Medieval & Renaissance Games Home Page

This Site is Obsolete

This page has not been maintained since 2010, and no further updates are going to be made here. I'm leaving it up for historical purposes, but for more complete and current information, please see:

https://www.querki.net/u/jducoeur/period-games/

That's written in Querki, a high-powered wiki system, and is much easier to maintain. Please go over there, look around, and join in if you'd like to help maintain it. If you have a link pointing to this page, please add that one instead.

Now, on to the old site...

Welcome to a page specifically dedicated to Really Old Games. This page is intended to cover anything and everything pertaining to games in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. All are welcome to contribute; I am particularly looking for relevant sites to point to.

Bookmarking this page: If you are bookmarking or creating a link to this site, please use the form:

I own that domain, and it should always forward to the correct place, even if the actual location of the site changes.

What's New: New files and changes to this site:

• 4/10/10: Added a couple of links to pages about Sugoroku, the Japanese version of Tables, as well as Related Sites pointers to a couple of good Asian-studies pages that get into games.
• 2/23/10: Restored Dagonell's articles, now that I have the right URL; also added in several that I'd been missing, including the improbable game Dwyle Flonking.
• 2/22/10:Added Le Jeux de Trictrac, Tafl: An Obsession.
• 2/21/10: Added links to the Crumiller Chess resources, Reannag Teine Pottery, the Elliott Avedon Museum of Games, a few of Mats Winther's pages, Debora Marzec's photo albums, Joan and Crispin's toy articles, a couple of Roman Board Game pages, a page on Tabula, the Trictrac Dictionary, Dagonell's Curling article and the Wikipedia one, the Google facsimile of the 1836 transcription of Alfonso, the teaching document of the Alfonso MS, another reconstruction of Grand Acedrex. Cleaned up a *lot* of dead links, and created a page for them, and found newer locations for a bunch of others. Rescued a variety of archived pages from The Wayback Machine (especially Ruben Krasnopolsky's and Imran Ghory's), and am hosting archived copies here.
• 8/9/09: Added links to The Moral Allegory of Tarot, and Faire Tyme Toys.
• 12/11/08: The Giant Overhaul begins. Added pointer to the Kubb World Championship. Updated link to Ebro Software. Added links to the Florilegium. Added link to Triofi.
• 8/25/08: Added pointers to Michel Wolffauer's pages on Losing Loadum, Gleek, El Mundo, Go, Tarot, Tafl, and cheat sheets for Laugh and Lie Down and Shogi.
• Older Updates.

Descriptions of Period Games, and Research Materials

• Rules for a variety of period games.
• Transcriptions and images of period sources.
• Bibliographies of period game sources.
• The Ace's Boke, a series of articles written in period style about games and gaming.
• The first draft of a brief History of Card Games, by Seaan McAy. (Who wants to stress that this paper is currently far from done.)
• A good overview of what's known about Games of the Viking and Anglo-Saxon Age, assembled by Regia Anglorum.
• A selection of concrete resources (including pretty pictures of real period game boards) can be found at The Virtual Museum of Games. Note particularly their detailed discussion of Peter Brueghel's important painting Young Folk at Play.
• A page of resources for 16th c. Landsknechts, which has a listing of several appropriate games.
• Ravensgard has an interesting article on Norse Games.
• The IPCS has a nice (if brief) History of Playing-Cards.
• Karen Larsdatter has a nice page on Games in Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture.
• The ORB is one of the more interesting research sites for period subjects in general; searching on games there produces a number of interesting results. It has a short essay on Sports and Games in general.
• Imran Ghory has a number of useful files relating to the history of games, including a very nice listing of period card games and when they are attested. (Currently archived here, since Imran's own site seems to have evaporated.)
• Jon Crumiller has an interesting set of photos of Ancient and Medieval game pices, as well as a variety of other chess-history resources.
• Debora Marzec has two large albums of photos of period game sets that she has made, which make a good quick reference of what things look like. Album 1. Album 2.

Frequently Asked Question

While there is no site that I'm aware of dedicated to period kid's games in specific, the book "Medieval Games" is quite rich in games appropriate for children. A full citation, including ordering instructions, can be found in my bibliography.

(I don't have any direct connection with the author, nor do I get any profit from the book; it's just that this is the most common question at this site, so I call it out specifically.)

Discussion of Period Games

• Information about the Period Games Mailing List, including pointers to its archive.
• Some messages culled from the Rialto (which is the SCA newsgroup), on the subject of period entertainment, with a lot on games.

Recreating Period Games

• An article on Acquiring Period Card Decks.
• Records of the Carolingian Low Company, a group of game players and researchers.

Related Sites

• James Masters has a nice collection of Rules for Traditional Games. Not all of them are period, but many are.
• The homepage of the International Playing-Card Society, which does all sorts of research into the history of cards and their games.
• There is a very pretty site devoted to Roman Games. (WARNING: this page appears to be virus-infected!) However, I have received a detailed critique of this site indicating a number of issues with the reconstructions, which is worth reading before you decide to use the games described therein. Also on the subject of Roman Board Games, see Wally Kowalski's page and the index at Littlewoods Casino.
• The International Playing Card Society Home Page, including rules to a variety of games, a very useful FAQ on playing cards, and other stuff on the topic (some of it period-related).
• An interesting article on Celtic Knucklebones, more on the making than playing.
• Board Games Studies is an academic journal devoted specifically to research into board games. Not strictly period, but interesting nonetheless. Note that, like many international journals, it publishes in a variety of languages.
• Rose and Pentagram have put together a nice timeline of game history.
• Arjan Verweij's Dice Site has photos of many different kinds of dice, including a large number of different period and pre-period dice.
• Stefan's Florilegium (a massive collection of snippets from online discussions) has a section on Children's Games, as well as more generally on games, and specifically on SCA games.
• The Elliott Avedon Museum of Games covers games more broadly, but does has a number of pages on relevant subjects such as the Alfonso MS, brief descriptions of various period games, and papers on game theory and history.
• Mats Winther is a games researcher whose page has article about many games, including a bunch from period. I don't necessarily agree with all of his reconstructions (he tends to focus on symbolism very heavily, and IMO puts too much weight behind the assumption that period games must have been fair), but he's constantly coming out with interesting stuff. He also produces implementations of almost all the games he discusses, using Zillions as a platform.
• The British Chess Variants Society focuses specifically on Chess in its many forms, and doesn't confine itself to period. It publishes a regular magazine called Variant Chess, with many relevant articles.
• Crispin Sexi and Joan Sutton have a variety of pages on the subject of medieval toys.
• Edward of Effingham's Online Japanese Miscellany has a number of brief pages on SCA-period Japanese games.
• The Asia Society has a nice overview of Asian Games -- a bit shallow but nicely broad, providing a good starting point for anyone interested in the topic.

Game Software

• Zillions of Games is arguably the best game engine in existence, at least for period games. It can't go everything, but it can do a lot, and it comes with many period games already implemented. (If you hadn't guessed, I *really* like this program.)
• EBro Software has a good-looking freeware implementation of tafl.
• Steve Neeley has an interesting collection of shareware games, several of them period or pre-period. (In particular, an implementation of Halatafl/Fox & Geese.)
• Stargraphics has a shareware implementation of Rythmomachy for Windows. (They call it Ambush.)
• Someone named "The Vole" is running online games of Gwyddbwyll.
• There are several implementations of Fanarona:
• John Stracke has a version designed to work under Gnome.
• Dominic Yu has versions that run under Hypercard and Java.
• David Eppstein has a fancier Java applet, which actually plays against you.
• There are also a few implementations of Mancala:
• There is also a Web implementation.
• And a rather pretty JavaScript implementation.
• Leif Bennett has written Java implementations of several period games, including a lot of variations.
• EarthGaming has a shareware implementation of Tafl, which they call Tabula Letum.

Vendors of Period Games and Materials

• Gregory Blount maintains a listing of some Purveyors of Period Games, as part of his Juried Merchants Listing.
• Tattershall Arms, which mostly deals in period military tack, also apparently sells my favorite Elizabethan card decks. Not 100% period, but the closest I've found for sale yet. They really enhance a game...
• A variety of period games, mostly with Celtic-inspired artwork, are available from Rose & Pentagram Design, including inexpensive period-style cards and several printed-fabric board games.
• Tara Hill, a small Viking-oriented company, is selling several period games, including Tafl, Merelles, Fox & Geese, and a sort of Vikingized version of Senet.
• Less specialized, but still useful, is 3 Trolls Games, a general gaming mail-order shop. They have their catalog online, including a bunch of the basics (Chess, Go, Cribbage, etc). Look under "Classic Games" in their catalog.
• Kadon Enterprises sells a vast array of games, mostly abstract board games. One or two are period (in particular, they sell a pretty Goose set), but all are very, very cool...
• Masters Games sells several traditional pub games, a few of which are more or less period. (Including a very pretty Shove Ha'penny set.)
• Faire Tyme Toys sells a wide variety of historical toys. Not all are appropriate to our period, but several of them are, so it's a good place to look around.
• Reannag Teine Pottery sells sets for a number of the major period board games such as Merels, Tafl, and Fox and Geese, as well as handmade dice. They also provide basic rules for the games they sell.

Odds and Ends

The Dead Links page collects links that have gone bad that I can't immediately find new locations of.

This page is maintained by Justin du Coeur. I am highly active in the Society for Creative Anachronism (among other things). I expect that most of the people particularly interested in this topic are going to be involved in the SCA or other re-creative/re-enactment organizations, but anyone should feel free to wander around and schmooze. I can be contacted at justin@waks.org.