My name is Noah and I've been following the black triangle course through the class so far. Paradiseuses a "roll-and-move" mechanic, per the assignment. I found it very difficult to make a strategically interesting game with that restriction!

I took inspiration from Backgammon, a classic 2-player "roll-and-move" game with an excellent balance of chance and strategy. Though Backgammon and Paradise have little in common, the game board of Backgammon and its relationship to the probability space defined by the dice themselves helped me to realize that the key to this assignment was in crafting an environment that both reflects the properties of the dice and offers opportunities for decision-making and strategy.

Here are the results.

Game Bits:

24 black tokens and 24 white tokens

Two six-sided dice

One 7x7 square grid. The squares in a diagonal spanning one corner of the grid to the opposite corner are marked. This is the neutral territory.

The other two corners are marked, one with a black circle and the other with a white circle (though the squares between them are not marked). These are each player's home square.

Players:

Two

Setup:

Players each take all the pieces of a single color. The luckier player should go second. However, if multiple games are being played, the player who won the previous game should go first.

Goal:

The goal of the game is to earn points by moving tokens onto the opponent's territory, or by capturing the opponent's pieces.

How to Play:

Players take turns. At the start of a turn, the player must roll both dice and move two tokens of his color onto the board. Tokens must begin at the player's home square (marked by a circle of their color). Each token must move the number of spaces displayed on a single die, in any one direction. Diagonal movement is forbidden. A token has entered the opponent's territory (and is eligible to score points at the end of the game! ) if it crosses the neutral territory.

For example, if a player rolls a 3 and a 4, one token must be moved 3 spaces from the home square, and another must be moved 4 spaces.

If the player moves a token onto a location that is already occupied by one of his own tokens, the player must roll one die and move the tokenagain in any direction.

If the player lands on a space occupied by one of the opponent's tokens, that token is removed from the game and considered captured. The player does not roll again. Note that an opponent's token can only be captured when it is outside of its own territory! Tokens that are in their own territory cannot belanded upon.

If moving the number displayed on a die would result in a player's token landing beyond the edge of the grid or landing on an opponent's token that is in its own territory, the player must move in another direction. If no other directions are possible, the player must roll again.

Ending the Game:

Once both players have placed all of their tokens on the board, the game is over. Players earn one point for each token in the opponent's territory, plus one point for each piece captured. The player with the higher score wins!