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Once per game, each player could forgo his normal move to throw the sava dice. If the spider came up on each, he could move one of his opponent's pieces to eliminate any man of its own color within its normal reach, a rule that acknowledged the dark elves' propensity for doing down their kin even in the face of a serious external threat

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Originally posted by KnightErrantJR

For some reason I am thinking that the board was circular or web shaped, but I can't remember the exact reference.

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Originally posted by Aureus

You mean, one is playing on three different boards at the same time and if you lose on one you lose on all?

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Originally posted by Lawfire

Is "sava" a strictly drow game? I am reading, "The Alabaster Staff," and two private guards were playing the game instead of being vigilant. It mentions something about dice and gambling also, I'd have to go back and re-read the section to get the details. This took place in chapter 8, I dont' want to put any spoilers in my post, but I did notice they were playing "sava."

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Still, Pharaun was amused to see that his friend's eyes lingered
on the web-shaped sava boards for an instant, which was likely all the time he required to analyze
the four contests in progress.

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Sava was an intricate game representing a war between two noble Houses—at least that was
what it currently represented. Pharaun had seen an antique set that recapitulated in miniature the
drow's eternal struggle with another race, but such pieces had gone out of fashion long before his
birth, probably because no player had wanted to be the dwarves.

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With its gridlike board regulating movement and its playing pieces of varying capacities, sava
resembled games devised by many cultures, but celebrating the chaos in their blood the drow had
found a way to introduce an element of randomness into what would otherwise unfold with a
mechanical precision. Once per game, each player could forgo his normal move to throw the sava
dice. If the spider came up on each, he could move one of his opponent's pieces to eliminate any
man of its own color within its normal reach, a rule that acknowledged the dark elves' propensity
for doing down their kin even in the face of a serious external threat

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Pharaun, who privately considered himself cleverer than Ryld, had always been a little
chagrinned that he couldn't defeat the weapons master at sava., but alas, his friend wielded
mother, priestess, wizard, warrior, orc slave soldier, and dice as brilliantly as he did a sword.

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In three more moves, his onyx
wizard and orc would trap and mate his opponent's carnelian mother.
As usual, he had accomplished his victory without recourse to the dice. Truth to tell, those
clattering ivory cubes with the magically warmed images incised on the faces were the one aspect
of sava he didn't like. They interjected blind luck into what should be a contest of pure cunning.

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The hulking swordsman stood pondering a sava board, where
he'd set up a problem with the onyx and carnelian pieces.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Considering the drow love of chaos, I'm surprised the dice aren't used more often than once per game per player. Especially since -- unless those dice are not standard 1d6s -- there's only a 1 in 36 chance of being able to move one of the opponent's pieces.

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Originally posted by Kaladorm


My thoughts exactly. They make quite a big deal of a player rolling the dice to early in the game and wasting an opportunity in one of the descriptions of a running game, and to me a 1/36 chance of something happening is hardly reliable, or even that valuable.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Considering the drow love of chaos, I'm surprised the dice aren't used more often than once per game per player. Especially since -- unless those dice are not standard 1d6s -- there's only a 1 in 36 chance of being able to move one of the opponent's pieces.

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Originally posted by Kaladorm


The playing pieces

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(...)mother, priestess, wizard, warrior, orc slave soldier, and dice (...)

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Particular playing materials

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(...)onyx and carnelian pieces.

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Originally posted by TobyKikami

Well, seeing as the dice are described as "cubes," they're most likely six-sided - but who's to say there's only one spider per die?

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Originally posted by Kaladorm

Great quotes there Ergdusch thanks. Also TobyKikami very well pointed out that they do indeed use d6's.

KEJR, as I read it the dwarves did not have this element of the game at all. It says clearly that the drow found a way to introduce the chaos into what would otherwise be a purely strategic game, implying that they modified it. That is if indeed we assume it was a dwarven game and not perhaps simulating the war between the drow and the grey dwarves, which I see as more likely. Thats what I believe the reference to 'other games' means, however I also believe the text says that the drow version is not the only version, so we know it's not just them that play it, but I think assuming it was dwarven in origin might be a bit of a misinterpretation (though could well be correct).

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Originally posted by Sheepz

I've been searching for information about sava for a while myself, and I found two sites that show some information about them.

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dksbzwn_0fvchhthm

In that site it is stated that one could choose to roll the dice every turn, that however there is a 75% chance that nothing happens, and thus it is quite risky (in the nature of the drow...). The dice that are mentioned on this site are 8-sided, rather than 6-sided, and also provides some possible tactics. And how the game would start.

It is ofcourse just one site, but it is definitely worth checking.

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