Morris (Roleplaying/Games Help)

Nine Man's Morris is a simple, yet addictive game played by the fishing folk of Esgaroth. The pieces are few: a piece of cloth with the lines drawn upon it in ink and a few colored stones. The set that is available to players has nine stones in several colors, which allow players to pick what color they wish to play with.

The object of the game is to take seven of the nine pieces from one's opponent via 'morrises'. This will be discussed later.

In order to play a game, two players must be present. Each should choose a color to play with, and the colors must be different. Then, one of them should move. It doesn't matter who moves first; this can be decided between the players.

Both players start out with nine pieces in their color off the board. To begin, a player moves a piece onto the board to any open spot. Then their opponent does the same, and so on. During the following turns, the players have two options. They can move their piece about the board, moving horizontally or vertically to a new open spot, or they can put a new piece on the board. Both alternate turns in this fashion. They do not have to put all their pieces on the board at once.

As was mentioned earlier, the goal is to for one player to capture their opponent's pieces by surrounding them with their own. The pieces can be surrounded either vertically or horizontally, but not diagonally. Once a piece is surrounded, it can be removed, unless it is already in a morris (a set of 3 pieces in a row/column).

When either of players reaches three pieces, something special happens. That person can now move all about the board, without going one by one vertically or horizontally. Thus they can hop about the board at whim, and pick off opponent's pieces. This makes the endgame quite difficult.

If either of the players cannot move during one turn because all of their pieces are blocked and they have no pieces remaining to be put on the board, the game is over.

For more details and the exact syntax of commands used to play, visit Sellenger's Inn in Esgaroth.