Set's Ladder is a puzzle game played on a specially rigged Pyramid of the People. Depending on the rule system devised by its designer, a Set's Ladder can be a game of chance, like a slot machine; or a more deterministic puzzle with specific rules and clues in the instructions; or a combination of both rules and chance.
Every Set's Ladder puzzle has a popularity score, which increases every time somebody plays it (whether or not they solve it). To complete the Initiation into Thought, a designer must create a Set's Ladder puzzle, and then have enough people play it to bring its popularity to 100.
Ante: Starting a new game of Set's Ladder requires an ante from the player, the type and amount of the ante being specified by the designer. Most Set's Ladders are built more for fun than profit, and since they are always located on sand, sand is a very common ante.
Objective: At the start of the game, every block of the pyramid is home to a colored piece, or "ark". Arks may be colored red, orange, yellow, or green. The player starts with a supply of colored tokens; these tokens can also be red, orange, yellow, or green. The objective of Set's Ladder is for the player to use her tokens to destroy the arks, and so clear a path to the top of the pyramid. Destroying the ark at the top earns the player a jackpot. Higher jackpots can be won by clearing one or more entire sides of the pyramid. The game ends when the player has used up her supply of tokens.
Playing: To play, the player stands somewhere at the base of the pyramid and chooses a token from her supply. Whichever block the player is standing nearest to is the one that is "attacked" first. The token will always begin at the bottom tier of the pyramid and work its way up to the top block (the 3rd tier), providing it is not blocked and destroyed.
Anytime a token lands on a block that has an ark on it, either the ark or the token will be destroyed. Which piece "wins" depends on their respective colors, and on the rules set by the puzzle's designer. For example, the designer might design his puzzle so that a red piece beats a green piece 75% of the time, or 100% of the time, or 0% of the time. The only unalterable rule is that a token will always lose against an ark of the same color.
The designer may explain his puzzle's rules in the instructions, or he may choose to let you work them out on your own through trial and error. Ultimately, the goal is to ascertain which colors work best against which colors, and to use that knowledge to "plan your attack" on the pyramid.
If you do want to rig your own, the cost is:
The idea is to design a game that is interesting, fun, and/or rewarding so that people will want to play it several times. The steps in design is specifying the probabilities of which colors of blocks 'win' versus other colors of blocks, how many blocks someone playing will get to use to attempt to clear the pyramid, the ante/reward, victory conditions, and instructions for playing.
People playing the game increases the popularity of the Ladder - multiple games from the same player will add more points, but the popularity increase gets smaller every iteration (goes to 0 after about 7 games?). Approximately 10 people playing multiple times will probably generate enough points (guesstimate based on Tale1).
The layout of blocks is accomplished by clicking on the squares in the top-down representation of the pyramid on the left. When a player plays a token at the base of the pyramid, it will work its way up, starting at the block that the player is standing next to, then to an adjoining block (randomly selected, if there are two) on the next tier, and then to the top. The token will challenge each marker as it goes up the ladder: if it wins, it annihilates the marker, and proceeds to the next level; if it loses, it vanishes and the marker remains intact.
To the right of the layout is a triangular matrix showing the relationship between the various colors. Each field in the matrix can be set to a number between 0 and 100; this is the percentage chance of the color on the top row beating the color on the left column when they meet. Note that these are linked for each color pair, and no distinction is made between which color is the marker on the pyramid, and which is the token being played. If green is set to beat red 75% of the time, then if the player plays a red token on a green marker, it will win 25% of the time.
At the beginning of the game, the player is given a number of tokens of each color, defined at the bottom of the configuration screen. If you're getting an error message about "The player must have at least one ark", this is what is broken; set at least one of the colors to 1 or more tokens.
The final aspect of configuration is that of the ante and payouts. The ante is simply the number of items of a given type that one must pay in order to play the Set's Ladder. The payouts are how many of that same item the player gets back for completing various objectives. The first (and easiest) objective is to clear the top of the ladder. The second through fifth (and final) objective are the clearing of successive faces (all six markers that occupy blocks on any given face of the pyramid). The payouts are cumulative, so if all five objectives are set to one, the payout for completely clearing the pyramid of markers would be five. The ante type is set from the pyramid's menu; you must have at least one of an object type in your inventory to choose it as an ante type. You can use the pyramid menu to load the pyramid's 'bank' to cover payouts, and you have the option to turn on or off the display of the bank balance to players.
see also: Rental pyramids, Set's Ladder Locations