The point isn’t to win (or lose) Tak, Bredon tells Kvothe in Patrick Rothfuss’ The Wise Man’s Fear, but to play a beautiful game. And now, thanks to Rothfuss, James Ernest, and Cheapass Games, you can try your hand at a beautiful, real-life Tak set.
Rothfuss and Ernest had previously collaborated on bringing to life another game from The Kingkiller Chronicles, the card game Pairs; as a stretch goal during that Kickstarter campaign, they committed to publishing the rules for Tak. However, as Rothfuss explained in a recent blog post, he still had his misgivings:
“Tak is supposed to be my world’s version of Chess or Go or Mancala,” I said. “I can’t ask you to make a game like that. It’s like saying, ‘you know those games that have stood the test of time for hundreds or thousands of years? The best games ever? Do that, but in my world.’ So first off, it’s unreasonable for me to ask. Secondly, you can’t do it. No one can. And thirdly, if you did somehow manage to pull if off, nobody would give a shit. We’re living in the golden age of board games right now. Nobody cares about strategy games like chess anymore.”
But the rules were a hit when played with a checkers set, and eventually Ernest and Rothfuss decided to manufacture the proper tokens to play Tak for real. Rothfuss was the toughest critic (in his words, “a curmudgeonly fucker”), but he reported that his first time playing was better than he ever expected:
I was stunned by the game. Stunned that anyone could make something like this. It’s more elegant than chess. It’s more enjoyable than Go.
I learned to play it in about five minutes and had a blast. More than a year later, the game is still unfurling for me like a flower, as I understand more and more about the play of it.
Now the game can unfurl for you, too. Rothfuss and Ernest have already exceeded their Kickstarter goal five times over in a few days, and there are plenty of options: the Classic set versus Tavern set, a companion book, collector’s coin, and other perks.
Tak and Pairs join a growing list of fantasy games being translated from the page to a real-life playing space: Earlier this month, Crafty Games announced the Mistborn: House War board game to help you refine your noble intrigue skills; there’s also a fan-made version of the Snakes & Foxes game from The Wheel of Time series.
Learn more about the design process over on Ernest’s blog.
Ah, your first sentence reminded me what the game was.
The real question is, when can I actually read the third book? Any updates?
I don’t know how I feel about these very successful, highly-acclaimed, well-recognize authors using Kickstarter for their projects.
I get that a publishing company isn’t going to fund a board game/card game, and that authors aren’t movie stars and can’t necessarily push development of something like this through on their own dime.
But it just irks me that Kickstarter is being used by people who have already made it big, or at least gotten their recognition. That’s probably an unreasonable reaction.
My next novel is going to be about giant sentient beards that distract their owners from finishing their sagas.
If only I could find some real-life inspiration…
I hope to someday see the hologram fighting game they play on the Millenium Falcon the way it looked I’m the movie–as a hologram game.
Maybe not such a good idea to alienate chess and go fans if you want your derivative game to be popular. Centuries…millennia of culture and history have formed chess and go into what they are today. Those games become part of people’s souls. Whole lives have been consumed; people have given up fortunes, families, love and health because they became so lost in the games’ essence that they became obsessed and could never escape. If you think these games are inelegant or boring, it just means you have not experienced their beauty and depth yet.
Saying your new game is more elegant and fun than chess or go just makes it clear that your opinion is uninformed. It’s like saying, “hey look at this picture on my iPhone, it’s way better than anything DaVinci ever painted.”
Ok setting aside my emotional response to the irresponsible bashing of the classics.
I am excited to see that there is a real Tak game now and that Rothfuss actually enjoys it. It gives potential for some detailed character musings. I can picture some beautiful passages about Kvothe finding music in Tak or parallels to real world scenarios or having dreams about Tak patterns that visually represent problems in his life and help him puzzle out life solutions. These are all things that can happen to people who immerse in chess and go.
The sentiment in the first couple Rothfuss sentences above are spot-on. I love that he wrote a game like this into his world. For me, it adds authenticity to the world. I hope it is featured more prominently as the story unfolds. And I hope that Rothfuss interviews passionate chess and go lovers for character research like he did musicians.