In all the original Star Wars trilogy, only one game makes an appearance - the enigmatic but tantalizing holographic chess-like game played by a frustrated Chewbacca and a feisty R2-D2.
Only watch the first 50-sec or so - sorry about the obnoxiousness after that.
What is Holochess?
There's not much to go by in this little scene - we see only three moves - and the film script and novelization are silent about even a name for the game. But fans have dived deep, created various rules and some mythology around the game, and it's now possible to play it. The extended universe provided the game with a name, Dejarik, as well as some details about each of the holomonsters that make an appearance.
Too bad they don't actually sell this game...
But if you want to play, you have to have a board to start, so I decided to make my own.
The Design
As with my Konane board, I've opted for a 450-mm by 450-mm black and white design to be transferred to a sheet of canvas for usability, easy storage, and durability.
I relied on two primary resources when considering my design: the clip from YouTube, above, and this teaser note from director J.J. Abrams for the upcoming Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens:
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| Sure looks like a hologame board to me. |
I started with a simple black and white design, but it looks flat and uninteresting. It definitely does not evoke a sense of the game seen in the movie, so I toned down the white to a nice gray.
Plain board and gray spaces
Still looks flat, so I created a little brushed aluminum texture. But at this point, it still looks like a vectorized texture. To really make it shine, I switched to a square board design, added the texture and some gradients, then translated it to polar coordinates to make it circular again. (I used Gimp to translate to polar, i.e., make the board a circle, since Inkscape lacks this capability. The downside is that you lose the vectorization of the image. To make up for that, I use very high-res images, which substantially increase the file size. The raw square board .tif image I exported to translate in Gimp is >100Mb! Probably overkill, but it gets the job done.)
Simple texture and full texture square board
Now that's more like it! You may notice that there's no grid lines between the spaces on the board - this is easy to see around the center space. This is intentional - I can't see any such grids in the original boards in the movie or the Abrams image. It makes it feel more like a solid board made of aluminum, not a painted piece of plastic.
Final circular board with Aurebesh decoration
Next, I had to deal with text-like images on the keys around the board in the Abrams image. This is a bit of an enigma. These symbols are not recognizable Aurebesh - the letters used widely in the Star Wars universe. There's no good way that I can see to know their meaning. So, to add a flourish to the design, I added a border to the board, added these symbols and a little Aurebesh writing, and contained them in a slightly unbalanced symmetrical design around the board. The symmetrical imbalance is actually another nod to the original board design from the film - the keys and lights on the board don't seem to directly align with a balanced half of the board. It's a small thing, but it adds a nice flavor, I think.
Making the Board
The next step is to take the hi-res image, get it printed at ~18"x18" (turns out that in black & white, this is only a couple dollars at Kinko's), then transfer the image to canvas. But more about that in a later post...
Playing Holochess
Of course, even after the board is printed out, you still need rules and playing pieces to play. I mentioned that people have come up with their own rules and variations. To that end, I have borrowed from some of these, adapted them for playability (and simplicity) and have put them up on GitHub. [Not all the rules are fleshed out - this is a work in progress.]
For playing pieces, there are a couple of options. One, for at least 2 variations of the game, you could just use 1.5" checker pieces - they should fit quite comfortably on this board. Another option would be to print out your own pieces with images of the holomonsters seen in the movie. I, personally, decided to buy some minifigures of those monsters and adapt them for play. I'm not yet entirely sure they'll fit on the board, but I'll figure it out. Can't wait to play!
Accessing the Resources
The board, some resource files, and my house rules are available on GitHub under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. I consider this work fair use and substantially original work with full credit to the original creators and copyright owners of the various inspirational source works - but all the more reason to keep it under a NonCommercial license.
Star Wars, and all its associated content, is the sole and exclusive property of Lucasfilm Limited of Disney. Original game rules and resources as developed by Mike Kelly are the sole copyright of Mike Kelly, and original rules and resources as developed by Igor Barzilai are the sole copyright of Igor Barzilai - but I'd like to wish them many thanks for the inspiration.
Bibliography
As a little shout out to those resources I found along the way that go a little deeper into the mythology around holochess:
http://zeelay.free.fr/star-wars-artisanal/ - Igor Barzilai's website with original game rules and other interesting things. This is the game I want to try. It's based on the actual moves made in the movie and isn't overly complicated.
http://dhost.info/rissa/Holochess/ - Mike Kelly's Dejarik rules. Lots of fun mythology around the game and rules for 2 games. These are the rules you'll find first on google - so I made my own variations based on this concept.
https://samstarrett.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/dejarik-holochess-the-ultimate-star-wars-pastime/ - Some ideas for refining Mike Kelly's rules for Dejarik. Interesting, at least.
http://www.xiii.dk/ccccd/Casino.htm / http://www.xiii.dk/ccccd/ - Free printable designs for Pazaak, Dejarik, and Sabaac, and even some Imperial Credits! And loads of info about Star Wars, to boot.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dejarik - Wookieepedia page on Dejarik with links to more info about the monster behind the holomonsters.
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