Week 6 ~ The fascist chase

This is Episode 6/10 of the Hacking 10 games in 10 weeks project.

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Hacking 10 games in 10 weeks

8 min readApr 2, 2018

Reginald Davies, in Some Arab Games And Puzzles (1925)

…for it is only in recent times that such frivolous matters have been deemed worthy of the attention of serious-minded travellers.

Davies was working in Sudan, as a civil servant of the British empire. He documented a series of games played by “the camel-breeding Kababish Arabs on the fringe of the northern desert, and the cattle breeding Homr Arabs of the south”. His goal was to provide fellow imperialists with useful tools to blend in with the locals, “to bring the Englishman into contact with the Arab in a capacity other than that of tax-gatherer or punisher of delinquencies, and from this point of view [games] have a definite administrative value”.

One of such games was the Hyena Game, known as Li’b El Merafib by the Kababish.

It’s a racing game of pure luck, where 4 players move one piece each (their mother) on a spiral track. Players have to throw a certain combination of 3 wooden sticks (a tâba) in order to leave the starting space on the outer spiral (known as the village), then throw the sticks again in order to move towards the centre (the well). Once at the well, mothers have to score more tâbas to drink and wash clothes, before they can race back towards the village. The first mother to reach the village wins.

And what about the hyena?

Well, the fastest (luckiest) mother becomes a hyena, and moves towards the well at double speed, gobbling up any mother that it overtakes.

In this game, the hyena may be said to be the winner, but there are degrees of defeat. The player whose mother gets eaten by the hyena is rudely mocked by the one who manages to get the old lady safely back to the village.

According to Davies, this game was predominantly played by children. He also noted that “most games have their seasons, and for these Arab games the season is primarily the fasting month of Ramadan, when they while away the time and enable the players to forget their hunger and thirst.”

What is this game really about?

Looking at the board, you may notice a similarity with the Game of the Goose. But that’s just a coincidence. There’s another, ancient Egyptian game, which Li’b El Merafib originated from. The game is called Mehen, the name of a snake-like god.

Mehen was a bodyguard god, which coiled around his boss, the sun-god Ra, to protect him from his enemies. It was also believed that dead people entered the after-life by walking towards Ra on the back of the snake-god.

Both Mehen and Li’b El Merafib use stick dice to determine how pieces will move. In ancient cultures, these objects were more than mere random numbers generators, as they were used both in games and fortune telling. The anthropologists Csikszentmihalyi and Bennett argue that games emerged in many cultures as light-hearted versions of divination rituals. Instead of playing with your own future, you would play out the imaginary fate of your game proxy.

From “The World of Games: Their Origins and History, How to Play Them, and How to Make Them” by Tony Burrett

Ancient games were more than pastimes. They were believed to channel magical and spiritual forces. Playing Mehen was not just entertainment, as victory symbolised success in the afterlife.

What strongly links Mehen and Li’b El Merafib is a rather unusual mechanic for ancient games: pieces swapping roles when they get back to the starting point. In both games, pieces representing humans become animal predators, which in turn chase the humans.

The two games have almost identical mechanics, but their skin is significantly different. What was the sun-god in Mehen became the well in Li’b El Merafib. The coiled snake became a desert track. The afterlife context was swapped for a real-life hazard, and the religious connotation of the race was removed.

Still, both games are dominated by chance. The winner is the luckiest player. As it turns out, chance was not some lame mechanic, but it played a deeper spiritual role in the ritual performance of Mehen. The game was a symbolic afterlife race against fate.

But what about Li’b El Merafib? We know it was played by kids, and children tend to be more excited by chance than boardgame geeks. Maybe it was an educational reskin of its ancestor. The message: life outside the village is dangerous, water is precious, and your mum struggles for you. 🤔

There’s another big difference between Mehen and Li’b El Merafib: the ancient Egyptians allotted six counters to each player, rather than only one. There’s an eerie message creeping into the game: you’re on your own, and your co-villagers could become your enemies (if they’re too lucky).

What will the hacked game be about?

I want to play with the idea of an enemy-within. One that pretends to take part in the race like everyone else, but has the hidden agenda of swallowing up the other contestants and gain absolute power. Let’s say the race is a metaphor for the democratic process, then the hyena is a fascist group. Historically, fascists seized power by undermining weak democracies through violence and political opportunism. They (initially) played within the system, and presented themselves as the champions of law and order, while bullying any opposition into silence.

This fascist snake is not historically accurate.

Games that draw inspiration from history run the risk of oversimplifying the complex dynamics behind events, movements and struggles. Take a game like Secret Hitler, for instance. While it doesn’t claim to be an accurate representation of Weimar Germany, it does reduce the political spectrum to “liberals vs fascists”, which works as a game mechanic but is quite problematic from a history perspective.

My intention with this hack is not to represent a particular moment in history, but rather to model (and therefore to abstract) fascist tactics, in order to stimulate a conversation around strategies of resistance. I’m no expert in this, and I welcome all constructive criticism.

How can I hack Li’b El Merafib so that it’s about fascist tactics?

The only thing I know about hyenas is that they move and hunt in packs. That’s their strength. And so do fascists. A single hyena (or a single fascist) is weak. In fact, the very word fascism derives from the Latin word fasces = a bundle of rods, which suggests military strength through unity.

This means each player should have more than one piece. Let’s say three pieces to start with.

The traditional game is based purely on chance. I’ll keep some of it, but mitigate it with tactical choices.

Components

3 coloured pieces for each player (+ 1 optional to mark the order in which players will roll&move, which changes round after round).
1 board with spiral spots: the more spots, the longer the game. The board on The 10 Best Games in the World book has 80 spots.
7 six-sided dice

Gameplay

One player will control three fascists, whose goal is to capture all three pieces from another player, or a mixed total of five pieces. The other three players will be the other parties. I’ll let you decide which area of the political spectrum they occupy. Their goal is to get at least two of their pieces into power (the centre of the spiral).

Players will roll three dice to determine the first round order (highest total roll goes first). In the following rounds, the order will depend on the positions of pieces (closest to the centre goes first).

During their turn, players roll the dice and then move their pieces (forward or backward) according to the numbers rolled. Multiple rolls can be used for a single piece (eg: 3+ 2 = 5 steps for one piece). The fascist rolls three dice + the number of pieces it already captured. The other parties can roll as many dice as they have pieces left on the board.

A piece can occupy the same spot as other pieces.

Fascists ⚫⚫ capture a piece 🔴when they surround and outnumber it. For instance ⚫🔴⚫ (with each piece on a separate spot) or ⚫⚫🔴🔴⚫ (with double pieces either on the same spot, or on two separate spots).

The fascist win when it captures either 3 pieces from the same player, or 5 pieces in total. Other players win when they get 2+ of their pieces to the centre of the spiral.

Dynamics

What I’m hoping to trigger with those asymmetrical rules:

If you play the fascist, and can set aside the feeling of disgust (for your role), you may be tempted to look for weaknesses in your opponents, try to sow discord between them, and jump on isolated pieces to bully them out of the game.
If you play one of the other parties, you may struggle between the urge to win the democratic race, and making bipartisan concessions to prevent the fascists from succeeding.

Thanks for reading so far! If this provoked some thoughts, why not share them in a response 👇?