can move a stone, and these would be the values on the 16 faces:
- 4 ones
- 6 twos
- 4 threes
- 1 four
- 1 five
That distribution is key to the strategic choices of playing Senet. Also, note that substituting the zero with a five makes the distribution of outcomes in Senet asymmetric. Even if we kept it a zero, it would still give the same kind of bell curve as in Backgammon and Can't Stop, with the associated strategic options. But with the five it gets even more interesting.
As it happens, I do not have any 16-sided dice lying around the house. But I do have 8-sided dice (D8). Why not use a pair of custom D8, as their 16 faces could represent all 16 possibilities? Both dice could have 2 faces with a one, 3 faces with a two and 2 faces with a three. The last face would be a four on one die and a five on the other die.
Well, it's obvious why that wouldn't work. If you roll two D8 you will get two outcomes, and you can pick only one. Even if you can make a custom D16 to replace adding four D2, or a custom D36 to replace adding two D6, two dice can never replace one.
And that's when I had my eureka moment.
Using two dice will increase the strategic options in Senet, just like in Backgammon. The key reason why Backgammon is more fun than Ludo/Parcheesi is because 2 dice give you a choice of what to do. Just like you can pick different combinations in Can't Stop, you have different ways to combine the dice in Backgammon.
Ludo/Parcheesi mitigates the luck from having a single random outcome from a D6 by letting you pick which piece to move, and that sort of works until you have one left - just like in Senet with its custom D16.
What I initially thought of as a problem with regard to making my own physical copy of Senet might just be what the rules-doctor ordered for improving the playing experience.TL;DR: If you roll two custom D8 instead of throwing 4 sticks (equal to rolling one custom D16), you will have two values to choose between!
And not only will using two D8 help by letting you have two options for each turn when you have just that last stone left, but they will also give players more options for how to move their stones throughout the game.
A basic advice for game design is to avoid special end-game rules, in this case for when a player has only one stone left. If the rules cause a problem with the end-game, tacking on some exception for that case is far from ideal. My proposal solves that.
By exchanging the 4 throwing sticks (four D2 = one D16) with two D8 where you get an option to pick which of the two outcomes you want to use on your turn, we don't need to change any rules at all.
Implementing this on BGA should be pretty easy (I'm not a programmer, but I imagine it would be) since you roll the two D8 and then click on the one you want to use, just like in Can't Stop.
And it should also be easy to make "Use two D8" an alternative option to "Use four throwing sticks" (which should obviously be the default setting, given the historical context).
I'll make a change request (a.k.a. bug report) and post the link below. If you like it, please upvote!