I wonder when Montana brought speed limits back. Right after the Feds left it up to the states to decide and eliminated 55, the abolished speed limits entirely. It was something like as fast as you can drive safely.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
That's it Bort, we're playing Le Jeu du Monde next year.
ChuckF, get translating. Ymir's Blood, build us the miniatures!
I am officially declaring myself obsessed with Le Jeu du Monde. The man to whom its dedicated -- the Comte de Vivone -- was the father of Madame de Montespan who is totally my favorite of Louis XIV's mistresses because she was said to have fed him the ground up bodies of infants for 10 years to ensure his affections would not wander. It didn't work long-term, so everyone put down the babies.
I wonder when Montana brought speed limits back. Right after the Feds left it up to the states to decide and eliminated 55, the abolished speed limits entirely. It was something like as fast as you can drive safely.
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Originally Posted by lisarea
It was back in the late 90s, based on it being unconstitutionally vague or something.
I had a friend at the time who was from Montana, and he was really really het up about the whole thing, so I got daily narrations on the progress.
Heh, they never really enforced the 55 mph speed limit in Montana, at least not for a decade or so after being blackmailed by the feds. "The fine for speeding is $2, and we're not really going to be looking for you," said the head of Montana State Police at the time. Then they discovered it can be a revenue source.
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That's it Bort, we're playing Le Jeu du Monde next year.
ChuckF, get translating. Ymir's Blood, build us the miniatures!
No joke, I'll do it. I'll even shoop us an English-language board. It sounds fun.
I object! The 17th century French location names are a significant part of the awesome. We do need some rules, though. I mean, what do you do once you land on a place?
That's it Bort, we're playing Le Jeu du Monde next year.
ChuckF, get translating. Ymir's Blood, build us the miniatures!
No joke, I'll do it. I'll even shoop us an English-language board. It sounds fun.
I object! The 17th century French location names are a significant part of the awesome. We do need some rules, though. I mean, what do you do once you land on a place?
Well fine then, I won't.
Maybe if you weren't too busy wildly objecting to actually look at the game, you would notice that the rules are written there, on the map, in French, telling you what to do once you land on a place. But now you'll never know, I guess.
no it's fine, liv just thinks I will do an awful job and ruin everything by translating the place names, LIKE I WOULD EVEN DO THAT AT ALL, I get it. I'm sorry I even brought it up, everybody have fun with your game.
I would slap a baby to see the author's additional knowledge of the game and historical commentaries. Now somebody figure out how we can turn this beauty into a useable online game.
Chuck that is a thing of beauty. Seriously, well done.
When the original was posted, I freaked out a little. Not just because it is awesome, but because it was familiar. I had a book that belonged to my mother, which had full color plates of a game almost identical to that one. The layout of the board, the movement, the four quadrants, the dice, everything was the same. Only that game was themed on the constellations and played across the night sky. I have to believe that they were contemporaries of each other. I am hoping this may have been a rather popular style of dice game in that period with variants on the theme for the bored aristocracy. It may have even been the same author, the styles are very similar from what I remember. If there were other versions that may make the rules easier to find.
Sadly, I sold that book in the needing-to-eat days of my early twenties and have always regretted it. I don't even have a clear recollection of the author or title, I just remember it was a book on astrology which focused on connecting eastern and western methods through history. It also had some funny essays in the back which attempted to deduce the star signs of characters in Shakespeare. I digress, it was a weird-ass, fantastic book.
I took a half-hearted attempt to rabbit hole Le Jeu du Monde when it was first posted, but now I am on a mission. Someone did put up a game board geek entry for it, but it lacks information. It does note that:
Quote:
The publication of a new set of rules, a Nouvelle Explication de jeu du monde (Paris 1650) suggests that the game remained popular over a number of years.
A klew!
ETA- What follows is a chronicle of my rabbit holing for anyone else who wants to play along.
ETA:
I uncovered that the author, Pierre Du Val d'Abbeville, was the royal cartographer:
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P. D. V. G. D. R. = P. Du Val Graveur du Roi = P. Du Val (1) Royal engraver. Worked for the king (2) during 20 years.
(1) Pierre Du Val d'Abbeville (1618/1619-1683), who also was a famous cartographer. From 1653 on he worked as a cartographer for his master and uncle H. Sanson in Paris. From 1662 on he started publishing several map series in small-sized format. After his death, his daughter published a large-sized atlas between 1688 and 1689.
(2) Louis XIV (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as The Sun King (French: Le Roi Soleil).
Via GBG I wish I knew where this info was added from. I am betting someone transcribed it from a book without giving a source. From this I would bet that the game I saw is a cousin, not a brother. Or perhaps not. Cartographers in that era had knowledge of the constellations.
This is one of the earliest geographical games that we have seen. Only one other copy is known of this game, held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The object of the game is to progress from the outer parts of the world in towards the center (France) by rolling dice and moving each player's piece from circle to circle on the board. California is shown as an island in circle 5. Duval also made a similar game of France.. Hennin, 3477
So there is another game he did on the regions of France. Wish I could find that Hennin footnote.
I have found it! By which I mean the type of game. It was called le Jeu de l'oie. My problem was that I was looking for un jeu de société, a board game, and not un jeu de hasard, a betting game.
The game requires 63 spaces which form a spiral and uses dice to advance. I am still working on translating the rules and history, but it is a start.