Remixing Snakes and Ladders

First draft October 2025.

Introduction

The purpose of this work is to document the development a novel game using and augmenting the materials of an existing game. In this study, the materials of Snakes and Ladders will be “remixed” to produce a pedogeological tool based on the history of the nineteenth century debate between Lord Kelvin and the geological community over the Age of the Earth. It is intended that, with limited modification to the existing format, salient aspects of the historical episode can be communicated through gameplay. To this end a recipe for how the materials are to be remixed is provided, followed by a of description of how historical content is intended to be embedded in the game.

Part 1: Remixing

Tabletop board games use materials such as a playing board, dice, cards and tokens. Typically, game materials are provided along with a set of rules to direct the behaviour of players and materials. In combination, game rules and materials enable players to play a game¹. It is possible to change the conventional use of materials, and therefore the game, through altering the context as defined in the rules. This is termed remixing.

The change in the context of materials can be considered from different perspectives. Foregrounding the design of a game (author’s intentions), resources can be repurposed by transporting them from one purpose-environment to another. Considering to the functions of materials within the performance of a game (how game roles relate to one another), pieces can be reinterpreted for a new performance. Attending to the context of play (materials, players and environment), items can be recultured in a foreign context. Engaging with Actor-Network theory (à la Michael Callon²) an agent can (re-)define the roles of others in a process of (re-)interessement³. In each case the connection of materials, actors and rules is rehearsed with slight differences in appreciation. Hence, remixing (reusing/editing/embedding existing pieces in a new whole) is a familiar practice which can also be found within the field of games and gaming.

It should be noted, remixing is distinct from gathering tokens from various sites to facilitate playing an existing game. For example, using coins as chess pieces or marking a joker card to fulfil the 52 prerequisite roles for poker. Instead, in the remixing case, the materials are repurposed for a novel game.

Remixing Snakes and Ladders

Snakes and Ladders is an appropriate subject for repurposing to educational ends given its pedogeological pedigree. The game is believed to have originated in the Indian sub-continent, where its earliest examples are to be found, sometime before the eighteenth century as a tool for religious teaching. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the game travelled along colonial routes to Britian and on to the World in its modern secular form [2]. Throughout its documented history it has been reinterpreted (if not remixed) across religious, geographical and political boundaries.

The apparatus of the existing game of Snakes and Ladders will be repurposed and augmented with game cards. An alternative set of rules will define a new interpretation of materials and procedures to produce a novel game. The outcome of each game will be a fictional historical narrative concerning the nineteenth century debate between Lord Kelvin and the geological community over the Age of the Earth.

Players will compile a shared collection of game cards over the course of the game by landing on snake or ladder tiles. Each card will describe a narrative event along with a specific outcome for each player designated by the player role. At the end of the game, when any player token exceeds the penultimate position (tile-99), the narrative will be complete with no more cards added. An aggregate score for each player will be calculated by summing the points awarded to each player on all collected cards. The score will determine a game grade which can be compared to other players, repeated plays or the reference narrative described in the game rules.

The game has several competitive components which can be performed against any contemporaneous players or asynchronously over repeated plays. The first metric is board progression as in a traditional race contest. This is driven by the chance rolls of the die, as in the original game. The second metric is the final grade, calculated from the player specific points on cards collected during the game. Card collection is determined by the chance encounters with snakes and ladders on the board by all players. However, the points accrued from the cards depends on the player role which is chosen by each player at the start of the game.

Materials & Rules

Standard constituents of Snakes and Ladders to be used:

Numbered 100-tile (10x10) board: including distribution of snakes and ladders
Counters: mark player positions
Six-sided die: rolled for chance token progression

Additional materials:

Ladder cards: each includes narrative text and (positive) points per role
Snake cards: each includes narrative text and (negative) points per role

Game rules:

At the start of the game each player must chose a role from the list of protagonists⁴: Kelvin, Geologist or Combiner.
All players begin off the board (tile-0) and blank history (empty narrative and no points).
Players take turns to advance their markers through the tiles (Boustrophedon fashion) in accordance with dice values until a marker position coincides with the foot of a ladder, the head of a snake, or the tile position exceeds tile-99 (end condition).
Landing on the foot of a ladder: the player token advances to the top of the ladder. A ladder card is obtained from the ladder card pile. The card is added to the common card pile in sequence.
Landing on the head of a snake: the player token regresses to the bottom of the snake. A snake card is obtained from the snake card pile. The card is added to the common card pile in sequence.
The game ends when a player’s marker position exceeds tile-99. Additional points are awarded to the advanced player for each tile over 100.
When the game is finished, each player calculates their score from the role-specific points accrued in the shared card pile. The final player score is the sum of all role-specific points from snake and ladder cards plus any additional points from the final position. The grade is determined by comparison of the score to the grading scheme provided in the game rules.

Opportunities for further contingency:

The score from each card is determined by a dice-roll using a key provided on the card.

Characteristics of the Remixed Game

Variations in game outcomes by adjusting the game settings of Snakes and Ladders have been studied previously⁵. Distributions of game metrics (snakes and ladders encounters, total number of turns, final positions) were compiled over repeated game simulations. The effects of variations in game rules and number of players were compiled. These distributions in simulated game phenomena provide guidance in the provision of additional materials:

The expected number of snake and ladder encounters per game suggest the number of game cards required and hence the probable length of the compiled narrative.
The likelihood of reaching final positions beyond tile-99 suggests a reasonable allocation of bonus points and hence the dynamic range for score grading (when combined with the average score from game cards).
The expected total number of turns per game indicates the game duration.

Beyond the limits set out in the game materials and rules, further opportunities for game altering decisions exist:

The choice of gameboard which defines the multiplicity and distribution of snakes and ladders over the tiles (this has never been standardised for Snakes and Ladders⁶).
The addition of special actions, such as bonuses for rolling a six, penalties for three consecutive six rolls, etc.

Part 2: Adding Historical Content

As part of the pedogeological aspect of the game players can get a sense of historical place through the use of material context, game behaviours and written information. This provides a source of referentiality⁷ through traditional written methods as well as pictorial and performance techniques.

Material Referentiality

These methods ascribe referentiality to the game through the physical appearance. Possible elements include design of the game presentation, such as the box, board art and text fonts. The material constituents of the game are also significant such as player tokens and cards. For digital or remixed games there are significant limitations to these options. In the case of digital games, there may be no presentation materials if the game is exclusively hosted online or only obtainable via download⁸. In the case of remixed games, some or all of the game materials may not be amenable to facilitate referentiality; indeed, some pieces may hamper the process. In the present case of remixed Snakes and Ladders, the game cards, which are supplementary to the original materials, can be tailored to make use of the methods of referentiality. Further augmentation is possible such as player tokens or dice; however, each adds additional overhead to playing the game.

Game Behaviours (roles)

Players are oriented to the historical period through a choice of historical roles made at the beginning of the game. Players may proceed as Kelvin (arguing the case for a 100-million-year limit on Age of the Earth), an antagonist Geologist (against Kelvin’s restrictive model) or a Combiner (seeking some compromised alternative⁹). The player’s historical narrative (and score) is compiled over the course of the game by the collection of game cards. Each card contains information and a score tailored to each role so that the player has a biased perspective of events. Players will be conscious of their partiality when reading a card as all perspectives will be presented. By the end of the game a pseudo-historical story can be told which is specific to the role chosen by the player as well as the chance collection of cards over the course of the game. This provides some mechanism for novelty over iterated plays which may encourage repeated engagement.

Written text

Written content will be provided in the game rules, game cards and historical comparison. Common referential methods found in written materials include dated or anachronistic phrases and spelling as well as using present tense when referring to historical events and characters of the time. These can make the player aware of the otherness of the historical context, illustrated in textual examples, while simultaneously inviting them to consider it an active and unfolding timeline that they share, via grammatical techniques. See Appendix A for examples of game cards.

Historical Comparison

To further encourage historical engagement and to ground the possible narratives with documented events, the final grading relies on a historical comparison. At the end of the game each player has a narrative with an accompanying score. This is compared to the documented events, described in a similar short narrative form to the game cards, as well as a look-up table, mapping grades to score ranges. Players can judge their own results against the comparative grade or by a detailed appraisal of events between the documented and generated narratives.

Conclusion

This work documents a proposed method for remixing an existing game, with limited augmentation, to the ends of historical pedagogy. It is proposed that Snake and Ladders provides an accessible starting point to enable engagement with the nineteenth century debate between Lord Kelvin and the geological community over the Age of the Earth. Several techniques are described to embed historical content within the game environment as well as how a mix of player choice with chance mechanisms can generate novel outcomes to encourage iterated plays. This remixing leverages the popular familiarity of Snakes and Ladders to the pedogeological ends of historical engagement.

Appendices

Appendix A: Example Game Cards

An example Ladder Card

In this example a single event is interpreted three ways. The consequences describe different reactions in the case of each role. The text references a contemporary organisation of the period.

Event: The French Connection

Description: There is a gathering of luminaries at your institution for a diplomatic event. There you meet an amiable French attendee, unfamiliar with the antagonisms of the geochronological debate, who describes some rumours he has heard concerning fossils unearthed during recent mining extractions in Prussia. Some days later you receive a reply to your letter requesting information from the Royal Prussian Mining Inspectorate. It provides some new empirical data for you to interpret.

Consequences:

Kelvin: “This report shows temperatures at depths consistent with my model of secular cooling.” +1 point
Geologist: “The fossils are reportedly found at depths lower than one might expect for their anatomical development. This suggests an evolutionary timescale beyond Kelvin’s restrictions.” +10 points
Combiner: “This interesting report provides valuable evolutionary data found in a geologically interesting area. Perhaps there is some significant factor which has varied evolution in this region.” +5 points

An example Snake Card

In this example the same text describes three different events. The consequences describe different reactions in the case of each role. The text references a contemporary organisation of the period.

Event: BAAS meeting

Description: Gathering your most recent arguments and findings you travel to the next annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science keen to engage in the debate over the Age of the Earth. On the day of your presentation you fall ill, perhaps succumbing to some contagion encountered on the busy train you travelled on to get there. You do not perform well and must retire early missing the event dinner and the chance to politely interrogate some of your antagonists.

Consequences:

Kelvin: “Blasted sniffles!” -10 points
Geologist: “Hopefully one of my colleagues can proceed in my stead.” -1 points
Combiner: “What bad luck! I shall have to rely on correspondence to make up for this.” -5 points

Appendix B: Online version

A web-app based game can be found: https://play-kelvin-project.app.cern.ch

References and Footnotes

References

Ref code	Title	Author(s)	Date	Publication
0	Charting Snakes and Ladders	K Wraight	2025	Link
1	How Long Is a Game of Snakes and Ladders?	S C Althoen, L King, K Schilling	1993	The Mathematical Gazette, 77, 478, 71-76
2	The Indian Game of Snakes and Ladders	Andrew Topsfield	1985	Artibus Asiae, 46, 3, 203-226
3	Snakes and Ladders in India: Some Further Discoveries	Andrew Topsfield	2006	Artibus Asiae, 66, 1, 143-179
4	Chess of the Gnostics: The Sufi Version of Snakes and Ladders in Turkey and India	Irvin Cemil Schick	2021	Games and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Kopp & Lapina
5	Board Games and the Construction of Cultural Memory	Jason Begy	2017	Sage Publishing

Footnotes

In more theatrical terms: the interaction of players, rules and materials constitute the performance of a game. ↩
Callon, M., 1986. Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fisherman in St Brieuc Bay. ↩
In this case it may be asked who this agent is. Following the work of Pickering, this can be identified with the non-human agency of the game rules which govern the behaviour of pieces and players. ↩
It is left to the players how role assignment is achieved, e.g. by age (e.g. youngest to oldest), by die roll (e.g. highest to lowest), by geometry (clockwise from the player closest the door). ↩
See [0] and [1]. ↩
For many examples see [2], [3] and [4]. ↩
Some examples taken from [5]. ↩
Conversely, other opportunities are available through digital design, such as a front page, avatar configuration and the addition of sounds and animation. ↩
Such roles are often forgotten when controversies are rehearsed, especially in non-historical contexts. ↩