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+# The Royal Game of Ur - Rulebook
+
+The Royal Game of Ur was rediscovered by British Archaeologist Sir Leonard
+Woolley between 1922 and 1934. British Museum curator Irving Finkel translated
+a Babylonian clay tablet and the photographs of another Sumerian tablet to
+reconstruct a set of plausible rules for the game.
+
+The Royal Game of Ur is a chance racing board game where two players compete to
+run all seven of their checker pieces through the board before the other.
+
+## Pieces
+
+The gameboard is an 8x3 size square board, with two tiles from the top and
+botom notched out from the fifth and sixth column of the top and bottom rows.
+
+[TODO graphic of board]
+
+The gameboard has various visual patterns on its tiles, including five rosette
+tiles: four on the first and seventh columns of the top and bottom rows, and
+one on the fourth column of the middle row.
+
+The gameboard is played with two sets of seven checker pieces: one black, and one white.
+
+Finally, there is a set of four four-sided tetrahedron dice. Each die has half
+of their points marked, and half left unmarked, giving each piece a 50-50
+chance to roll a mark.
+
+## Setup
+
+The board is cleared and both players are given their set of checkers.
+Following Chess standards, the player with the white set is given the dice,
+giving them the first move.
+
+## Objective
+
+Each player takes turns rolling dice to move their checkers from the pool,
+across the board, and then out of play. The first player who moves all of their
+checkers out of play wins.
+
+## Turn
+
+The active player begins their turn by rolling the dice. Sum up all the dice
+with a marked side up, and that's the fixed number of spaces a single piece can
+move. An active player may move a checker from their pool to the board, within
+the board, and from the board out.
+
+It takes a pip to move from the pool to the beginning of the board, a pip to
+move from the end of the board out of play, and a pip to move from one tile to
+the next. The player must use all roll pips on a single move.
+
+[TODO show graphic of board, detailing the mirrored route of each player]
+
+A player can then freely move one of their checkers on any of these conditions:
+
+- The piece moves out of play
+- The destination tile is empty
+- The destination tile is not a rosette (an opponent piece is "captured")
+
+If the destination tile is owned by one of their own checkers, or is a rosette
+owned by an opponent checker, a player may not move there. If the destination
+tile is otherwise owned by an opponent, a player may "capture" that checker by
+moving there, sending the checker back into the opponent's pool.
+
+If a player has no valid moves, they are forced to skip their turn.
+
+## Rosette
+
+There are five rosettes decorated on the game board: two on tiles private to
+each of the two players, and one in the middle of the board accessible by both.
+A player that lands on a rosette nets an extra turn, and checkers on a rosette
+tile may not be captured.