Board Games in Fiction

3-D Chess

A playable game from Star Trek

Azad

The central game in the story of The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Bendoh

Bendoh is a board game, presumably similar to Chess, from the Stephen King novel The Eyes of the Dragon.

{.....Peter had made their father a set of Bendoh men three years ago. "I'll give Father something better than a bunch of stupid old game pieces," Thomas had said haughtily, but what he was really thinking was that if he couldn't make his father a simple wooden sailboat, he would never be able to help make something as difficult as the twenty-man Bendoh army. So Peter made the game pieces alone over a period of four months-the infantry men, the knights, the archers, the Fusilier, the General, the Monk and of course Roland had loved them even though they were a bit clumsy. He had immediately put away the jade Bendoh set the great Ellender had carved for him forty years before and put the one Peter had made for him in its place.}

Cheops

Mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune, Cheops, or pyramid chess is a nine-level chess with the double object of putting your queen at the apex and the opponent's king in check.

Cyvasse

From George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series

Cyvasse is played on a board which changes from game to game. The players arrange the tiles on the board, with a screen in the middle, so neither can see how the other arranges their board. Amongst the squares that the players can place themselves, are mountains. In turn, the players move their pieces across the board. In Volantis there are cyvasse parlors.

According to George R. R. Martin, cyvasse was inspired by "a bit of chess, a bit of blitzkrieg, a bit of stratego. Mix well and add imagination." He describes the game as complex and profound. He has not come up with rules for the game.

Game Pieces

There are ten different pieces available:

• Rabble

• Spearmen

• Crossbowmen

• Light Horse

• Heavy Horse

• Trebuchet

• Catapult

• Dragon

• Elephant

• King

The dragon is the most powerful piece in the game. While it is not exactly known how many pieces each player has of each different kind, one player has multiple elephants. The goal of the game is to "kill" the King.

Known color combinations of pieces include ivory and onyx, ivory and jade, and alabaster and onyx. Squares of the game board can be colored jade, carnelian, and lapis lazuli.

Known Rules

Several rules are briefly mentioned in A Song of Ice and Fire:

• A dragon can remove elephants from the board.

• A catapult can remove a dragon from the board.

• A trebuchet can remove a dragon from the board.

Dejarik

Star Wars game

Holochess

Star Wars game

Jumanji

Pai Sho

The ancient game of "Pai Sho" is a board game created by the makers of Avatar: The Last Airbender & Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Ancient-Game-of-Pai-Sho

Zathura

Games of Discworld

Board game played in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode Ordeal in the Darklands (1983)