GAME BOARD
LUDUS DUODECIM SCRIPTORUM
GAME BOARD
LUDUS DUODECIM SCRIPTORUM
L E V A T E D I A L O U
L U D E R E N E S C I S
I D I O T A R E C E D E
This inscribed board says: “Get up, get lost. You don’t know how to
play! Idiot, give up!”
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) xiv.4125
INFORMATION AND RULES
LUDUS DUODECIM SCRIPTORUM
ABOUT Scholars have reconstructed the direction of play based on a
beginner’s board with a sequence of letters. Roland Austin and
This game of chance and strategy is a bit like Backgammon, and it
Harold Murray figured out the likely game basics in the early
takes practice. The game may last a long time—over an hour. Start to
twentieth century. Rules are adapted from Tabula, a similar game
play a first round to learn the rules before getting more serious—or
before deciding to tinker with the rules to make them easier! WHAT YOU NEED
We provide two boards to choose from, one very plain, and another • 2 players
with six-letter words substituted for groups of six landing spaces. • A game board with 3 rows of 12 game spaces (download and print
Romans loved to gamble, and some scholars conjecture that ours, or draw your own)
Duodecim boards with writing on them were intended to disguise their • 5 flat identifiably different game pieces for each player. They will be
function at times when authorities were cracking down on betting. stacked. Pennies work: heads for one player, tails for the other
Some boards extolled self-care, Roman style; one says: “To hunt, to • You can also print and cut out our gaming pieces and glue them to
bathe, to play, to laugh, this is to live!” Another is a tavern’s menu: pennies or cardboard
“We have for dinner: chicken, fish, ham, peacock.” But some boards • 3 six-sided dice
are too obvious to fool anyone. Our example is an “insult board”:
“Get up, get lost. You don’t know how to play! Idiot, give up!” Both
players could assume negative comments were about the opponent. Player 1 Player 2
Start Start
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Finish
Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum board from Aphrodisias in Turkey.
Photo: William Neuheiser. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic,
via Wikimedia Commons
INFORMATION AND RULES, CONTINUED
LUDUS DUODECIM SCRIPTORUM
RULES • An opponent may land on a single piece, forcing it to start over at
the beginning of the next turn
Goal: The first player to move all playing pieces off the board wins • To return a captured piece home and then back onto the main
To enter board, players switch to one die
• If a player’s pieces are blocked by stacked pieces of the opponent,
• The first player is selected by the roll of a die (the higher number
the player’s turn is lost until the board opens up
plays first)
• Play begins in the middle row, in players’ 6 home spaces (see To exit
diagram)
• A player’s game pieces must gather in the final six spots before any
• No piece may advance from home until all 15 are on the board
may exit
• Pieces may be stacked
• Exiting requires an exact throw (a piece on the last spot still needs a
• No player may enter the other’s home row
throw of 1)
• Each player throws three dice per turn and moves based on the throw
• At this stage in the game, players switch to one die
To play
No, it’s not you—this game is hard to grasp at first. If you are patient
• Each player can move 1, 2, or 3 game pieces based on the throw and play one game while learning the rules, you’ll have fun.
• The numbers on the dice can be used separately to place 3 game
pieces, or can be added together to move one piece or two To make the game faster/easier
stacked pieces
• Allow entire stacks to move as one if the total of the 3 numbers
• Example: 3 dice throws of 1, 3, and 6 offer five possibilities:
rolled allows the stack to reach a free spot
1 piece moves 10 spaces (1+3+6)
• Decrease the number of game pieces and/or dice
3 individual game pieces moves 1, 3, and 6 spaces (1, 3, 6)
1 piece moves 1 space and 1 piece moves 9 spaces (1, 3+6) To make exiting faster/easier
1 piece move 3 spaces and 1 piece moves 7 spaces (3, 1+6)
• Allow an exit once all pieces have reached the final 12 spaces.
1 piece moves 6 spaces and 1 piece moves 4 spaces (6, 1+3)
• Allow pieces to exit whenever they can without waiting for others to
• No die may be ignored
catch up
• A number may not be split, only added
• A players’ stacked pieces are always safe from an opponent To make the game harder
• Players may not land on the opponent’s stacked pieces, but can
• If a piece is sent back to the beginning, the player many not move
count the space and move to an empty spot beyond
any other pieces until that piece is off the home space again and on
the main board
© J. Paul Getty Trust
