Hello all, Ric here with a video looking into some of the fictional games of Star Trek.
I’ve already done a video on Dabo and one on Tongo, but many of the others just don’t
have enough detail behind them to be as fleshed out as these two.
So I have compiled several into one video for you.
The first thing that became apparent when I was making this video, was that there are
a lot of fictional games in Star Trek that begin with the letter “K”.
The second was pretty much the same issue I encountered when I made my videos on Tongo
and Dabo, and that is that when these games were thought up, the rules were not.
After all, they serve as background details to a scene, and only have a goal or objective
if it is necessary.
Sometimes it is rather intuitive to discern what the goal of the game is supposed to be,
or even some basic premise of how to supposedly play.
Sometimes, however it’s not, such as Kadis-Kot, which has me convinced that Naomi Wildman
was a child genius just in figuring out how to play.
Oh, then again… Neelix.
Of course, many of the games played in Star Trek are already pre-existing ones that are
real, so I’m not including those in this video, eventually settling on four completely
made up ones.
I was also going to include the Diplomath game from Lower Decks, but that would literally
be dissecting a joke, so I’m going to take a pass on that one.
Instead, let’s start with…
The Ktarian game that was seen in the TNG episode, “The Game” and was hardly cast
in a good light.
The device is a simple headset that beams directly into the eyes to display a 3D space
of early 90s CGI animation.
The device reads the player’s neural impulses and players have to simply steer a flying
disk into a moving vortex.
A pretty simple premise and there are 47 levels, each level having a number of cones an discs
that corresponds.
When the game is first introduced, it also has the dubious effect of stimulating the
pleasure sensors of the brain into doing the happy chemicals, creating a quickly addictive
effect.
It couples this with a softening up of the player’s susceptibility to suggestion, eventually
brainwashing the player into obeying outside orders.
Subsequent reveals of the game suggest that this was likely a corruption of the game’s
interface technology for the purpose of the take-over scheme and that the original is
free of any such dubious ulterior motive.
I say this, because it’s unlikely the Federation would allow such a dangerous device to circulate
among its member worlds, let alone aboard starships after discovering the plot and we
do see it reappear.
The game is attributed to the Ktarian species, who have been encountered several times in
Star Trek, but have also multiple appearances, even in the canon, from forehead spines to
domes and horizontal slit pupils.
They are a Federation member world too but there plan to use this on the Enterprise did
have some level of military of political backing…
It’s a weird situation.
Moving on from this headset game to a more traditional board game from another culture.
The Cardassians have a board game called Kotra that actually looks really fun to play.
The board is a battle-axe shape with a layout of spaces on the field of play.
To either side are pits that house the inactive pieces.
It is a two player game of strategy, based on a battlefield, much like chess would be.
It is noted that the game is very skewed in favour of playing offensively, as defensive
play tends to lead to a player being overwhelmed instead of provided a chance to regroup.
Based purely on observation, it seems that the shape of the board would funnel the pieces
into opposition with one another, which probably explains why defensive play is not really
an option.
We can see that one of the pits is divided into two, and from the concept art, this side
is referred to as the “Won pieces” area.
So presumably, opponent’s pieces that are removed from the board are placed here.
There are also dice involved, and any game that involves funny dice, I’m up for.
Several of the pieces are of different design and have varying names based on rank, much
like Chess.
I did find a made-up list of rules by someone with the online name, Abayomi from 2013, which
I’ll link to because frankly, it’s an impressive amount of detail and reading through
it presents a coherent game that sort of resembles a cross between Chess and a table-top wargame,
something very in keeping with how it was portrayed in the show.
Moving from one strategy game to another now, from a far more reserved species than the
Cardassians, the Vulcans.
The Vulcan pursuit of pure logic is near full time activity, and thus, many of their games
and traditional recreational activities also focus around attempting to hone this discipline
or mental abilities in general.
Not to say that’s such games are dull, logic puzzles can be quite therapeutic when solved
and the Vulcans have no shortage of such activities.
The Kal-toh game is one that was devised as a test of logic, observation and patience
when played solo, as well as tactics when played against an opponent.
When completed, it resembles a 38 sided structure compiled of matchstick-like metal bars, sat
upon the base unit, which was powered and responsible for recognising the bars based
on user input.
When a new game begins, the bars, called t’an are completely mixed up and stacked in a seemingly
random fashion.
However it is not as randomised as it first seems and this is the secret of completing
Kal-toh.
We’re talking single player at the moment, but essentially there is a pattern hidden
among the chaos and you can uncover it by moving one t’an at a time.
As you make sense of the emerging pattern, the Kal’toh responds by assembling the structure
further bringing you closer to completing it.
The goal of a single player is to finish it in as few moves as possible (I think), while
multiplayer has the opponents take it in turns to assemble the puzzle without tipping their
hand to the opponent, that they have uncovered the pattern because the one who places the
final piece is its victor.
You fail the game, if you end up disrupting the pattern, obvious or not, until the puzzle
loses its cohesion and collapses, scattering the t’an everywhere.
It has been noted that beginners of the game often try to look for symmetry in the design,
and attempt to force some upon it with their placement of the t’an.
This however rarely yields the desired result as symmetry is generally only revealed in
the final assembly of the pattern.
Presumably for the sake of replayability, the base unit derives numerous starting “deals”
of T’an and replicates them into place so no two starting points are the same.
This is one of those puzzles that although made up, I can see and understand how it is
to be approached and because of this; believe Tuvok’s assertion that it is far more complicated
than Chess, because it genuinely seems so.
Finally, I’m going to focus on the one most seen in Star Trek Voyager, and one enjoyed
by multiple age groups.
Somehow.
Kadis-Kot is a game developed somewhere in the Alpha Quadrant, not sure where exactly,
but it’s old and was known since at least the mid-23rd century.
The pieces of play consisted of the Kadis-Kot board, which was a large translucent hexagon
and a myriad of pieces that were placed on it.
The pieces were of two shapes, circles and hexagons, divided across three colours and
players took turns to add them to the board which was marked out into a numbered gird.
At the start of the game, a player picks a colour, but during gameplay, all pieces of
all three colours are useable by either side.
However, the win state and even rules to this game are even harder to discern than the others
it seems, because everything I can think of, based on observation, rapidly diverges into
pure speculation.
Like, I have no clue.
It might be based on something like Othello, where the goal is to control the majority
of the board, but the placement of the pieces is inconsistent with that approach, with sometimes
the pieces being placed haphazardly all over it, and sometimes placed in organised sections.
So in reality, this game was not designed to have any rules or thought put into it,
but I find it kind of funny that this seems to be the most ambiguous and complex game
on the list… and apparently it’s simple enough for kids to enjoy and pick up easily.
I’m going to leave this here before I break out the red string and try to crack the code
of this fictional game and try to make it make sense.
So there’s four of the background board games enjoyed by the crews of Trek.
As a kid, I’d always see them and wonder if I could really play them and I remember
being overjoyed to learn that there exists a real ruleset for things like the 3D chess
game, so why not these.
And apparently I’m not the only one!
Thanks for watching this one and until the next vid, I’ve been Ric, thanks again and
goodbye!
What’s that?
I forgot the Wadi game from DS9?
yes, yes I did.