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So. @cheapassjames and @patrickrothfuss's #tak. It's an abstract strategy game, for those unfamiliar with it, and I... like it. Yeah. We'll go with "like" ...
Buckle in for a thread with some wide ranging thoughts. (Mild Kingkiller Chronicle spoilers ahead) 1/
Buckle in for a thread with some wide ranging thoughts. (Mild Kingkiller Chronicle spoilers ahead) 1/
I first encountered #tak the same way I imagine most people have, as the fictional game within an epic fantasy narrative (like Martin's "Cyvasse" or Williams's "Shent").
What first drew me was not @patrickrothfuss's description of Tak but of a character, Bredon, playing it. 2/
What first drew me was not @patrickrothfuss's description of Tak but of a character, Bredon, playing it. 2/
Bredon, an as yet unknown older man formerly (or not-so-formerly-but-now-more-subtly) involved in courtly intrigue bursts into the protagonist's room, #Tak board in hand, ready to teach and advise, in game and court alike. 3/
From the start #Tak, a two-player game with set rules that afford the possibility of five complete games in a sitting, is juxtaposed with the boundless and amorphous jockeying of courtiers.
I say juxtaposed with, but in the story the first takes place *within* the second. 4/
I say juxtaposed with, but in the story the first takes place *within* the second. 4/
This nesting is important: a game played with the purpose of coming to an end ( #Tak) within a game played for the purpose of continuing play (attaining and maintaining power in court).
Philosopher James P. Carse has a name for these things: #FiniteAndInfiniteGames. 5/
Philosopher James P. Carse has a name for these things: #FiniteAndInfiniteGames. 5/
But the distinction is still more subtle than that. ~60 pages after Bredon introduces #Tak to Kvothe (the protagonist), Kvothe claims after a match to "nearly" have won. Predictably Bredon proceeds to wipe the floor with Kvothe, followed by the dialog that drew my interest: 6/
"Fine," I said, leaning back in my chair. "I take your point. You've been going easy on me."
"No," Bredon said with a grim look. "That is far gone from the point I am trying to make."
"What then?"
"I am trying to make you understand the game," he said. 7/
"No," Bredon said with a grim look. "That is far gone from the point I am trying to make."
"What then?"
"I am trying to make you understand the game," he said. 7/
"The entire game, not just the fiddling about with stones. The point is not to play as tight as you can. The point is to be bold. To be dangerous. Be elegant."
I don't agree with Bredon, but not because this fictional character is wrong. 8/
I don't agree with Bredon, but not because this fictional character is wrong. 8/
I disagree because Bredon's view of #tak is a projection—it's incomplete. It is, essentially, to approach a finite game with the mindset of infinite play. That's the distinction I mention above—finite games don't have to be seen that way, even though much of the time they are. 9/
#Chess, for example isn't merely a game I play sometimes, it's part of the story of my father and I's relationship: finite play for the purpose of infinite play.
Chess isn't merely a game I play sometimes—except when it is, and that difference is internal. 10/
Chess isn't merely a game I play sometimes—except when it is, and that difference is internal. 10/
That said, I find Bredon's view *preferable*:
Bredon's voice softened... " #Tak reflects the subtle turning of the world... No one wins a dance, boy. The point of dancing is the motion that a body makes. A well-played game of tak reveals the moving of a mind." 11/
Bredon's voice softened... " #Tak reflects the subtle turning of the world... No one wins a dance, boy. The point of dancing is the motion that a body makes. A well-played game of tak reveals the moving of a mind." 11/
All this builds to @patrickrothfuss's triple axel landing in the chapter:
"The point isn't to win?" I asked.
"The point... is to play a beautiful game... Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?" 12/
"The point isn't to win?" I asked.
"The point... is to play a beautiful game... Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?" 12/
The excerpting here doesn't do the full text justice, FYI. But it'll do.
Once the point is larger than winning, the field of play spills over the dimensions of the board. As Carse says, finite players play *within* the rules while infinite players play *with* the rules. 13/
Once the point is larger than winning, the field of play spills over the dimensions of the board. As Carse says, finite players play *within* the rules while infinite players play *with* the rules. 13/
Which leads me to #InfiniteTak. It's a project I've been working on since I encountered this blog post exploring #Tak strategy:
https://taktraveler.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/partners/
14/
https://taktraveler.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/partners/
14/
The post's author, Scott Crawford, starts with a thought experiment: imagine a game of #Tak on an infinite board and with infinite pieces. Scott's purpose is analytical—not to consider infinite play per se, but to illuminate aspects of finite play. But I wondered. 15/
What if we were to take the idea seriously—with its own potential to be a beautiful game? What you might get (as of ~80 moves ago) is something like this: 16/
Brontosauruses. You might get brontosauruses in #InfiniteTak. (There's been some additional pieces added to its head since it was finished...) 17/
When play has no end, one isn't concerned about a winner. As in normal #Tak my partner in play and I are keeping track of the longest road and the flat count. But against the backdrop of infinity, any lead in either is provisional. 18/
That provisionality, however, is dependent on an ongoing desire to continue. Which is to say that part of the field of play is your *motivation for play*. Getting *too far ahead* may create a context of amotivation—particularly since we're socialized to want to win. 19/
What does it take to sustain that motivation for a thousand moves (we're not quite halfway there)? Ten thousand moves?
More radically, what would it take to inherit not the board, but the *game* (already a lifetime in)? I'm not aware of anything like that in existence. 20/
More radically, what would it take to inherit not the board, but the *game* (already a lifetime in)? I'm not aware of anything like that in existence. 20/
Of course, the possibilities for #InfiniteTak are much more expansive than this one version. The central feature has been the presence of the infinite plane right from the start. Though the spreadsheet has some practical constraints, there are a few moves way off the screen. 21/
A different approach (another template I've been working on) would somehow link the dimensions—not infinite, but infinitely expandable—to the number of pieces on the board. That constriction (I think) would foster a much more confrontational game, suited to a different style. 22/
There are so many choices you can make about the ratio of pieces played to board size, or perhaps you increase the board size every time someone creates a road that would end a finite game of the same dimensions. The curious point is how to decide. 23/
For a finite game you'd get a bunch of play-testers together to run through a large number of matches to balance the game. How would that work for something like this? The concept of balance doesn't really apply. Large number of games? Missed the point. 24/
Instead—and this is imagination from admittedly limited experience—the point is co-creation, evolution, and renewal of purpose over time. The smaller infinite game ( #InfiniteTak) is nested within the larger infinite game of an ongoing relationship, which it reflects. 25/
Changing gears—once the point transcends winning, you might also start to wonder about #Tak's deeper structure. Which brings me to #OEIS A309514, "Number of winning Tak paths on an n X n board." 26/
https://oeis.org/A309514
(Inspiration from N. J. A. Sloane and @numberphile)
https://oeis.org/A309514
(Inspiration from N. J. A. Sloane and @numberphile)
When you start to wonder about that structure within #Tak, maybe you engage in recreational mathematics to explore it. Theoretically speaking, that might look something like this: 27/
(Another structural element of #Tak I'm reasonably—but less—certain about is that in the absence of an obstruction [walls and capstones], the number of ways to unstack a stack of n size doesn't depend on its location. I forget my logic, but it's here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v8lD-IklI0Dsrfu_x4NFJZn6cyV0wL_sYbsvhXHzeks/edit?usp=sharing) 28/
All this curiosity extends to thinking about #Tak in the context of the two historically prominent abstract strategy games, #chess and Go (hashtag results understandably polluted). 29/
Complexity from simplicity is perhaps *the* selling point for #Tak. But is it different from these other two? Some time ago I came across a Reddit thread that offered a quick heuristic for calculating permutations: consider number of plies and the trend of move choices. 30/
For #chess, each player begins with 20 choices, then (depending on which choice is made) the average number of choices increases mid-game before declining in the end game (literally to zero, since that's what checkmate is). 31/
Go, in comparison, depends (like #Tak) on its board size. In a 19x19 board that's 361 choices for the first player, but the second player will only have 360. Granted, that's 129960 possible board states after two plies to chess's 400, but the number of choices only declines. 32/
#Tak's trend is different from both—not starting with as many choices as go, but where in go choices decline, in Tak they increase—often dramatically. To quote discussion on this topic from the Tak Talk Discord server, "[Tak] never simplifies." 33/
If my intuition is correct, one implication of this is that #Tak is much more a game of particulars. Beyond the most basic of strategies to hold more flats and threaten completed roads, perhaps end-game theory isn't possible in the way I know it to be for chess. 34/
If this is true, it'll be another reason I *really* like #Tak—we have probably millions of human hours considering ethical principles, but maybe Tak can be a metaphor for an alternative to principles, moral particularism (a phrase I learned yesterday). 35/
From what little formal description I've seen so far, moral particularism fits well with the writings of feminist and educational philosopher Nel Noddings, who wrote Caring: A Relational Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. And of course this has more direct relevance... 36/
Because, and this goes back to #FiniteAndInfiniteGames, infinite games are relational. If we're playing #Tak as Bredon hopes we will, we're probably doing so in a way that regards our opponents as worthy of our care. 37/
