And let's not forget that for millennia before that, basically all games were either chess variants or races. Wait, the Goose Game was also a race game...
Because Lovecraft is a recognizable fantasy identity with a sizable following and it falls into the public domain. That's it. Why are so many games about dungeons and dragons? Because D&D has been very influential over the decades, and the theme sells. Why are so many games about some form of European colonialism or something, it weirds out people who don't play them? Because wargamers created contemporary board games on the American side of the industry, including D&D, and gamifying every single combat experience (not just domination-style 4x and 17xx style games) was part of that, and since they were there first, that's what sold. It's just a marketing thing. If you've ever tried to design games and sell them, it's very hard to sell new concepts. That's all changed with the age of Kickstarter and crowd funding. Stonemaier Games, one of the greatest new publishers, understands that taking risks on new themes is a good thing. Take Wingspan, the first widely published board game to be designed and illustrated completely by women, and it's about birds. It's also notable to be one of the few games to dare to use pastels as the prime colors of the components. (the only other I can think of is, oddly enough, Buck Rogers).. But that's an entirely different conversation. :)
If you like history, you’ll like this. If you like board games, you’ll like this. If you like both history and board games, make sure your door is locked before hitting play.
Holy crap, Quinns. If you wanted to do an ongoing series about the history behind boardgames, I would gleefully watch each and every one. This stuff is fascinating to me.
Irving Finkel playing the Royal game of Ur with Quinns would be the ultimate SUSD video of all time!!! As an aside the Royal game of Ur is phenomenal that I would highly recommend anyone playing, I've never met a person from 6 to 60 who hasn't loved it! having spent a career in archaeology this was a great lecture in which I learnt some fun new things thanks.
I was going to ask about UR but you beat me to it...about two years in the past. :P It's highly addictive. My wife and I have been playing it for some time and is it VERY good.
Great talk! I am from Spain and the "Goose game" ("El juego de la oca" here) Is still played, it's the classic grandma game. You don't double your move. You move to the next square with a goose on it throw the dice again. In fact there is a phrase that you say when that happens "de oca a oca y tiro por que me toca" which is something like "From goose to goose and I throw because it's my turn". At least since my grandma's times its been played like that.
And as someone from México, even if it isn't as traditional as Snakes and Ladders and couple other more, Oca is still a very dear board game... I remember when the reruns of the TV Show of that board game was transmitted by TVE, those were good times.
Oh I remember playing it as a kid. I’m german. I vividly remember being in the lead, just a few jumps to the finish... and then I landed on death.... and I went back to the start... I think I cried and never played that game again.
@@TheRatedOniChannel Was that the show where they had a guy bodypainting a naked woman in one spot? I remember never missing the show when they transmitted it in PR because of that.
The game of the goose also has the honor of having the highest index of "house rules" ever seen. As it was the quintessential initiatory game in Spain, the boards never brought a manual and that led to it being played slightly differently in each place or home.
Yeah, the same goes for The Netherlands. I think almost everyone has played some old fashioned Ganzenbord ("board of the goose") as a child. In the dutch version there is a space called 'the well' where you got stuck (i.e. didn't get to play) until one of the other players passed the well space. Especially frustrating when you already were coming in last.
I just had a flashback of all the little rhymes depending on the tile like "De oca en oca y tiro porque me toca" (From goose to goose, and I'll toss the dice again cos it's my go)
No mention of Go? Some highlights: 16:25: Monopoly's auction rule actually makes it a game. 16:36: We are actually playing Tic Tac Toe wrong. The pieces were originally allowed to move. 17:33: "(...) when the Romans conquered the world in self-defense, as historians like to say." 25:55: Ultimate Shogui 28:07: A very interesting Ancient Greece story on Backgammon. 30:09: In 1452, a priest managed to give a sermon on Backgammon so convincing that the population of Nuremburg burnt 3k+ Backgammon boards. 31:33: The broken goose game, played in Europe for more than 400 years. The precursor to the boredom of Monopoly. 34:17: The world's first casino. 34:48: Casino notes on how to focus the client's vision on the game. 41:14: The origins of the Game of Life. The Final Bibliography: - Tristan Donovan - It's All a Game - He also has a good book on the history of videogames called replay. - Ian Living Stone and James Wallis - Board Games in 100 Moves: 8000 years of play - Catherine Perry Hargrave - A History of Playing Cards - David Schwarz - Roll the Bones: A History of Gambling
perfect talk, the only thing I missed is at least a mention of wargames which were popular in high nobility and martial education as a battle simulator
Absolutely! I was saving that for the history of D&D. There's a really nice onramp going from the first war simulations to modern wargames to D&D, as outlined in Jon Peterson's 'Playing at the World'. - Quinns
“So you want to play one board game to get through this quarantine?” “Yeah” “Like War of the Ring, Twilight Imperium... or?” “Um...” *glances at **26:02* “yeah.. yeah something like that”
31:04 in Italy we still play the goose game and it's still called as shown in the video: "Gioco dell'oca", it's a game for small kids, it helps them to learn to count.
Excellent talk, only regret is that he didn't mention go/weiqi/baduk. I know later he made a review about it, but the fact that go is missing from a boardgame history talk makes me feel as if something big is missing.
I love this, but I did want to point out the the game in the image when he talks about Senet is not actually Senet. Many Senet game boxes had Senet on one side and another game on the other side. Senet had 30 squares, sometimes with a unique hieroglyphic in each square. They don't know the name of the other one, but since it has 20 squares, they call it the "Game of 20 squares." It's thought to be closely related to the Royal Game of Ur. Irving Finkel found modern Jews from a village in India still playing it, brought with them from Babylon thousands of years ago. It's that game that appears in the photo when he talks about Senet. Both games were like backgammon, and played with dice sticks, but it was Senet he was describing while showing the other game.
"things were great back in the day before these video games and tik toks. Imagine back in the day when people just played board games, wouldn't that be amazing?" * People playing backgammon while a man who was forcibly castrated in the past is now dying on a stake outside looking at his own skin *
4 ปีที่แล้ว +34
Amazing presentation! I absolutely love when people take board games further and begin to study their history and their role in society and culture. More of these as well, please. :D
31:35 Not true : there is a clever provision made on the board to prevent winning with a 9 at the start. If you roll a 6-3, you land on space 26, and if you roll a 5-4, you land on space 53. And I can assure you that space 58 (Death) will take care of you more often than you think, since you can encounter it on the way up but also on the way down. Since you have to roll the exact number to reach space 63, if you roll more, you go down accordingly. So, with 2 dice, I can assure you that when you reach one of the last spaces and roll a big number, there's a good chance that you'll land on 58 !
I’ve played backgammon for more than 40 years and there is an energy that you bring to the game that can determine a win, like a will, you will the dice! Tarot cards were one e a game!
Yes! I mean, nowadays we have "optimal" ways to move the checkers around and in match games the weight and importance of using the doubling cube. However even so, the feel of getting that "joker" roll to win it all is just soooo good. Same with bad roles that, at least myself, end up tilted lol.
As someone who worked in a game store i have vietnam flashbacks of extemporaneously explaining a complicated card game and a customer going: “oh, so it’s like monopoly?”
everything in and about this presentation is just amazing: the actual informatiob, the way it is collected and compiled, but foremost the sparkingly brilliant, quick, witty and funny spirit it is presented with. ine if the best talks i ve encountered in 33 years! thank you!
This year in our bachelors program on visual communication in early modern and 19th century someone actually wrote a paper about goose games and how they were used to represent history. It was surprisingly interesting!
A lot of people note that Goose Game is still played in Spain; a boardgame collection I got in Denmark produced in the 80s or 90s had the Goose Game in it... And Nine Men's Morris!
Well done Quinns! I would be so worried talking in front of a large crowd but you did it and did a great job! Very interesting talk, thank you. I would love to hear more.
Such a fun & informative talk by Quinn. It's a shame that he had such limited time considering Quinn appeared to be having fun with it. Thank you for this overlooked, yet delightful trip through time.
This is a Great video, but I must say as a teacher myself that I really love running gags, and during that first pre-historic picture I would have said “geese running wild” to start the Goose gag, and than in the end say “and that’s how far we have gone, finally overcoming that whole bird theme to every gam… oh Gos what’s that???” And the last slide would be Wingspan 😂
The Game Of Ur, at last! Tom Scott has played this with Irving Finkel if I recall correctly Edit: memory did serve, th-cam.com/video/WZskjLq040I/w-d-xo.html
I was just thinking that Egyptian game looked a bit too much like the royal game of Ur for them to not be connected somehow. If they are not the same then one can only speculate which one predates the other. Mesopotamia predated the Egyptian civilisation to be sure. But the also coexisted. Does anyone here know?
I'm not sure what the setup is like at SHUX but from watching this, investing in a teleprompter would make for a more dynamic lecture. Other than that, Fantastic talk!
I think you confused chaturanga and chaturaji. Chaturaji is the 4 player game that you described. Chaturanga is the 2 player version that, if I’m not mistaken, came after chaturaji and then became chess. I could be mistaken.
Awesome video as always! Very insightful. Growing up with my iranian family, ive had my grandfather teach me backgammon in different ways trying to teach each aspect of it from 3 years onwards. How to throw dice, movements, defense attack and when to be aggresive or humble (cheat).etc. But I wish i could go back and tell him "you know there was this princess once in Persia... made this poor eneuch look at his own skin after losing" he would have been shook. Anyway lovely and insightful!
The Victorians also did Reversi, which later became Othello. It's about winning space. As I suppose the ancient game of Go is, surprised that wasn't mentioned.
Really liked the presentation!!! Always awesome content! I did think the transition from the mancaula board to African societies was quite akward. If I may recommend an alternative phrasing, " We do not know the role of these mauncala boards for pre historic humans beyond entertainment. However we can glean some understanding by looking at mauncala style boards and their usage in various cultures today. For example here we see the 'blah' people who use their version of a board depicted here to 'blah' "
the 9 men's morris (or ''Mica'' (pronounced like meetza) ) is still played today in Serbia and I'd say the whole of Balkans. It's usually on the bottom face of a cheap set of a kid's board games which most often includes Parcheesi/Sorry, Backgammon, Chess, Checkers and perhaps other classic games
"The goose game" is quite popular in Spain as a childs game. The rules for. The geese are different though. When you end your movement in a goose you teleport to the next one and roll the dice again "de Oca a Oca y tiro porque me toca". It kind of takes the place of snakes and ladders in Spain, and is as bad... But pure luck games are easy to understand for children so.....
I am a huge fan of alternate chess games. Shogi is amazing (he didn't even touch on the stealing units), as is the two vs two bughouse chess. Though one of my favorites has to be Janggi, the korean version of the Chinese Xiangqi. It throws in the fun new rule that pawns can move sideways. You will never fear a pawn as much as you will when they are essentially kings.
Top-notch work as always, Quinns! The intro really set the tone. Incidentally, I feel you’d be doing us all a disservice if you didn’t title your memoirs “Blood, Sex & Jokes”.
In Spain the game of the goose is probably one of the most played boardgames, often sharing a double sided board with Parchís (parchesi/Ludo). It's mostly snakes&ladders but with rhymes ("from goose and goose and I throw because it's my turn" or "from bridge to bridge and I roll my dice because I'm carried by the current"). But only three tiles make you go back, and one makes you lose your turn. But yeah, it's talisman but without any choice. The main excuse for the game is that is often used to teach kids to count (and to lose). But I'm one of those nerds who gave it a terrible score in bgg (as it has nothing of what I consider a boardgame, as you literally have to make no choices). It was hard for me to gave it a worse score than the one I gave to Uno, as I will probably play El juego de la Oca... and I will continue to ignore the existence of Uno if I can.
Great talk. I loved it. I've seen a few TH-cam videos about the origins of games. These things fascinate me too. Awesome to see you give a talk about it.
I've got a little tidbit to add :-) In Spanish, the expression 'estar a dos velas' means 'to be completely broke'. Literally translated, it means "to be on two candles" - having to go to the 'banca'(bank) with two candles if you were out of money. Aaand the Spanish have got a gesture to go with it (index and middle finger pointing at the eyes and going down) which ties into the gesture for having your nose full of snot in ways I haven't been able to figure out yet.
I should point out that the origin you gave for chess (it originally being a four player game) is rejected by all serious chess historians: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%80%93Forbes_theory. What you've got pictured is not chaturanga (which is believed to be the precursor of chess, but is only a two player game), but instead a related game called chaturaji. EDIT: According to chaturaji's Wikipedia page, the theory was rejected in 1913, so whichever source you got that from is very out of date...
sorry but you need a better reference. Wiki isn't a good source. Edit: to add, i'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that wiki isn't really a good source for these things. Now some of the sources cited by wiki can, and i do mean can be useful. :)
@@elfinstuff8934 bullshit. As long as it's self edited and not reviewed it's lacks any standing as a resource for citation. There is a reason universities won't allow Wikipedia to be used as a citation.
Great talk, "Ethics and Geese" is a bit old hat though, to get in to the hobby I would recommend an introducktory game of "Moral Mallard" before moving on to "Aesop's Eiderdown" which has a quacking base campaign.
There is a glaring omission of GO. I am befuddled as to why you chose to omit this, seeing that you are generally a thorough individual. Its like leaving out Gamma World or the Empire of the Petal Throne for RPG's.
I just wanted to help you out (I teach history), I'm watching this with one of my middle school classes - there is no ZERO BC. There is 1 BC and then there is 1 AD. Scales of Time in historical language are not the same as math. There is no zero. There is the year before Jesus Christ was born, and then the 1st year of his birth. We cannot be zero when we are born. A 30 year old is in their 31st year of life. A newborn is in their 1st year of life. Great job though all around on this documentary. It is the best one I've found online by far! All the best, Joe
Amazing talk! And I have seen that tiny Senet board in person at the king tut exhibit. It is absolutely adorable and pocket-sized! Would love a replica for the cuteness alone.
Children still play the game of the goose in Italy. Snakes and Ladders is not as popular, so usually when I'm talking about game design with Italian friends, when I would mention snakes and ladders in English, I would usually mention the game of the goose in Italian instead, since it has the same problems.
In Spain there are still young people playing goose game and perhaps this explains their success over time: We played a version called "oca-limocho". The "calimocho" is a very popular drink, especially in the north, made up of wine and cocacola. In the "oca-limocho" game there are special rules to drink or make others drink as punishment.
My ears start bleeding early on work the assumption that prehistory was gritty and tough. Nomadic tribes often had less food scarcity and more free time than settled ones, simply by virtue that they went where the food was.
Part 2: Go - th-cam.com/video/RRBjN8empIs/w-d-xo.html
At 12:15 Quinns claims that the mural is "huge", but without the use of a Standard Reference Pear I just don't know if I can take his word for it.
Dom Guilfoyle have that same problem w/pornography. 🤷🏻♂️
@@Wallach_a Your post was posted 2 hours before the comment you replied to. Wat?
I believe that the modern standard is the banana
Modern board gamers: Why does every second game have to be about zombies, or Cthulhu, or zombie Cthulhu?
Medieval game makers: Hold my waterfowl.
And let's not forget that for millennia before that, basically all games were either chess variants or races.
Wait, the Goose Game was also a race game...
Verily.
Because Lovecraft is a recognizable fantasy identity with a sizable following and it falls into the public domain. That's it. Why are so many games about dungeons and dragons? Because D&D has been very influential over the decades, and the theme sells.
Why are so many games about some form of European colonialism or something, it weirds out people who don't play them? Because wargamers created contemporary board games on the American side of the industry, including D&D, and gamifying every single combat experience (not just domination-style 4x and 17xx style games) was part of that, and since they were there first, that's what sold.
It's just a marketing thing.
If you've ever tried to design games and sell them, it's very hard to sell new concepts. That's all changed with the age of Kickstarter and crowd funding. Stonemaier Games, one of the greatest new publishers, understands that taking risks on new themes is a good thing.
Take Wingspan, the first widely published board game to be designed and illustrated completely by women, and it's about birds. It's also notable to be one of the few games to dare to use pastels as the prime colors of the components. (the only other I can think of is, oddly enough, Buck Rogers).. But that's an entirely different conversation. :)
If you like history, you’ll like this. If you like board games, you’ll like this. If you like both history and board games, make sure your door is locked before hitting play.
I may of exploded with joy
@@furretthefuzzynoodle3896 I think you exploded with bad grammar lol j/k
Or watch it at truly late night so no one can hear you watch it.
I'm in max volume though 😂
Holy crap, Quinns. If you wanted to do an ongoing series about the history behind boardgames, I would gleefully watch each and every one. This stuff is fascinating to me.
I would take time out of my already very busy schedule to watch that. I have to listen while I’m at work, but I would actively watch that series.
100% agree
Irving Finkel playing the Royal game of Ur with Quinns would be the ultimate SUSD video of all time!!!
As an aside the Royal game of Ur is phenomenal that I would highly recommend anyone playing, I've never met a person from 6 to 60 who hasn't loved it!
having spent a career in archaeology this was a great lecture in which I learnt some fun new things thanks.
I highly enjoyed Tom Scott and Irving Finkel playing it.
th-cam.com/video/WZskjLq040I/w-d-xo.html
@@robindevoh Thanks. I've been meaning to watch that for ages, perfect follow after this.
My dad and I made an Ur board a few years ago, it's addictive!
Our household loves UR. It's one that suits all ages and all abilities
I was going to ask about UR but you beat me to it...about two years in the past. :P
It's highly addictive. My wife and I have been playing it for some time and is it VERY good.
Great talk!
I am from Spain and the "Goose game" ("El juego de la oca" here) Is still played, it's the classic grandma game. You don't double your move. You move to the next square with a goose on it throw the dice again. In fact there is a phrase that you say when that happens "de oca a oca y tiro por que me toca" which is something like "From goose to goose and I throw because it's my turn". At least since my grandma's times its been played like that.
And as someone from México, even if it isn't as traditional as Snakes and Ladders and couple other more, Oca is still a very dear board game... I remember when the reruns of the TV Show of that board game was transmitted by TVE, those were good times.
Oh I remember playing it as a kid.
I’m german.
I vividly remember being in the lead, just a few jumps to the finish... and then I landed on death.... and I went back to the start...
I think I cried and never played that game again.
@@TheRatedOniChannel Was that the show where they had a guy bodypainting a naked woman in one spot? I remember never missing the show when they transmitted it in PR because of that.
The game of the goose also has the honor of having the highest index of "house rules" ever seen. As it was the quintessential initiatory game in Spain, the boards never brought a manual and that led to it being played slightly differently in each place or home.
Yeah, the same goes for The Netherlands. I think almost everyone has played some old fashioned Ganzenbord ("board of the goose") as a child. In the dutch version there is a space called 'the well' where you got stuck (i.e. didn't get to play) until one of the other players passed the well space. Especially frustrating when you already were coming in last.
The Goose Game is still played and quite popular in Spain today, it's called "La Oca", literally meaning "the goose" in Spanish.
“Ganzenbord” (the goose plate/board) in dutch
@@ilovepudding7873 Ye its more of a kids game, I always thought Candyland was the same game as Ganzenbord, maybe I am wrong though.
I am happy that we didn't lost this magnificient game. People can be bored of playing Monopoly sometime!
In Spain La Oca was also the name of a contest tv show that was basically the human size version of the board game
I just had a flashback of all the little rhymes depending on the tile like "De oca en oca y tiro porque me toca" (From goose to goose, and I'll toss the dice again cos it's my go)
No mention of Go?
Some highlights:
16:25: Monopoly's auction rule actually makes it a game.
16:36: We are actually playing Tic Tac Toe wrong. The pieces were originally allowed to move.
17:33: "(...) when the Romans conquered the world in self-defense, as historians like to say."
25:55: Ultimate Shogui
28:07: A very interesting Ancient Greece story on Backgammon.
30:09: In 1452, a priest managed to give a sermon on Backgammon so convincing that the population of Nuremburg burnt 3k+ Backgammon boards.
31:33: The broken goose game, played in Europe for more than 400 years. The precursor to the boredom of Monopoly.
34:17: The world's first casino.
34:48: Casino notes on how to focus the client's vision on the game.
41:14: The origins of the Game of Life.
The Final Bibliography:
- Tristan Donovan - It's All a Game
- He also has a good book on the history of videogames called replay.
- Ian Living Stone and James Wallis - Board Games in 100 Moves: 8000 years of play
- Catherine Perry Hargrave - A History of Playing Cards
- David Schwarz - Roll the Bones: A History of Gambling
Losers have “works cited”. Winners have “books that I mercilessly robbed for this”.
Masters have
“Trust me, bro.”
You're both wrong, "Works consulted" is the king of academic writing.
perfect talk, the only thing I missed is at least a mention of wargames which were popular in high nobility and martial education as a battle simulator
Absolutely! I was saving that for the history of D&D. There's a really nice onramp going from the first war simulations to modern wargames to D&D, as outlined in Jon Peterson's 'Playing at the World'. - Quinns
“So you want to play one board game to get through this quarantine?”
“Yeah”
“Like War of the Ring, Twilight Imperium... or?”
“Um...” *glances at **26:02* “yeah.. yeah something like that”
31:04 in Italy we still play the goose game and it's still called as shown in the video: "Gioco dell'oca", it's a game for small kids, it helps them to learn to count.
Wife: wouldn't it be better to get off TH-cam and do something constructive?
Me: shhhh I'm watching a lecture
Wife: oh sorry
Oh, to sit in a crowd of people and listen to a man talk.
Yeah, my first thought was "Oh, that's quite impressive how they faked this to seem like there's an audience."
just gotta make sure you shut up when you sit down.
Yeah, I legit thought it was a skit
Gordon Wiley Well, I was in the audience, and I am real...
So is it a real audience?? I can't tell if it's real or fake... it seems real, the audience reacts at all the right times!
Get this man a TED talk.
No.
26:50 *cracks knuckles TIME TO WRITE A SHOGIRAP!
Please do. I didn't know I needed that in my life till now. 😂
"Ethics and Geese" is my new favorite intelectual proprerty, can't wait to recive the second edition manual.
It was kickstarted in 2017, so any day now
Excellent talk, only regret is that he didn't mention go/weiqi/baduk. I know later he made a review about it, but the fact that go is missing from a boardgame history talk makes me feel as if something big is missing.
100% huge miss
I love this, but I did want to point out the the game in the image when he talks about Senet is not actually Senet. Many Senet game boxes had Senet on one side and another game on the other side. Senet had 30 squares, sometimes with a unique hieroglyphic in each square. They don't know the name of the other one, but since it has 20 squares, they call it the "Game of 20 squares." It's thought to be closely related to the Royal Game of Ur. Irving Finkel found modern Jews from a village in India still playing it, brought with them from Babylon thousands of years ago.
It's that game that appears in the photo when he talks about Senet. Both games were like backgammon, and played with dice sticks, but it was Senet he was describing while showing the other game.
Amazing how Quinns can pack a little over 60 minutes of content into 43 minutes.
No wonder SU&SD vids are so informative and entertaining.!
39:42
"Or as I call it, Ethics and Geese"
That joke was way funnier than the audience gave you credit for.
I don't get it.
"things were great back in the day before these video games and tik toks. Imagine back in the day when people just played board games, wouldn't that be amazing?" * People playing backgammon while a man who was forcibly castrated in the past is now dying on a stake outside looking at his own skin *
Amazing presentation! I absolutely love when people take board games further and begin to study their history and their role in society and culture. More of these as well, please. :D
31:35 Not true : there is a clever provision made on the board to prevent winning with a 9 at the start. If you roll a 6-3, you land on space 26, and if you roll a 5-4, you land on space 53. And I can assure you that space 58 (Death) will take care of you more often than you think, since you can encounter it on the way up but also on the way down. Since you have to roll the exact number to reach space 63, if you roll more, you go down accordingly. So, with 2 dice, I can assure you that when you reach one of the last spaces and roll a big number, there's a good chance that you'll land on 58 !
I'd just finished watching the video of the Wavelength stream and thought to myself "aww, I've run out of new SU&SD to watch". Marvellous timing :)
I’ve played backgammon for more than 40 years and there is an energy that you bring to the game that can determine a win, like a will, you will the dice! Tarot cards were one e a game!
Yes! I mean, nowadays we have "optimal" ways to move the checkers around and in match games the weight and importance of using the doubling cube. However even so, the feel of getting that "joker" roll to win it all is just soooo good. Same with bad roles that, at least myself, end up tilted lol.
As someone who worked in a game store i have vietnam flashbacks of extemporaneously explaining a complicated card game and a customer going: “oh, so it’s like monopoly?”
Quinns! You totally missed hnefatafl! Such an important part of board game history!
I know, Im being a pedant, but I was sad you missed it.
its alright sir. your comment just made its part by introducing me to hnefatafl
Yeah I am both surprised it was missing and surprised yours is the only comment pointing its omission out.
It’s a crime!!!
everything in and about this presentation is just amazing: the actual informatiob, the way it is collected and compiled, but foremost the sparkingly brilliant, quick, witty and funny spirit it is presented with. ine if the best talks i ve encountered in 33 years! thank you!
I saw this and said to myself “this is what I’m watching today!”
This year in our bachelors program on visual communication in early modern and 19th century someone actually wrote a paper about goose games and how they were used to represent history. It was surprisingly interesting!
My grandparents have Goose, it's still popular in Holland!
The video we didn't know we wanted
A lot of people note that Goose Game is still played in Spain; a boardgame collection I got in Denmark produced in the 80s or 90s had the Goose Game in it... And Nine Men's Morris!
Well done Quinns! I would be so worried talking in front of a large crowd but you did it and did a great job! Very interesting talk, thank you. I would love to hear more.
Amazing talk!!! I feel humbled to think I am part of such ancient traditions. Iwill be reading all the books you metioned!
13:45 I've played Senet a lot, and it certainly isn't a bad game at all. It's engaging and almost always yields knuckle-biting finishes.
Senet might have been displaced by Ur as the oldest game, now that we've discovered how to play it.
Such a fun & informative talk by Quinn.
It's a shame that he had such limited time considering Quinn appeared to be having fun with it.
Thank you for this overlooked, yet delightful trip through time.
I'm reasonably certain I've played the game of the goose as a child. I remember there were goose meeple...
In polish language we still name dice game ''kości'' which means ''bones''.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO!!!! MANY THANKS, HUGS & GREETINGS!!!!
This is a Great video, but I must say as a teacher myself that I really love running gags, and during that first pre-historic picture I would have said “geese running wild” to start the Goose gag, and than in the end say “and that’s how far we have gone, finally overcoming that whole bird theme to every gam… oh Gos what’s that???” And the last slide would be Wingspan 😂
The Game Of Ur, at last! Tom Scott has played this with Irving Finkel if I recall correctly
Edit: memory did serve, th-cam.com/video/WZskjLq040I/w-d-xo.html
Yep, irving is just awesome
I was just thinking that Egyptian game looked a bit too much like the royal game of Ur for them to not be connected somehow. If they are not the same then one can only speculate which one predates the other. Mesopotamia predated the Egyptian civilisation to be sure. But the also coexisted. Does anyone here know?
Absolutely MORE of this. Amazingly well done.
So entertaining to watch, a topic that always fascinated me but I never bothered to look into it
This is brilliant Quinns!! You have elevated my boardgame appreciation to the highest level!!
Outstanding! Great job Quenns!
I'm not sure what the setup is like at SHUX but from watching this, investing in a teleprompter would make for a more dynamic lecture. Other than that, Fantastic talk!
Please please PLEASE do a talk on the histories of MTG and D&D
I think you confused chaturanga and chaturaji. Chaturaji is the 4 player game that you described. Chaturanga is the 2 player version that, if I’m not mistaken, came after chaturaji and then became chess. I could be mistaken.
Awesome video as always! Very insightful. Growing up with my iranian family, ive had my grandfather teach me backgammon in different ways trying to teach each aspect of it from 3 years onwards. How to throw dice, movements, defense attack and when to be aggresive or humble (cheat).etc.
But I wish i could go back and tell him "you know there was this princess once in Persia... made this poor eneuch look at his own skin after losing" he would have been shook. Anyway lovely and insightful!
The Victorians also did Reversi, which later became Othello. It's about winning space.
As I suppose the ancient game of Go is, surprised that wasn't mentioned.
Quinns is the kind of guy that everybody wants in his games group
This was super interesting! Thanks for sharing.
This was amazing. Damn this channel is a gem.
When a really good communicator talks about something they're super passionate about. _b
Really liked the presentation!!! Always awesome content! I did think the transition from the mancaula board to African societies was quite akward. If I may recommend an alternative phrasing, " We do not know the role of these mauncala boards for pre historic humans beyond entertainment. However we can glean some understanding by looking at mauncala style boards and their usage in various cultures today. For example here we see the 'blah' people who use their version of a board depicted here to 'blah' "
the 9 men's morris (or ''Mica'' (pronounced like meetza) ) is still played today in Serbia and I'd say the whole of Balkans. It's usually on the bottom face of a cheap set of a kid's board games which most often includes Parcheesi/Sorry, Backgammon, Chess, Checkers and perhaps other classic games
"The goose game" is quite popular in Spain as a childs game. The rules for. The geese are different though. When you end your movement in a goose you teleport to the next one and roll the dice again "de Oca a Oca y tiro porque me toca". It kind of takes the place of snakes and ladders in Spain, and is as bad... But pure luck games are easy to understand for children so.....
my favourite part was when quinns said "mousefull" instead of "mouthfull" and also the part about chess
23:36 You may not like it, but this is what peak chess looks like
This was fantastic!great talk about the history of board games.
I am a huge fan of alternate chess games. Shogi is amazing (he didn't even touch on the stealing units), as is the two vs two bughouse chess. Though one of my favorites has to be Janggi, the korean version of the Chinese Xiangqi. It throws in the fun new rule that pawns can move sideways. You will never fear a pawn as much as you will when they are essentially kings.
Ankle bones (shagai) are still used and played in Mongolia
We have a game of the goose at home. It's still widely known in the Netherlands as Ganzenbord.
Top-notch work as always, Quinns! The intro really set the tone.
Incidentally, I feel you’d be doing us all a disservice if you didn’t title your memoirs “Blood, Sex & Jokes”.
Here in the netherlands, i still have a Titled goose game board in my cabinet. We used to play it when i was younger
In Spain the game of the goose is probably one of the most played boardgames, often sharing a double sided board with Parchís (parchesi/Ludo). It's mostly snakes&ladders but with rhymes ("from goose and goose and I throw because it's my turn" or "from bridge to bridge and I roll my dice because I'm carried by the current"). But only three tiles make you go back, and one makes you lose your turn.
But yeah, it's talisman but without any choice. The main excuse for the game is that is often used to teach kids to count (and to lose).
But I'm one of those nerds who gave it a terrible score in bgg (as it has nothing of what I consider a boardgame, as you literally have to make no choices). It was hard for me to gave it a worse score than the one I gave to Uno, as I will probably play El juego de la Oca... and I will continue to ignore the existence of Uno if I can.
Mankala is so fun that dead people escapes the otherworld to play after death. Screw Ouija Boards, Mankala is the real deal
Great video! Would love more talks like this!!!
Great talk. I loved it. I've seen a few TH-cam videos about the origins of games. These things fascinate me too. Awesome to see you give a talk about it.
I've got a little tidbit to add :-) In Spanish, the expression 'estar a dos velas' means 'to be completely broke'. Literally translated, it means "to be on two candles" - having to go to the 'banca'(bank) with two candles if you were out of money. Aaand the Spanish have got a gesture to go with it (index and middle finger pointing at the eyes and going down) which ties into the gesture for having your nose full of snot in ways I haven't been able to figure out yet.
I absolutely loved this video, if you guys did a shut down and sit down boardgame symposium, i would watch it
I would absolutely love more history lessons like this!
Great video! Once I pressed play I thought "nope, I won't get through it", but it was worth every minute of watching.
Utterly brilliant! Love this.
I should point out that the origin you gave for chess (it originally being a four player game) is rejected by all serious chess historians: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%80%93Forbes_theory. What you've got pictured is not chaturanga (which is believed to be the precursor of chess, but is only a two player game), but instead a related game called chaturaji.
EDIT: According to chaturaji's Wikipedia page, the theory was rejected in 1913, so whichever source you got that from is very out of date...
sorry but you need a better reference. Wiki isn't a good source.
Edit: to add, i'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that wiki isn't really a good source for these things. Now some of the sources cited by wiki can, and i do mean can be useful. :)
@@davidmiller9485 Wiki is linked for the explanation. Scroll down to “references”. Sources galore. Wiki has come a FAR way from being unbelievable.
@@elfinstuff8934 bullshit. As long as it's self edited and not reviewed it's lacks any standing as a resource for citation. There is a reason universities won't allow Wikipedia to be used as a citation.
Great talk, "Ethics and Geese" is a bit old hat though, to get in to the hobby I would recommend an introducktory game of "Moral Mallard" before moving on to "Aesop's Eiderdown" which has a quacking base campaign.
I loved it! Please make more talks about the history of games and boardgames.
25:03 I think "Mad Queen" is a combo calque.
Vizier > Fool (Fou) > Queen. Hence "Mad" Queen.
There is a glaring omission of GO. I am befuddled as to why you chose to omit this, seeing that you are generally a thorough individual. Its like leaving out Gamma World or the Empire of the Petal Throne for RPG's.
I just wanted to help you out (I teach history), I'm watching this with one of my middle school classes - there is no ZERO BC. There is 1 BC and then there is 1 AD. Scales of Time in historical language are not the same as math. There is no zero. There is the year before Jesus Christ was born, and then the 1st year of his birth. We cannot be zero when we are born. A 30 year old is in their 31st year of life. A newborn is in their 1st year of life. Great job though all around on this documentary. It is the best one I've found online by far! All the best, Joe
Masterfully done. What a fascinating story to tell.
Amazing talk! And I have seen that tiny Senet board in person at the king tut exhibit. It is absolutely adorable and pocket-sized! Would love a replica for the cuteness alone.
It's been 2 years and I still mutter "tic-tac-mo-fo" to myself randomly.
This was absolutely amazing, Quinns did a great job!
Children still play the game of the goose in Italy. Snakes and Ladders is not as popular, so usually when I'm talking about game design with Italian friends, when I would mention snakes and ladders in English, I would usually mention the game of the goose in Italian instead, since it has the same problems.
This was fascinating! Thx Quinns!
In Spain there are still young people playing goose game and perhaps this explains their success over time: We played a version called "oca-limocho". The "calimocho" is a very popular drink, especially in the north, made up of wine and cocacola. In the "oca-limocho" game there are special rules to drink or make others drink as punishment.
Well 'punishment', if you play oca-limocho you want to get drunk.
@@wolff indeed and of course. 😂😂
Un saludo!!
My ears start bleeding early on work the assumption that prehistory was gritty and tough. Nomadic tribes often had less food scarcity and more free time than settled ones, simply by virtue that they went where the food was.
Thank you!!!
Boardgame history!! Brilliant. Do more of this pleeeeease!!
I’ve just noticed that Quinn looks like Steve Merchant in his final form 😂😂
Well i just watched this whole thing. Well done
I never knew Mill was actually called Nine Man's Morris. Excellent game.
What? No mention of Go, one of the oldest games in the world, or its cousin Gomuku, probably the most played game in the world?
I want a talk on everything you almost went out on tangent.
Yes! Those tangents are probably chock full of interesting stpries and hilarity.
Me: Ditches summer class lectures for this lecture
Amazing! Hoping for more of those in the future!