Azad
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- For other uses, see Azad (disambiguation).
Azad is a fictional game played in the Empire of Azad in the book The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. The word Azad translates to mean "machine" or "system", but is applied in the Empire to any functional entity such as animals, plants or artificial machines.
Although the actual rules are not given in the book, the game is primarily tactical and played on three-dimensional boards of various shapes and sizes. Typically the boards are large enough for players to walk around inside them to move or interact with their pieces. The number of players differs from game to game and also influences the tactics, as players can choose to cooperate or compete with one another. As well as skill and tactics, random events may influence the gameplay (often as card or other games of chance), and sometimes may change the outcome critically.
The game uses a variety of curious pieces to represent a player's units (military, resource or even philosophical premises). Made of genetically-altered cells, these respond to their handling by a player - at one moment in the book the protagonist is encouraged to take more care of a piece so that it performs better during play.
The game is the main determinant of one's social status in the forementioned empire. As such it aims to represent reality to such a degree that a player's own political and philosophical outlook can be expressed in play (the idea being that rival ideologies are "tested" first in the game before the winners can apply them in reality). In the novel, the protagonist ultimately finds that his tactics come to reflect the values of the Culture itself.