From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Board and table games, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to board games and tabletop games. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

Contents 1 4 hours? 2 Pyramid v. Full Colors 3 Highhandedness 4 Card Levels 5 Full Colors 6 Pyramid in the reimagined series 7 Canon 8 Need references and fiction cleanup 9 so-called cleanup

[edit] 4 hours?

...did I really spend 4+ hours writing that up? See what happens when I get bored, a hint depressed, and laser-focused? I should be in bed...

Hope we like this. I have never seen rules for Pyramid that were both clear and concise. I probably failed at concise, but I think this pretty much covers every aspect of the game.

If you want to get a set of cards for yourself (and I have NO connection to them other than I got mine from them), do a search on eBay.com for "Battlestar Galactica Pyramid" and find the seller "Intergalactic Trading Company" (their ID is "intergalactic"). It's a good fun game after you spend about ten minutes learning it.

I'm tired. Good night.

VigilancePrime 06:21, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pyramid v. Full Colors

BEFORE trying to skew these articles into their separateness again, please provide some rationale or evidence for the need to do so. There is nothing that has been shown in the new series to suggest that they are different games, and Ron Moore has said himself that they are intended to be the same. VigilancePrime 06:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Ron Moore stated in the podcast of "Resistance", in as many words, that the new series card game is called "Triad". "Full Colors" is a winning hand *WITHIN* the game of Triad. (unsigned comment by 69.112.26.170)

Can you give a SCREEN reference? If not, it's not canon yet. When it becomes official on-screen, we can add it as fact. The point you bring up, though, is that it hasn't been given an official name IN the series yet. I'll clarify in the article. Thanks for pointing that much out. [RDM frakked it all up and can't get himself un-frakked...] VigilancePrime 03:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Highhandedness

Persons from Earth? Hackwrench 19:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

As opposed to Caprica, Tauron, Geminon, or any of the other of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.  ;-)

VigilancePrime 02:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Card Levels

I thought the article was great except that the first and third level cards are frequently switched around. An example of this is the caption for the picture, and section 1.2.1.

I welcome any efforts to assist the article in correcting those oversights. (Like I mentioned, I wrote that thing in the middle of the night, etc., etc... and I'm sure there's at least a couple typographical or similar errors like that one!)

VigilancePrime 04:31, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Full Colors

In the miniseries, I remember Kara referring to her winning hand as "full colors", in the same way that we have a poker hand called "full house", etc. I don't remember any character referring to the entire card game as Full Colors, (er, but I haven't yet seen all aired episodes). 70.20.179.75 14:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if they have, but the SciFi website and RDM's blogs have made the "new" distinction clear. Personally, I had HOPED that they would have fixed their error (start using the correct terms and pretending that they always had), but Six's and then Baltar's references to Pyramid the court game (rightfully Triad) in the first two episodes of season 2b pretty much killed that thought.

They really frakked it up, so to speak.

VigilancePrime 22:38, 14 January 2006 (UTC): [BTW: if you can screencap that scene where Starbuck lays down the hand - so that we can see the actual hand - I would appreciate it. I'm working on getting BSG-based hands, as I have at least one example that does not fit the currently accepted mold for the game.]

RDM explained this in the "Resistance" podcast: by the time they noticed the switch (in the Miniseries they referred to the sport as "Pyramid") the Miniseries had already aired. See the "Resistance" podcast where this is explained in full. (another unsigned comment from 69.112.26.170)

"Noticed the switch" is code for "we have no frakking clue about what Battlestar Galactica was, and didn't study it enough, and frakked it up and somehow, miraculously, have salvaged it into a pretty good (okay, really good) show, but we still frakked this up beyond all recognition and I'm to frakking lame to fix it retroactively but SciFi and fans will forgive me and maybe one day we'll have two different games or some-frakking-thing." (BTW, what you said above I think is the same thing I have said here a few different times...see the following section...I'm not seeing any new information yet.) VigilancePrime 03:37, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pyramid in the reimagined series

According to dialog from Samuel Anders and what is written on BattlestarWIKI, Pyramid now seems to be a physical sport while the card game is "Full Colors". Anders and Starbuck play the game on Caprica, and when Anders returns to fleet, Admiral Adama recongnizes him as a star player from the Caprica Buccaneers who play Pyramid as a professional sport. I took the liberty to mention this in the top part of the Pyramid article. Cyberia23 19:00, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Ron Moore covered this in a blog, saying that HE frakked it up and by the time he realized it, it was too late. I had hoped that they would correct it but they never did, so the TERMS are now changed. The game PYRAMID and the sport TRIAD are the same (Triad got a little expansion, but the point of the game seems the same). This is why there is NO JUSTIFICATION for seperate articles for Full Colors and Pyramid (card game). They are, as it stands now, one and the same. It is getting tiring to be constantly fixing this article which, I might add, is still 95%+ the original article. (Cyberia23: I really liked the appearance/organization changes you made. Thank you for your help on that!)

VigilancePrime 06:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

No, the card game is called Triad. His exact words were: "..somewhere along the line I transposed the names. I misremembered what they called it and I- the sort of racquet-ball slash basketball game that they played in the original and that we referred to in this series, I now call Pyramid, and the name of that game in the original which was Triad is now what we sort of call our poker game"--->He clearly said that the card game is called Triad, not Full Colors. Please stop reverting this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.64.137.195 (talk) 18:34, 14 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Canon

PLEASE, before you frack it up again, actually read the reason for changes. While RDM and his cohorts may use the term Triad, and he may have told the world in a podcast it was Triad, it still remains that there is NO CANONICAL link to the name (yet). WHEN and IF they establish it in an aired episode, we can adjust this article accordingly. VigilancePrime 06:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need references and fiction cleanup

There are no references cited in this article. For Wikipedia articles, canon is irrelevant. The guidelines here are verifiability, reliable sources, and no original research. How much of this is described in secondary sources? How much of this has just been inferred directly from the series? It's not clear.

There is also a glaring lack of distinction in this article between reality and the universe of Battlestar Galactica. All persons are from earth; there is no basis for making a distinction between them and people who aren't from earth. Is this claim drawn from a particular anecdote? If so, cite the publication describing that anecdote. If not, it needs to be removed. —ptk✰fgs 14:18, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• The primary reference is the published rules, as I noted on the talk page, but various similar sources are online; I based them off a written one, so how do I note that? (I made the attempt in stating as much on the talk page.)
• As far as a distinction between reality and fiction, I understand the point, but this describes a real card game that was derived from fiction. There is a clear set of rules (that, like most card games, varies often) and this has been played in real life (I have, and I know of others), so it is a real game. It is used in fiction and was created for fiction, but the Klingon language was also created for TV and is now offered as a college class even! Same concept.
• I don't claim that the article is perfect; far from it. I do, though, believe that this article has reference, even if not well-noted, and is based on reality, even if originating in fiction. (Oh yeah, the "persons from Earth" comment was, admittedly, a little tongue-in-cheek, but that's all.)
• VigilancePrime 02:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Generally, written sources are cited something like this: Author Name (Year). "Title of an article", Title of Work. pg 1234.

If this is both a card game played in a work of fiction and a game that was actually published later, that distinction needs to be very clear.

Unfortunately, there is still nothing in the article to cite the rules or explain the distinction. I suspect that the rules section will need to be drastically condensed if it does indeed describe a complete copyrighted game. If the article does contain the complete rules of the game as published by ... whoever published it ... then the article is infringing on their copyright.

As you seem to have a copy of the published rules, and I don't, there's nothing I can do here to clear things up. Please take a moment to create an unambiguous distinction between the game in the fictional work and the game as published, and add a citation for the source. —ptk✰fgs 00:36, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

• Eek, I can do that, but it'll be awhile as I'm not even online but twice a week for a little while (in the process of moving). I don't think the rules are capyrighted as they have been seen online and sent with the card decks, and were very basic. This article admittedly garnishes those in order to be more thorough and descriptive. Truth told, if you screencap the TV show (which I've also been meaning to do for a long time), you'll see that what they say and the game as published here and elsewhere are a bit different. I'll continue working on this article as time goes on, and hopefully get a way better citation and descriptiveness. Thank you for your patience and guidance! VigilancePrime 02:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] so-called cleanup

PTKFGS: While much of your cleanup did help this article out, I'm concerned that too much content got hacked out. "(WP:FICTION and WP:WPBTG cleanup. removed excessive rules detail that is likely copyright violation, and unnecessary canon disclaimers.)" is the reasoning, but "likely copyright violation" is hardly reason. Can you show anywhere that the removed information was copyrighted? (Hint: it isn't.) The possible hands is absolutely important to the article; whereas before the article was sufficient for a person to learn to play the game, not it is not. I would think that unacceptable for a thorough, complete article on any game. Again, I like a lot of the changes, but a little too much with the scalpel. I don't have the time nor energy right now to change it up, but I'll get to it; I would absolutely appreciate your continued assistance with this, though, as it appears you have experience in gaming articles, and I need that sort of help. VigilancePrime 20:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Where are the rules published? It is entirely true that someone could have used the previous article to learn to play the game. Unless it is in the public domain, that is the problem. If the rules are not referencing a published source, and they were constructed here, then it's original research and there's no question that it needs to be removed. Really, the only hope for keeping that level of detail in the article is if it's published under a GFDL-compatible license.

Keep in mind that Wikipedia is not an instruction manual. It's not a concern whether someone can use the article here to learn to play the game. WikiProject Board and table games has a description of what level of detail is appropriate for game rules, as well as some discussion on the matter.

A complete description of the rules would most likely be welcomed more readily at battlestarwiki.org, but I see their copy of the article is linking back here with a sketchy claim that the rules are fan-created.

We need to know: What is the provenance of the rules?

Once we've got the answer to that question, it will be much easier to determine how much more of the article needs to be removed if it is not to be deleted. —ptk✰fgs 00:01, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll work on that. No promises on the timeline, though, but I'll work on it. Thank you for the help and clarification (and encouragement). VigilancePrime 01:54, 6 November 2006 (UTC)