Glass Bead Game playable variants

"GlassBeadGame PlayableVariant" is Charles_Cameron?'s term for an attempt to realise the GlassBeadGame in the real world in a playable way. One might think of a playable variant as "a glass bead game" (or gbg) rather than "the Glass Bead Game" (or GBG, which depending on viewpoint is either a fictional construct from TheNovel or an unattainable ideal or both).

Here are some PlayableVariants accessible on the Internet:

• The Bead Game: The reincarnation of of glassbeadgame.net (link broken)
• DigitalBeadGame: A recent, computer-mediated playable variant.
• GlassPlateGame: One of the earliest known playable variants, designed by Dunbar Aitkens -- "a conversation in the trappings of a board game".
• HipBone: Charles_Cameron?'s HipBone Games are probably the most popular gbg on the Internet.
• Intrachange: A gbg by William_Horden? based on correspondences between the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching and the 64 squares of a chessboard.
• Kennexions: designed by Ron_Hale-Evans?, Kennexions is based on the Norse poetic form called the Kenning?, among other things.
• LudusSollemnis: A gbg by Terence_MacNamee? based on liturgical drama. This work is now being continued at the website "Lusor Curiensis"(http://lusorcuriensis.wordpress.com/).
• Toward the Glass Bead Game: Fascinating gbg by Joshua_Fost? that uses XML and the SemanticWeb? (also an ambition of Kennexions).
• Vicus Lusorum: A wiki-formatted gbg and collaborative story engine which uses Everything2 as a model and the entire Internet as sources for game beads.
• WaldzellGbg: The Waldzell GlassBeadGame, designed by Mark_Line?, takes an analytical approach.
• Genesis-World-Game: a gbg involving Buckminster Fuller, Hermann Hesse, and Ludvig Wittgenstein.
• EdgeIn : A fairly competitive GBG based around hidden meanings.

See also BambooGarden for Seattle's original gbg design community.

Related Projects

• DominoBeadGame: A competitive domino game by Sid_Sackson?, inspired by TheNovel.
• OrganicPoetry: Like Scrabble, with words, not letters, and associations linking them.