Dead Period Games Links

The Web is a more transient place than we might wish: sites and pages go away on a regular basis. The result is that a site like this winds up with dead links on a regular basis.

As of February 2010, I am beginning to keep track of these dead links as I remove them, if I can't immediately track down their new home. Often, a combination of Google and the Wayback Machine helps me find new homes of these sites, but when that doesn't work, I'm putting the links into cold storage here, in the hope of being able to retrieve the pages later. If you happen to find a current online version of one of these pages, please drop me a note and I'll add it back in. In some cases, it may just be a matter of a little serious Googling: I haven't had time to really search for all of these yet.

From Rules / Tables: A very complete page (with rules, software, etc) on Modern Backgammon, which is similar to the early game in most ways.
From Rules / Tables: Philippe Lalanne has a substantial page on Trictrac in French. (Warning: this page kills older versions of Netscape.)
From Transcriptions and Images:Sonja Musser Golladay is much of the way through a serious translation of the Alfonso MS. Golladay's translation is now available as part of her dissertation from the University of Arizona, and the translation has been excerted online.
The Ruben Krasnopolsky archive: Ruben has done a lot of good work on the subject, especially in transcribing period sources. Unfortunately, all of his pages have succumbed to bit rot. I have rescued a bunch of them via the Wayback Machine, and am hosting those archived versions here. They were formerly located at http://astro.uchicago.edu/~ruben/cards/wits.html
The Imran Ghory archive: like Ruben, Imran did lots of good work that seems to have vanished off the Web. I am hosting an archive of his page here. It was formerly found at http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran/games/
From Transcriptions and Images: The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has a page showing several period game boards and decks of cards.
From Transcriptions and Images: Girolamo Cardano is best known as one of the founders of game theory today, although he was relatively obscure in his own time. His book, De Ludo Aleae (in Latin) is one of the critical sources for Primero, as well as having numerous other tidbits.
From Transcriptions and Images: The Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française is a searchable French dictionary from 1694, which a number of game-related entries. (This searchable version of the old edition seems to have disappeared, sadly.)
From Transcriptions and Images: Here is a fairly high-resolution image of Breughel's terribly important painting, Children's Games.
From Rules / Glic: The Games Guild of Ealdormere plays a variant of Glic.
From Rules / Karnoffel: Another rather nice description of Karnoffelspiel.
From Rules / Karnoffel: Another description of the game.
From Rules / Picket: Gwynydd of Culloden has a nice description of Cent, which is essentially the same thing as Picket.
From Rules / Primero: The Shire of Isenfir has a brief description, including a brief cheat sheet.
From Rules / Tarot: Seaan's reconstruction of basic Tarot, which comes out rather differently from Justin's.
From Rules / Tarot: Troccas, an old Swiss card game; I don't currently know whether it is period...
From Rules / Tarot: Another history of Tarot.
From Rules / Alquerques: A very nice article by Robert fitz John.
From Rules / Alquerques: A brief description (with a nice period illustration) on the Alfonso site.
From Rules / Chess / Byzantine Chess: And another page on Byzantine Chess.
From Rules / Chess: A long abstract of a book propounding the importance of Spain in the evolution of modern chess and checkers.
From Rules / Chess: Traveller.com has a very complete timeline of the early history of chess.
From Rules / Chess: This page is a good concise description of the early versions of chess.
From Rules / Chess: The Live on the Net Chess Site has a nice, if brief, article on Religion and Chess (scroll down for the article). It lists a large number of clerical references to chess, both positive and negative.
From Rules / Chess: A fellow doing chess in the classroom has a concise history of the origins of chess.
From Rules / Chess: Sam Sloan has a longish article arguing for the Chinese origin of Chess. Interesting article (with a somewhat annoying soundtrack, I'm afraid).
From Rules / Chess: Blackmask has transcribed H.E. Bird's Chess History and Reminicences, a 19th (?) century book on the history of chess. He also has it available for download in various formats. (Go to the main page and search for the book to get the download entries.)
From Rules / Chess:The town of Marostica has a tradition of live chess matches that purports to go back to the Renaissance.
From Rules / Dice: There is a very brief overview History of Dice on About.com.
From Rules / Goose: Here is another concise rules description, from Faire Angel.
From Rules / Goose: The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica has been (badly) transcribed online; its entry for Game of the Goose can be found a ways down this page. (Sadly, while the page is still there, it looks like it has been spammed to death.)
From Rules / Hazard: A brief description from the Shire of Isenfir.
From Rules / Knucklebones:The Museum of Games has a brief page, based on the Brueghel painting.
From Rules / Merels: A good description of Nine Men's Morris from Far Isles.
From Rules / Merels: A brief article, focusing on Twelve Man Morris.
From Rules / Merels: A description of Nine Men's Morris with a good picture at the Alfonso site.
From Rules / Merels: A four player dicing variant, with a good picture at the Alfonso site.
From Rules / Merels: A German Merels Site, with a shareware implementation and a bit of tactics.
From Rules / Merels:Gwynydd of Culloden has a nice description of Nine Men's Morris.
From Rules / Rhythmomachy: Tommy's Toys has a shareware implementation for DOS (and by extension, most versions of Windows).
From Rules / Rhythmomachy: A very brief description of the game, apparently for a class project.
From Rules / Tablero de Jesus: The official guide to Tablero da Gucci, a popular SCA drinking variant of Tablero de Jesus.
From Rules / Tablero de Jesus: Another description of Tablero da Gucci.
From Rules / Tables: A brief description of Imperator, currently missing its picture, on the Alfonso site.
From Rules / Tables: A brief description of El Mundo, an unusual four-player tables game, with a good picture on the Alfonso site.
From Rules / Tables: A brief description of Six, Deuce, and Ace, a simple tables game, with a good picture on the Alfonso site.
From Rules / Tables: There is a basic (if a bit imprecise) description of period tables.
From Rules / Tafl: Culwyn Bleidd Caernarfon has written yet another good description of hnefatafl.
From Rules / Tafl:Guillaume de la Sudeterre has a nice page showing Brandubh boards he has constructed, and a bit of speculation about how the game was played.
From Rules / Tafl:Earthgames has a brief overview history of tafl games.
From Rules / Tafl: And another.
From Rules / Tafl: Benjamin Slade has a good page on tafl, with a bunch of links and a downloadable implementation.
From Rules / Tafl:There is a Yahoo discussion group on tafl.
From Rules / Tafl:Colyne Stewart has a discussion of tafl games, focusing on Tablut.
From Rules / Tafl: Lord Rowan O'Sidhe has a brief description of Irish Fidchell
From Rules / Billiards:An overview History of Billiards can be found at CueCare.
From Rules / Colf: A history of the early game.
From Rules / Colf: Golf is specifically outlawed in an act of 1457.
From Rules / Hurling: A Brief History of Hurling, by Lady Elisabetta Maldestro, which quickly runs down the commonly-known info.
From Rules / Hurling: The Rules of Hurling. Note that these rules should be taken with a grain of salt for purposes of period recreation; as far as I know, we don't have many concrete details of the period game. SCA games are often played with even more minimal rules than this.
From Rules / Hurling: A detailed article on the history of Cornish Rugby, which winds up touching on a lot of Hurling history along the way.
From Rules / Hurling:A detailed article on the history of Shinty, a relative of Hurling.
From Rules / Hurling: Clan na Bheithir has a good page, giving some history of the sport as well as their reconstruction of the game, and a couple of modern versions.
From Rules / Rounders: A description of the game, as played at the Northern CA Renaissance Pleasure Faire.
From Rules / Rounders: Several descriptions of Rounders can be found at RenGeekCentral.
From Rules / Collections: Lady Pegleg has brief descriptions of the rules for a variety of board games.
From Rules / Collections: Jeffrey Singman wrote a good (if concise) description of several Active Games, including Barley Break, Bowls, and Ninepins, for The Moderne Aviso.
From Rules / Collections: Faire Angel has very brief descriptions of several different games.
From Bibliographies: A Review of the book Ye Merry Gamester, from The Moderne Aviso.
From Research Materials: The Games Guild of Ealdormere has a big page of links, a collection of articles on period games, and an online periodical called "Games, Period".
From Related Sites: There is a page on Geocities of Ancient, Foreign, and Esoteric Board Games, mostly made up of links to other sites.
From Related Sites: The Compendium of Common Knowledge has a couple of brief pages on common Elizabethan games and other recreations, including sports.
From Related Sites: Mikael Johansson maintains a page on Brädspel, which is a Nordic game of the Tables/Backgammon variety. Versions of the rules are available in both English and Swedish.
From Related Sites: The Barony of Dragonsspine maintains an interesting page of games they have played at SCA events. Not all period, but many are. Similarly, they have a nice article on Children's Games and Contests.
From Related Sites: The Far Isles Guild of Gamers has several articles, including one on Making Game Boards.
From Related Sites: Off the Wall Boardgames is a nice little site with concise rules for many board games (many, though not all, period) and printable boards and pieces for them.
From Related Sites: The Games Guild of Ealdormere is an SCA guild dedicated to games. Their homepage has a lot of related links.
From Software: A very pretty Java implementation of Tablut is available on the Web. Note that the rules in this version make capturing the King rather easier than in the variants I'm accustomed to. ("Black wins? Whaddaya mean, black wins?".) They have recently added a Windows implementation as well.
From Software: For those with up-to-date browsers, Gamelan maintains a rather nice collection of board game applets, to play against the computer or an opponent over the Net. Most require Java to use. Not all are period, but the majority are.
From Software: A very large collection of DOS Shareware games can be found at Tommy's Toys, with several period games scattered throughout (including the only computer versions of Piquet, Gleek and Primero I am aware of, and a brand-new implementation of Rythmomachy). Runs on any DOS box (that is, any PC system except for Windows NT).
From Software: NSoftware has shareware versions of Nine Men's Morris and Alquerques. (Not tested yet.)
From Software / Mancala: There is a rather nice Java implementation.
From Software: Benjamin Slade has a free implementation of tafl.
From Vendors: Pastyme Games sells a variety of historic games, many of them period.
From Vendors: The Viking Trader sells nice leather boards for several major period board games (hnefetafl, alquerques, and others).
From Vendors: Bryanna's Treasure Box sells a variety of hand-painted cloth board games, mostly from the core of SCA period. (Including Rhythmomachia; she is one of the few I know who sells this!)
From Vendors: Lady Pegleg sells a variety of nice game boards for various period games.
From Vendors: Francesco Sirene, who mostly appears to deal in spices, also sells a couple of period toys.
From Vendors: The Scribes of Caerthe, an SCA scribal guild, is running a fundraiser by selling individual card suits, with novel subjects but done in more-or-less Renaissance style. It's a good cause, and some of the cards are very nice. Check it out. (And as a bonus, each suit comes with a booklet of a period game, from these pages, nicely typeset...)
From Vendors: The Dozens of Games site sells seven-sided dice, which don't look terribly period, but probably work well for seven-sided backgammon. MacGregor Games also now sells seven-sided dice; the pentagonal ones match the original description closely, but I find them a bit uneven for actual play.

Back to the Medieval and Renaissance Games Homepage.