The Royal Game of Ur

It would be a blatant lie to say this wasn't a difficult game to study, and iterating it into something interesting was a serious challenge. What passed for entertainment in the year 2 BCE explains how they got so much work done; if the games are this boring carrying an enormous boulder on your back to build a pyramid sounds like a pretty good night out.

At least it's better than Ur!

But I digress.

Our first thought was to speed up the gameplay itself.  Toward the beginning of the game especially, the pacing stagnates pretty quickly as players are unwilling to jump into the unsafe main play corridor from their start zones. A common iteration in our class was changing when you could add new pieces into play; we decided to keep the original rule of being able to play new pieces on any turn with any die roll above 0.

ITERATION 1 - KINGS

Our initial idea was to improve the mechanic of  "doubling-up" and increase the pace of the game with one stone. We turned doubled pieces into Kings, which have the ability to take pieces even when on Rosette squares (typically safe zones). Kings can only be created when a piece is moved onto a Rosette square which already contains a friendly piece. This MUST be a dedicated roll, i.e. the entire roll must be used on a single piece, and if you do not fall on the Rosette square you cannot make a King (a la finishing the game, exact rolls off the board). Each player can have only one King on the board at once.

This worked fairly well, though we came up with a few rules in medias res, which felt natural, and fed into iteration 2. Regular pieces attacking Kings resulted in the King losing a piece, but keeping it's position. Kings can also be used as "blockers", which are impassable by friendly or enemy pieces. This gave us the idea for iteration 2.

ITERATION 2 - COMBAT

We decided combat was a rather passive process in this game. The centre lane, especially toward the beginning, seemed to be entirely waiting for your opponent to move in front of you so you can take them, and then they take you etc. We reiterated combat so exact rolls are needed to take. When you take, you occupy the place of the piece taken (except with Kings). You can move past a piece if your have a high enough roll, which can be useful for accessing Rosettes or the exit.though you can divide your roll between pieces. For example:

If black is in this position and rolls 4..

He could take all 3 white pieces by dividing his roll. Unlikely, but possible.

Also, we removed some of the value of Rosette squares by having them protect you for a limited time, up to two opponent turns. This prevents "camping", keeping the game moving as no piece is permanently safe, and reduces the chance of Kings.

These combat rolls added a layer of strategy toward the end game as piece hopping became a more viable tactic in addition to simple taking.

ITERATION 3 - MORE DICE ROLLS 

A quick final addition was a board modification to further increase the games pacing. We added marked squares to the board; when a friendly piece occupies one of these squares, you gain a supplemental die roll.

A maximum of four squares are available to each player, with a potential of four supplemental rolls per turn. The squares are hard to hold for very long though; an optimal strategy is trying to hold a few early on to move pieces further down the board out of harms way.
These are a once-per-turn supplement. A Rosette stone extra roll, will not grant another set of supplemental rolls. A practical example:

If black rolled two, he could move a piece to his closest Rosette Stone...

Which would grant him an extra roll, as per the norm. As he now only has one marked square occupied, he rolls his one extra die, and does what he will with that result. On his Rosette extra roll though, regardless of the number of marked squares occupied he can only roll normally.

This had the effect of speeding up the game quite significantly, and added quite an amusing competition with territory control. This is probably my favourite iteration, especially combined with the combat iteration. Further refinements for this idea included making these marked squares harder to hold, and perhaps on a separate path on the board, as a risk/reward alternative.

Game pending.