La dicima vittima

As I missed the lesson on la dicima vittima, I decided to watch some of it online I have to admit I didn't have a clue what was happening(The version I watched had no subtitles). The scene I watched had a women kill a man with guns inside her bra which is the weirdest yet coolest assassination I have seen. Then everyone around her just acted like nothing has happened.


I did notice the Austin Powers feel to it that others have been writing about on their blog's especially Ursula Andress's influence on the Austin Powers fem fatales.

Tafl Iteration

For the ancient board game iteration I will be trying to focus on balancing the game. I first started by looking what others had tried. I liked the idea of a bidding mechanic so I started there. I decided that each player would have 10 tokens and at the start of every turn would be a bidding round, you could bid any amount of tokens who ever bid the most gets to move. after some play testing I decided that these counters should be reset every third move that way you had to think three move ahead which added a lot more strategy to the game.

I am also going to put special squares on the board, if you land on one you get an extra token to bid with. I placed these central on the board to try and take some of the game play away from the edges.

Games Britannia Part 2 - Monopolies & Mergers

I really enjoyed part two of game Britannia, the episode started by explaining a game from the 18th-19th century called the mansion of bliss. This game was made to get more children into school the whole aim is to reach the middle of the board which had a huge Georgian house. It was a way of telling the lower/middle class that you can aspire to more in life if you behave proper.

After success in the UK the mansion of bliss was copied in America, however there were some changes made, instead of a nice Georgian house at the end it was replaced by president of a company. It was telling you to work hard and you will become rich. You could say the american dream come from this morality based game by saying to win you need to be rich you need to be powerful.

In this episode they also talked about a game called br'er fox and br'er rabbit this was a game made to raise debate about redistribution of wealth from land owners. It helped raise debate about a sensitive subject by making a safe setting your disconnected from the subject your just playing a game. From this game we ended up with a classic board game monopoly.

I am starting to realise how games have been used in the past as a way for discontent people to express their feelings just as books and films have.

Tafl

Tafl

Hnefatafl is a Scandinavian board game that is played on a square chequered board with an odd number of squares on each side.  There is much debate regarding the rules and also the size of the board.  However there is a general consensus that the aim of the game is for the defending player to try and reach the edge/corners of the board while the attacking player tries to prevent this by capturing their pieces.

According to H.J.R Murray the board game tafl or hnefatafl as it would later become known (to distinguish it from other games of the time such as chess (skak tafl) or tables (kvatru tafl)). Is a game that could have been played in Scandinavia as early as 400AD (Murray (1952) p. 56).  Of course it wasn't only played in Scandinavia, Murray suggested the game was being played in parts of Europe mainly appearing in countries where the Vikings settled such as England, Ireland and Iceland.

After much research the main problem with tafl is the game play isn't balanced the king is usually able to escape. I have decided to pick this as the ancient game I will iterate for my first assignment.