Dao Sho

Dao Sho is a point-taking strategy game that uses carved circular tiles. Typically played between 2 to 4 players, the game's primary win condition is to reduce all opposing players' points to 0, with each player reduced to 0 immediately eliminated from the game. Due to the extremely long time such games take to play, dozens of additional instant-win conditions have been added over the centuries, and overtaken points as the way most players approach the game.

Gameplay

Players provide their own "bag" of tiles, analogous to a deck of cards, built to accomodate their own playstyle and strategies. As the game has evolved across Hesper, hundreds of tiles are accepted as standard. Before a game is played, players will agree upon a weight limit for the game, which their bags must not exceed. Different tiles have different standardized weights, to account for their relative strength in gameplay.
The game is played on a round hexagonal grid, with players taking turns drawing, playing, and moving tiles. The game is generally played as a war game, with points deducted from a player's total when a tile is removed from play. However, many win conditions exist which subvert this aspect of the game entirely, making the exact nature of a game completely unpredictable when playing new opponents.
There is no natural end state to the game - play continues until all but one player has "gone bust", or lost all of their points, or until a player achieves their win condition. Because of this, Dao Sho is notorious for being an extremely long game to play.

Tiles

Dao Sho tiles are broadly divided into three categories: Nature, Hesper, and Atlanteans. The earliest versions of the game consisted entirely of Hesper tiles. Nature tiles were added over time, and the arrival of the Atlanteans promptly inspired their addition to the game. Within these categories, there are three broad playstyles. Nature tiles trend towards altering the game state or achieving abstract win conditions, Hesper tiles trend towards more straightforward war game victories or positioning-based win conditions, and Atlanteans trend towards heavy-handed win conditions and control over the war game aspect.
Each of the three main categories is further divided into countless "suits", which are loosely defined by either their region of origin or by working towards similar win conditions. For example: Cha'ari tiles are a Hesper suit which often bypasses points and wins by moving its tiles from one extreme end of the board to the other; Broken Sun tiles are a Hesper suit which sets up pilgrimmage sites and then wins by controlling them in order; Maskur Das Woods tiles are a Nature suit which often wins by misleading the opponent into instant-loss traps.
Tiles are made from wood, which means the same tile might have a wildly different size or shape depending on the wood used, in order to meet the standardized weight. Veteran players will often observe the wear on their opponent's tiles to gauge their experience and familiarity with the bag.

Variants

As Dao Sho has been widespread across Hesper for millenia, many variants exist outside of the widely-accepted standard rules. Common variants include extremely low or high weight limits, multipliers to points to speed up the game, or restrictions on suits or board size.

Culture

Dao Sho is generally considered a refined game, due to its long history and nigh-infinite available strategies. Since so much of someone's personality can come through in their gameplay, avid players consider the game to be the best way to get to know someone new.
The game is sometimes used as a form of communication. Because such a wide variety of game states can be created between colluding players, a game of Dao Sho may be used as a form of code language. What looks like a normal game to outsiders can convey an almost unlimited amount of information between the players.
Because of the game's extremely long run time, it is unpopular for gambling. When it is played for stakes, they are usually set extremely high to offset the time investment, and it is very rare for more than one game to be played.