Your track gives players a place to move. It does not tell them who starts, how far to move, or what happens when two pieces meet. Those choices belong to the rules.

About 4,600 years ago, people in Ur, a city in what is now Iraq, played a board game. A surviving board has twenty squares. Today it is called the Royal Game of Ur.

A later clay tablet describes parts of a more complex version. Scholar Irving Finkel read its writing and used it to work backward toward a simpler game. A reconstruction is a version worked out from surviving clues.

The board is an object people found. Reconstructed rules are an interpretation of evidence. Your own rules are a new invention. All three can be interesting, but they tell us different things. Playing your paper game does not prove how people played in Ur.

People in ancient Egypt also played board games. Senet used thirty squares arranged in rows. Egyptian boards survive from more than 3,000 years ago. They give researchers clues about play.

Another game had twenty squares and reached Egypt from the Near East more than 3,500 years ago. Some boards show flower-shaped marks on special squares. Egyptian versions can use different signs. Players adapted games instead of keeping every design the same.

Return to your own track. A special square might give another turn, send a marker backward, or do nothing at all. You can see a mark without knowing which rule it carried.

Try separating two questions: "What is on the board?" and "What did players do there?" The first can come from looking. The second needs more evidence. We know people played these games. These sources do not tell us that every player was a child.

together · About 8 minutes; estimate

You need

• Paper and pencil
• Two large folded paper markers

Try it

1. Draw eight numbered squares; start off the track and finish on eight.
2. Take turns moving one square; markers may share a square.
3. Play to the finish and count each player’s turns.
4. Predict the turn count if landing on four gives one extra move.
5. Replay with the same starting player and that one rule changed.
6. Compare turn counts; did the winner change or stay the same?

solo · About 5 minutes; estimate

You need

• Your paper track
• Paper and pencil

Try it

1. Invent one different rule for the same track.
2. Write how a turn works and how a player wins.
3. Give your rules to an adult without explaining them aloud.
4. Watch one turn and ask what was unclear.
5. Revise a confusing line and try that turn again.