Tars Okey

Two Turkish table games — Okey and Tavla — played on real tables, right there in the world.

No abstract menu game. Tars Okey puts a hand-built wooden table into Minecraft: green felt, brass trim, four stools, four istaka racks and all 106 tiles. You sit down, the tiles are dealt onto your rack, and you play on the table itself — reach for a tile with your crosshair, drag it where you want it, throw it on the pile. No window required.

Next to it stands the Tavla table: Turkish backgammon, two seats, a real board with 30 checkers and two dice. Same idea, same hands-on table.

The table

• A 2×2 block table you place like any other block. Right-click to take a free seat.
• Four seats, four istaka racks, the talon in the middle, the gösterge face up beside it, two dice on the felt.
• Everything is visible to everyone at the table — including people who are just watching. Spectators see the talon, the discard piles, whose turn it is, how many tiles each player holds.
• Face-down tiles are never sent to other clients. The server transmits only the number of tiles in a foreign hand, never which ones. You cannot cheat by reading packets, because the data is not there.

Playing on the table

Everything runs off the right mouse button. What you aim at gets a golden outline, so you always know which tile you are about to touch.

A turn clock sits at the top of the screen while you play: when it is your turn you see the time left in large digits with a shrinking bar that turns red in the last ten seconds and ticks softly in the last five. Everyone else sees who is on turn and how long they have.

The window is only for the table itself — starting, getting ready, adding or removing uncles, settings and stakes. It shows no tiles: the game is played on the table only. When someone wins, everyone sees the winner's rack for five seconds, laid out exactly as the winner arranged it.

Why the istaka has more slots than tiles

Each rack has two rows of eleven slots — 22 for at most 15 tiles. That is on purpose: only with free slots can you lay a hand out in groups with gaps between them, the way you do at a real table. The gaps stay where you put them, even after you discard. Nothing slides around behind your back.

The Okey uncles

Short on players? Sit down with Mehmet, Kemal, Sabri or Orhan Amca. They are modelled and animated: they rest their forearms on the table edge, reach out when they draw, turn their heads to whoever is playing, and rock gently while they think.

Three strengths — easy-going, shrewd and coffee-house master. They see exactly what a human sees: their own hand and what lies open on the table. They do not look into the talon, and they do not look at your tiles.

In 300 test rounds against a player throwing at random, the uncles won 238 : 0.

Stakes

Want to play for something? Each seat has its own stake tray. Open the stake window and you see every tray at the table, live — the other seats with their names on top, yours at the bottom. Drag in whatever you want to bet; the moment someone else adds something, it shows up for everyone. The lobby lists each player's stake next to their name too. Everyone puts in their own; nobody can reach into anyone else's.

The moment a round starts the trays lock. Every round is its own game: whoever finishes takes everything, straight into their inventory — no button to press, and anything that does not fit drops at their feet. A draw or a round won by an uncle gives every player their own stake back; so does standing up before the round starts. Then the table returns to the lobby and everyone can bet again. Stakes only count between players: if you sit alone with uncles, your tray stays open and untouched. Nothing is duplicated and nothing is lost — checked after every step in the test suite.

Nargile and çay

A kahvehane without a water pipe and a glass of tea is not a kahvehane.

• The nargile is a placeable block: tray, glass vase with water, brass stem, clay bowl, wind cover and a ribbed hose. Right-click to draw on it — the coal glows, it bubbles, it smokes. Decoration, no gameplay advantage.
• Çay comes in a proper ince belli bardak, the thin-waisted glass, with saucer, two sugar cubes and a spoon. Drink it from your hand, or put it down on a corner of the Okey table and pick it up again between rounds.

The rules

The full classic game, not a simplified version:

• Played counter-clockwise, like at a real table: take from the left, discard to the right. The player to the right of the dealer starts with 15 tiles
• 106 tiles: four colours, 1–13, twice each, plus two false okeys
• Gösterge and okey, series and sets, the 1 counting both high and low
• Çift — seven pairs — is a valid finish
• Every round is its own game: the winner takes the stakes immediately, then it is back to the lobby
• When an uncle wins, his rack is laid out in its winning groups for everyone to see
• 2 and 3 players use the full 106-tile set with unchanged rules

Every invalid move is refused and explained, on the server, every time.

Tavla — the second table

Turkish backgammon, at its own table. Craft it, place it, sit down: two stools facing each other, a wooden board with 24 points, 15 checkers per side, two dice and a leather cup at each end.

• Played on the board, exactly like Okey. Right-click the dice in front of you to roll, then click your checker and the point it should go to. What you aim at lights up
• Classic Tavla: doubles count four times, a hit checker goes on the bar and must re-enter before anything else, and you bear off once all fifteen are home. No doubling cube
• Match to 5 wins, adjustable from 1 to 7. A Mars counts as one win — the way it is played in the coffee house
• Borne-off checkers rest in felt trays beside the board, where you can count them from across the table
• Stand up in the middle of a game and it counts as a loss, not a Mars
• A turn clock as at the Okey table: 30, 60 or 120 seconds, or off. When it runs out, the move is made for you

Short on players here too? The uncles sit down at the Tavla board as well, in the same three strengths. They look at the board and the dice, nothing else.

Two uncles played 240 games against each other: the coffee-house master beat the easy-going one 211 : 29.

Stakes work exactly as at the Okey table — both players pay in, the winner takes the pot.

Servers and multiplayer

• Works in singleplayer, over LAN and on dedicated Forge, NeoForge and Fabric servers
• The whole game runs on the server. The client only ever gets what is openly on the table.
• Any number of tables, each with its own game
• Games and stakes survive a server restart
• A table cannot be broken while a round is running or while stakes are in it
• /okey finde and /okey aufraeumen find and clean up stray tables

Requirements

Three builds of the same game — pick the one for your setup:

• Minecraft 1.20.1 with Forge 47.2.0 or newer in the 47 branch
• Minecraft 1.21.1 with NeoForge 21.1.1 or newer
• Minecraft 1.21.1 with Fabric Loader 0.15.11 or newer and Fabric API 0.116.0 or newer
• Client and server, if you play on a server

Getting started

1. Craft an istaka (planks), a tile set (clay, bone meal and four dyes) and then the Okey table.
2. Place it, right-click to sit down.
3. Add uncles if you like, everyone readies up, the host starts.
4. The gösterge appears on screen for five seconds — the next tile up in the same colour is the okey.
5. Play on the table. When your hand is complete, drop your last tile on the middle of the table to finish.

For Tavla: craft the Tavla table (planks, a bone, brown wool and two logs), place it, sit down, add an uncle or wait for a second player, and start. Roll by right-clicking the dice in front of you; press O to open the window during a game.

Language: English, German and Turkish (Türkçe), fully translated. Model, textures, sounds and rules built from scratch for this mod.