Backgammon Reborn: How to Appeal to Young Girls?

So I'm teaching my 5-year-old niece to play Backgammon, and find myself resorting to explanations that involved the social lives of these little pieces ("they're all trying to get home safely" and such).

Made me think that I could create Backgammon IN SPACE! by a little repackaging to appeal to young girls (perhaps one for young boys later, but the girlie one was my first thought here). Same rules, different visuals, and a less abstract understanding of what's going on.

While trying to puzzle my way through this project, I got stuck without explanations for certain rules, so I thought I'd bring this by here and see if y'all might help me figure out how best to do this. Or at least give me some ideas about where to go next.

So here's what I've got so far:

Take the Backgammon board, which is four sections of 6 points each, and make it into a diamond shape, and call it a block of houses (six houses on each side). Put a park or a forest in the middle.

Let's call the sides A, B, C, and D.

• Player 1's home is the A side. She walks pieces from D around C and B to get to A.
• Player 2's home is the D side. She walks pieces from A around B and C to get to D.

The aim is to get all your pieces to your home side so you can start removing them from the board. You move up to two pieces a turn (up to 4 if you roll doubles). Strategy mostly involves not leaving a piece by itself, because then it can be captured and sent back to the other side of the board, delaying your getting everyone safely home.

Higher-level strategy involves blocking the opponent's journey home by making several spots in a row unavailable (six in a row is impassable).

Trick-or-Treat

My first thought, as I noodled around with the idea, was a Girl Scout door-to-door cookie sale. But let's consider instead a couple groups who are out for Halloween candy and planning to meet up for a party at the end.

So they're headed in the opposite direction. They've split up a little. They spot the other group (this "group" thing is why Girl Scouts might be better) and realize that they have to hurry to get home first and do... something.

• First Question: Why try to get home faster than the other group?

The dice rolls represent, presumably, the ability of a kid to move on to the next house (or multiple houses) after getting candy (or concluding business with a customer, in the case of the Girl Scouts).

• Second Question: Why do the kids move one-at-a-time, instead of in pairs?
• What prevents kids from going to the same spot as other kids? (This works better with the Girl Scouts: You wouldn't try to sell to a place other girls are already selling to.)

"Capturing" here is more like "Bob runs Tim off; Tim gets lost in the woods, and eventually finds his way out on the wrong side of the block." This isn't a very satisfying explanation, but I can't think of a better one that works for little kids (since we can't have prisoners of war, killing, wounded, etc.).

Though actually, I can think of at least one possible route: The capture destroys or loses something the kid needs, which he was on the other side of the board to get in the first place. Therefore he returns to the start to grab another one.

• Third Question: What's the explanation for capturing? How does it put the character back on the opposite side of the board?

And various other details:

• What's the explanation for doubles allowing you to move twice as much?
• Once you get to home row, how is it you can pull kids off (for the party or whatever) by dice rolls, and what's the explanation for why rolling the wrong number means a kid has to move forward a bit in the queue instead of heading off for the party?

So... any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Too complex?

You probably want Troper Covens.

Huh. From the name of that section, I was never really clear what it meant, and didn't explore it.

Thanks for the heads-up.