Comments by joejoyce

Glad to be back! Would be happy to help, but am probably limited to a small
monetary contribution, and that may well not help. If it will, please let
us know - I'd pay to post and play. One probably dumb question: could we
go after the perpetrator of the ravenous robot for something like a denial
of service attack, or is it a[n anonymous] robot from some place that will
block any such efforts? Or is this just our tough luck; is the idea that 
people and other things use the net, and we need to have way too much 
bandwidth to try to avoid this?

I would like to add one lesser attribute. If the pieces could somehow
represent the moves they make, that would be nice. For example, the
squirrel move is a combo of the alfil, dabbabah, and knight. Of course, my
current example of that piece looks like Dumbo on wheels, complete with
pillbox circus hat. But I believe the idea is a good one. I don't
recommend pieces like those in Navia Dratp, where the moves are shown
schematically on the piece base, but the use of common symbols combined
[hopefully better than Dumbo on wheels] in an artful manner would make it
a lot easier [certainly for me] to concentrate on the game, and not keep
having to look up piece moves [I play bad enough], which is very
distracting; or worse, mistake one piece for another. Some games [like
Postal Chess] or piece sets [like the Pizza Kings] need unique themed
pieces, but this is much more the exception than the rule.

To answer your question [copied from the page Rules of Chess]:

Pawns that reach the last row of the board promote. When a player moves a
pawn to the last row of the board, he replaces the pawn by a queen, rook,
knight, or bishop (of the same color). Usually, players will promote the
pawn to a queen, but the other types of pieces are also allowed. (It is
not required that the pawn is promoted to a piece taken. Thus, it is for
instance possible that a player has at a certain moment two queens.)

The information is there under the section on pawns. 

So, you may promote a pawn to a lost piece, but it is not required that
there be a lost piece available to promote a pawn.

I hope this will answer your specific questions:
    * No piece may ever move unless it is activated by a chieftain which
has to be within 3 squares of it at the start of the move.
    * Each chief may activate 1 piece per turn. An activated piece may
move outside the 3-square activation range of the chief which activated
it, or any other [friendly] chief.
    * No piece may move more than once per turn.
    * Once a piece has finished its move, it becomes inactive again. It
cannot move in a subsequent turn without being re-activated by a chief.

In general, activation is different from movement. Every piece may move.
Only chiefs may activate. Think of each piece as a warrior in a small
band. Now add bureaucracy and attitude. The chiefs [the leaders or bosses]
are the only ones who will do anything on their own. Each chief has time to
do one thing per turn. The chief can do it him or herself, or can yell at
somebody close enough and make them do it. The other piece types don't do
anything unless they are forced to. Once they are out of yelling distance
[3 squares], they don't hear any orders, and do nothing. They would
rather die than move without being yelled at. Okay?   ;-)

I am attempting to change the name of my recent submission from 'Chieftain
Chess with Preset' to 'Chieftain Chess', now that a preset page is
available. I am also trying to indicate it is multi-player, with 1-4
players per side, for a total of 2-8 players. I seem to be having 2
problems. First, when I try to do the name change, I get this error
message:
 Error performing query: Duplicate entry 'MSchieftainchess' for key 1
Second, is there a way to indicate a range in the number of players per
side?  I will put in '1-4' and '2-8', but what comes up is '1' and
'2'. 
Any information or assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Looks quite interesting. Just downloaded the ZRF, and will attempt to play
it soon. The pairing of leaping ability with longrange pieces makes for
some fairly powerful pieces. Are the augmented, in both senses of the
word, pawns a way to keep the pieces from running amok and pacing the
game, or is there more to the 2:1 pawn ratio? It also pushes the starting
density up to 60%, and puts the 2 sides 4 empty rows apart.
Can't rate this other than interesting just yet, but I'd like to try a
game sometime.

Hey, Gary. I had that problem, with the hero and other pieces. The trick is
to put the designator in square brackets in your preset. So the standard
knight is n or N, and this is typed into the appropriate spot in the
preset editor. The hero used in Lemurian Shatranj would be:
 [_JG_ldw] or [_JG_LDW]
Typing this in the appropriate spot will put the hero where you want on
the board. My son looked it up in the Game Courier instructions.

Excellent! I've enjoyed playing this; that it plays opening pawn moves
alone puts it ahead of Zillions. The only part I don't like is that it
keeps beating me. Great to see this out. Thanks. Joe
ps: love the shatranj section!

Games I'd prefer not to play:
1 - Neutral King 
2 - Crazyhouse
3 - Berolina
4 - Moderate Progressive
5 - Avalanche
6 - Anti-King II
rated from 1 [maybe I could play this reluctantly] to 6 [rather eat
glass].

Hey, David, Modern Shatranj is the only game I've played to any extent
I've never lost; you trying to ding me in the tourney? ;-)

This seems very interesting but I don't see exactly how it works. Is it
really a 3D game played on 2 boards, like Alice Chess, except changing
boards is voluntary, or is it something else? The description indicates it
easily could fall into that controversial area of '4D' games, as it seems
you describe a variant played on 2 totally different 2D boards, with free
movement between them. Or even 1 standard 2D board, and 1 maybe
3D-mimicing smaller board. The 16 square 4x4 board does have 2x2
'subsets' of squares within each square, if I've read everything right,
or does it? Depending on the exact movement rules, the game/board you
describe could act as a 3D, 4D, or even 5D playing surface. 
Personally, I hope you are doing a 'higher-dimensional' game, and would
refer you to Parton's Sphinx Chess, Aikin's Chesseract and my own
Hyperchess for 3 similar '4D' treatments. I would strongly recommend
looking at LL Smith's and Dan Troyka's 4D, 5D, and 6D games, which
illustrate rather nicely the use of higher space dimensions in chess, even
though some see them all as convoluted examples of 3D. Welcome to the
debate.

Thanks for the comments, Christine. I guess the rules finally pass muster,
at least with you. :-) 
This is my second biggest game in board size, by about 3 squares. And
it's my biggest game in total number of pieces, by a lot, even though
it's got the least variety of pieces, at 5. 
As far as the big kid part, you're right; I would have loved this game
when I was 16. It has a little of a military wargame feel to it.
It's actually a large variant of Lemurian Shatranj, even though it came
out 2 weeks before LemS did. 
One possible variant of this game would be to: allow the hero and shaman
the bent moves, drop the command control distance rule and replace it with
a guards promote to chieftains rule.

Gary, *this* is the John Vehre you suggested I challenge to a game of Grand
Shatranj??? I'm 3 & 8* against you, and part of that is luck! lol! Joe
*1-1 in GdS, though :-D

The author of the Discworld series has an interesting critique of chess,
from the point of view of one of his characters in 'Thud':
'Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess
in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went
off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing
nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the
rooks around, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen
moves.'
Footnote, page 67

Judd, you are apparently asking if a pawn can move diagonally forward when
moving from the 7th to the 8th rank. Unless it is capturing an opponent's
piece, the answer is no. A standard FIDE pawn may never move diagonally
forward unless it is capturing. There are other types of pawns that may
move diagonally forward, such as the Berolina pawn, but they have their
own limitations.

Thank you all for the comments. We really appreciate them. The impetus for this article is contained in Claudio's statement that a shortrange piece 'Never crossed my mind'. Often these pieces seem to be used as filler or fancy pawns. Both of us believe they deserve more, and conceived this project to encourage others to design variants that actively use shortrange pieces. So it's gratifying to see Greg and David intending to do so. David, as he has so often done to me in our games, has left me in a sticky situation by carefully not mentioning my use of the Squire/Swiss Guard/Mammoth in 2 designs, forcing me to claim what is now the 3rd independent invention of Claudio's man-Alibaba piece, and relegating him to 5th place. Shortrange pieces have been around forever, but invisibly. Maybe that will change. [Use the pieces, Claudio, please!]

Gary, thank you for the reference to Taikyoko shogi; it has an amazing number of different shortrange pieces, and is quite a source for ideas. It also illustrates one main reason why this article deals with Western-style pieces, and that's for simplicity. The Eastern short-range pieces are often quite complex, gold and silver being 2 common examples which fall outside the scope of the Piece Builder. Instead of 2 directions, orthogonal or diagonal, these pieces require the definition of 8 directions. Or at least 4, ortho, diag, forward, backward, the last two of which are relative to the player and not the board. Attempting to include this type of piece was not even considered, as the complications would make a relatively simple system practically unmanageable, and certainly expand the article into novel size.

Doug, it's true all the pieces discussed capture by replacement, but that is the default simplest method of capture. In that sense it's deliberate; but this article discusses movement rather than capture, and certainly any of the pieces created may capture in Ultima-like ways or any other way one could devise.

Ha, this comment is getting to be article-length. Again, thanks all for your interest. Enjoy. Joe [As it's now about 3:30 a.m. in Australia, Christine won't see this for a while. Hope she doesn't mind I took the liberty to speak for both of us.] BTW, the games listed should be coming out in Zillions over the weekend. Then I'll try to use my slash-and-burn method to make presets for CV.

This situation is certainly to be expected, and will happen more and more.
The total number of chess variants is in the thousands now, and can only
go up. In the short time I've been aware of and active in chess variants,
I've seen my ideas pop up in other games, and others have seen my games
reflect their ideas; all without any previous knowledge on the part of
whomever was 2nd [or 3rd...], so we might as well get used to it. 
As for the royal pawn idea, Jeremy's game I found very interesting - I
playtested it with him - but as he says a little gimmicky, as the RP
stayed in the line of pawns, blocking a number of pieces. Gary's version
is a better chess game; more traditional and a lot easier to figure out
just what to do in, but not a better idea. The idea in both, a royal pawn,
is an excellent one. The treatments are also good in both; Jeremy's being
much quirkier. I don't know which might be considered a better game [not
a better chess game, but a better game]; they are so different it is
difficult to compare them. Since I'm playing a game now with Gary, I have
the opportunity to see just what both are like; others should take the same
opportunity.
Enjoy.

Evan, email me if you need more than this. I have the game, complete with
rules. Briefly, the castle can be placed on any terrain. Capture a castle
by first moving to and stopping on the outer position [the Green], and on
the next turn moving into the castle proper; this wins the [2 player]
game.
Enjoy. Joe

Claudio, yes, the 1, 2, 3, 4 are absolute [small, whole] numbers. These
distances are forced by the nature of the pieces - any chesslike piece
must move at least 1 square; if it leaps it must move at least 2 squares;
if it both slides and leaps, it may move 3 squares [though it could move
less]; and if you have a double leaper, it may move up to 4 squares. These
numbers are totally independent of the boards on which they are placed. And
yes, their power varies with board size; specifically it goes up more and
more as the boards get smaller. Technically, an n/2 piece is scalable,
getting its maximum movement range from board size and not as an intrinsic
part of the piece itself. And it could have, on an 8x10 board, a
back-and-forth movement of 4 and a side-to-side movement of 5. This is not
something I had thought of until just now answering your question. The
scalable R/2, B/2 or whatever could be interesting [if gimmicky] pieces.
Anyway, that's why I listed 3 somewhat different ways to look at
shortrange pieces instead of just 1 definition of 'the' shortrange
piece.
Greg, I'd enjoy playing Grand Shatranj against you [or any of my other
shortrange variants], but I don't feel I should compete for a 'World
Championship' with only 1 other person. If several players, including,
say, John Vehre, were to compete, then I would be more willing to play,
but wouldn't have a prayer of winning. I'd be happy to play a friendly
game with you.
Sam, Gary, I agree that shogi-style drops certainly unbalance a situation,
and should therefor more easily lead to a conclusion; but I am, frankly,
terrified of games that use drops as I have almost no familiarity with
them and far too easily get lost in the maze of potential positions -
another reason why I only discuss Western chess development in the
article.
Christine does have a nice little add, but I can't tell and spoil the
surprise. I will note that while it's easy to tell our writing apart,
people will find it much harder to tell our designs apart, as we fall into
the category of designers exemplified by Fighting Kings and Royal Pawn
Chess. And since we discuss games and look at each other's work, it's
sometimes hard for us to tell just who did what. [Now if we could only
understand each other...]

I think this is a rather nice game. Of course I'm prejudiced; it clearly
fits the ShortRange Project. But I can't rate it because it has
precedents and close relatives that Christine Bagley-Jones and I, among
others, have designed. I reference 'Modern Shatranj', posted at this
site, and its shatranj to chess discussion, especially steps 4 and 5 and
Roberto Laviere's piece suggestion for the guard. With Roberto's 2-step
general, step 5 is 'Combo Modern Day Chess'. The game mentioned for step
4 is 'Hypermodern Shatranj' which was released last weekend. You can find
that ZRF and a number of closely-related others at the Zillions site under
recent releases as 'The ShortRange Project'. Short descriptions of the
released games may be found on this site at the end of the
recently-released Piecelopedia article 'The ShortRange Project'. [Sorry
I've been slow in getting pages posted here.]
With that all said, I do think this is a rather nice game. And it's to be
expected that extremely similar or identical games will show up more and
more often. Glad to see someone else is looking at shortrange pieces.
Welcome to the discussion. [And you might want to use either the
double-guard or queen-2-slider icon for the guard piece in your preset,
just to prevent confusion - at least, I always screw up when icons are
used for different pieces.] Enjoy.

This is a very interesting-looking game. [You might want to clean up a
couple typos, though.] I'd love to know how it plays. It looks like it
begins almost in mid-game with the pieces so close; and with a starting
piece density of 80%, it's a good thing pieces can only move 1. It's
tight; of the 45 squares, only 3 allow a piece its full range of movement.
A very tricky piece of design: something necessary if you want a good game
with so few squares. You compensate for the limited number of squares by
an almost outrageously high starting density, and by having all your
pieces move only 1. Radical. You've certainly pushed the game to a limit.
Any possible white first move and black reply puts both pieces en prise.
Are there forcing moves available to either player that provide an
advantage? What is the range of options in this game? I'd really enjoy
trying a game of this. If it works, the game as well as the initial
concept would be excellent. As someone interested in short-range pieces, I
have to commend you on an excellent idea here. You have presented a pretty,
almost puzzle-like game. I hope it plays like it looks. [And it's nice to
know I'm not the only one with a 45-square chess variant languishing
somewhere in a corner, waiting for Hans to get younger.]

For those interested in the various kinds of pieces around, I'd like to
recommend a very fine Piecelopedia article by David Howe. 
 http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/taxonomy.html
'A Taxonomy' is an excellent overview of the various combinations of
things that make up a chess piece. Mr. Howe looks at 6 characteristics of
pieces, from size to method of capture to 'special powers', and gives a
range of possibilities and pieces, with references. His well-written,
concise article conveys a lot of information in a small space. My only
possible complaint is that it's too brief. But the goal is so lofty it
would take a book to really do it justice. Mr. Howe has made an excellent
start.

James, I'll second that. I see we have a bit more security now. Pity that
we seem to need it. An don' thet beat all! Joe [born & raised in northern Appalachia]

Gary, whatchoo call me?  :-)  I bet it's just revenge for me messing with
your Flags and Stones game.  [Looks good; gotta play it soon.] 
I agree 9x12 gives you the traditional spacing, but then you have to deal
with a double first step for pawns. If you add it, you bend your 'same
pieces, same rules... only the board is different' concept a little - the
purists will howl. Seriously, I think the 9x10 and 9x11 will be also
interesting games and worth the effort - bet you a pizza next time I go
through Ohio. And if you're right about what you called me, then you
should do better and better in each longer version, because you've sure
taken me to the cleaners in a bunch of those longrange piece games we've
played. [Like Avis, you've tried harder. Congrats on climbing in the
ratings.] The strategies and tactics should shift nicely through the
variants. Go for a new effect: board variants. Or do you think all game
boards could be expanded and shrunk in the unoccupied middle and give all
playable results?

Hey, Christine! Sorry it took me so long to reply, got trampled by events
recently. Still, I'm remiss in not yet thanking all the people who
enjoyed the  article and especially all those who have actively
participated in one way or another. David Paulowich suggested Lemurian
Shatranj with rooks. Claudio Martins Jaguaribe roughed out a game called
Naval Base Chess at the Yahoo chessvariants group, which has been modified
but not yet completed. Mike Nelson has posted Insane Flip Relay Shatranj
here at CV and promises a preset. Greg Strong has posted Hubbub here,
along with a preset; Greg is currently harrassing me with a knight 10-12
moves into a game. Gary Gifford created 6 Fortresses Short Range, posted
the rules and a preset, and then [Amazingly! :D ] created 2 variants of
that game, with rules and presets, which use the same setup and pieces but
vary the original 6FSR board length  and are named Shoranji and Shoranji
Maximus. Gary and I are playing our second version now. 
To all these people, my apologies in being so slow to acknowledge your
several efforts, and for not yet having put in links to your game rules
and presets that are listed in the Update to the Games Released section in
the beginning of the TSRP article. I hope to fix that quite soon, but I
don't see how I'll manage a shortrange piecelopedia anytime soon. Its
size seems to have outrun my current typing abilities.
A number of people have recently posted games that fall into the
shortrange category, come close, or use some shortrange pieces in larger
variants, without making the fuss over it I have. Great! Some of those
games are really nice. But doing it this way, with a little hype and
soliciting of ideas, has been a lot of fun. Here, I'd like to thank
Christine for having the idea of a collaboration on shatranj-like games in
the first place. And, in spite of miscommunications 2-10 times a day, or
maybe helped along by them, it was a very rewarding experience for me, and
I hope for her. She certainly earned my thanks; I know she worked hard on
TSRP. We both hope others will continue to read, play, design and enjoy
the shortrange aspects of chess variants. We still actively solicit
people's comments and participation, and do respond to questions and
suggestions. Doug Chatham has asked about alternate forms of capture. I
expect to release a game soon that uses a few different forms of capture,
with a good-sized board and no piece moving over 3. This might be a good
secondary theme, short range with more than 1 form of capture. There's
plenty of room for more updates.

When I attempt to 'send' the move '11-13' in the One Ring Chess preset,
it fails and I get this error message:

Warning: main(draw_circle_table.php) [function.main]: failed to open
stream: No such file or directory in
/home/chessva/public_html/play/pbm/play.php on line 922

Fatal error: main() [function.require]: Failed opening required
'draw_circle_table.php'
(include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in
/home/chessva/public_html/play/pbm/play.php on line 922

What does this mean, other than 'it's broke' and how can it be fixed?
The preset is by Abdul-Rahman Sibahi.

Thank you David for pointing out the '&' is an illegal character in the original title. Now everybody can ignore it again... [could the editors delete the original posting?]

Recently a few of us have been pushing shortrange pieces, and several games featuring them have been posted in the [relatively] recent past. I'm starting to see reactions to this, and have gotten some comments, questions, and observations. What I'd like to use this thread for is discussions of some of the things that seem interesting or relevant to game design. One question I'd like to eventually answer was indirectly posed by my opponent in a game comment. We were discussing some of the ancient clunky pieces and my opponent made the comment that they 'didn't feel like real pieces'. So, one of the long-range questions here will be:

'What is a *real* piece?'

In a recent comment on 'Hoo Mitregi', Andy made this statement: 'For shortrange pieces, I find balance is better, both short and long in same game. Control of ranks, files, diagonals is such big part of chess strategy. But I have not much experience in games all shortrange' and this got me to thinking about exactly what pieces control. Ranks, files and diagonals are linear features that extend from side to side of the board, and are controlled best by a long-range piece that can sit in a protected corner and exert influence across the board. So why are short-range pieces any good at all? Just what do they do, if they don't and can't control the linear features that are 'such big part of chess strategy'?

Shortrange pieces control points and local areas. The secret to decent shortrange pieces is to not make them weak versions of longrange pieces, but to give them moves longrange pieces don't get. The knight is today's vestigal shortrange piece, combining both the jump and the 'crooked' move that no [FIDE] longrange piece gets. So, give pieces steps, jumps, both a step and a jump, let them change direction during the jumpstep move, let them jump twice. A very powerful shortrange piece can control most of or a major chunk of a board. [See, for example, the 'Flexible Knight' in Two Large Shatranj Variants.] They do this by hazarding themselves more taking a position in the middle of the board, where a range of 3 or 4 squares has maximal coverage. But they are still covering points and areas, not linear features like today's bishop, rook and queen.

The discussion on piece values in the Generic Chess Piece Creation System
comments comes at a very opportune time for this game. If goChess is to be
a workable game, the building costs of the pieces must be not only pretty
accurate, but reflect the particular building blocks used. For one thing,
the longer the Go phase goes on, the more likely it is that wazirs will
outnumber ferzes. And a new tactic of preferentially capturing ferz-stones
in a long Go phase would reduce the opponent's bishop types later. So in
line with David Paulowich's comments, I believe the ferz to be worth a
little more than the wazir in goChess, but would like to hear other's
comments. [And am hoping to shanghai a little of the piece value
conversation.]
Okay, are the costs of the pieces [given in Ws and Fs] appropriate? Some
immediate problems arise [besides the obvious one of needing more
research]. What are the values of some of the newer pieces, shortrange
leapers, double leapers, and bent leapers? Especially on a 19x19 board?
And what are the values of rooks, bishops, queens, or archbishops,
chancellors, amazons, on a 19x19 board? Leapers are more effective when
they have a screen to hide behind, so are worth less in the endgame, when
there are few screens available. [Building these pieces close to your
opponent's home area might make sense - you'd get to use them quickly
and early.] And while any given piece's value also depends on all the
other pieces in the game, there have to be ways to compensate and balance
effects, even if it's 'seperate ladders' for different styles of
pieces. Or can it mix all sorts of piece types, like Gary Gifford's
'Shanghai Palace'? What are the limits on total piece numbers and piece
types before a game gets ridiculous?
I lean toward using 3 longrange piece sizes now, ranges 4, 9, and
unlimited [18], as more appropriate to the board than the original 2
pieces of ranges 3 and 18. And I think the board could use some
intermediate-range pieces, moving say 6-10 squares. What happens to the
values of those pieces when they move between 8x8 and 19x19 boards? Or up
to 30x30? Does the value of the shortrange pieces 'bottom out' at some
number that changes very little if at all when the board length goes from
20 to 30, or 40? And what happens to the longrange 'unlimited' pieces
values on those boards? Do they keep going up or level off?
A cannon, for which I have made no provision, might be an interesting
piece on this board - its value? What other pieces might be interesting,
or might need to be put in their own categories to keep from being too
interesting? Simple, straightforward, easy to use and understand pieces
are preferred. ;-)

The discussion on board sizes in the Infinite Chess comments is very
interesting for what it does not have, in spite of several versions of
'infinite' chess and the efforts of George Jelliss and Ralph Betza.
There is nothing that approaches infinite, although Ralph Betza's
'chessboard of chessboards' [64 8x8 chessboards arranged in an 8x8
array] with its 512-square sides and over a quarter million squares does
give you a little area to play in. But all the 'infinite' boards have
limitations on how far away from other pieces any piece can move [making
Mr. Betza's behemoth the largest actual board discussed]. They have
flexible boundaries that can stretch and extend in any direction, but all
the games have a finite number of pieces, so there is a maximum area the
pieces can occupy if they are required to be within a specified distance
of other pieces. Even if the requirement is merely being within some
distance of one other friendly or enemy piece, and the pair of pieces go
racing out across the 2D plain, 2 pieces don't take up a lot of room. And
the rules tend to be written so that isolated pair cannot happen. The
average size of these boards is probably under 20x20. Even with more
pieces, the size probably wouldn't get much above 30x30, the total board
area being near 1000 squares. This is wargame size. A chess board is
generally about 100 squares in area (~30-300), and a wargame, about 1000
(~300-3000), very roughly. While there are some exceptions, this is
accurate. Just not precise. Apparently, 'infinite' for chess variants
means 'as big as a wargame.'

Mats Winther has just posted a new piece, the Scout, which moves as a camel
and captures as a queen. Interesting piece, moving as a shortrange leaper
and capturing as a longrange power piece. [Possibly the name 'Scout'
inspires leaping pieces; Greg Strong's Scout piece (Brouhaha, Hubbub)
also leaps 3 squares. Think I've seen others.] The converse of this piece
would be a piece moving as an unlimited slider that captures with a
shortrange move. If it's a crooked and/or leaping shortrange capture, the
piece might be restricted to bishop [or maybe rook] to limit its power a
bit. Whether or not you limited the shortrange capture to just the
bishop's original color, just the opposite, or both colors would affect
the power considerably. The idea of balancing queen moves with, say, alfil
captures, just doesn't thrill me. A queen that captures as a king would be
a tricky piece to use. A queen capturing as a knight is probably a bad
idea, especially on larger boards or with lower piece densities. Tricky
concept, [maybe a little annoying, as I prefer pieces to capture the way
they move, it's simpler] worth developing. 
***Edit*** Oops! Just read Michael Howe's full comment - sorry for poaching on 
your idea. A knightrider-king - how does that compare to the queen-king? 
Defense against the NN-K should be a specialty of some shortrange pieces, 
as the knight, like the camel, can only land in restricted spots. A moderately 
powerful shortrange piece could guard those spots where a linear piece couldn't.
There is a comment by M. Howe and another by M. Winther that I would like
to address in this thread [from my own perspective, of course :-) ]. But
let me give Mats' new piece a rating [and check the laundry!]

Nice piece, very tricky. That it can change color is nice, because I've
always found the camel to be a darn awkward piece to use. By the time I
got this far in typing this, I found out you'd been anticipated, an all
too common occurrence these days. [I saw Michael Howe's comment!] No
matter, it's still a good idea, and I'll bet someone can anticipate Mr.
Howe. 
There are a couple statements, one by each of you, that I'd like to
discuss in a different spot.
M. Howe: 'Leaping-riders can be awkward and unbalancing because of their
ability to attack through pawn walls, but this is a good solution.'
M. Winther: 'If anybody wants to study the characteristics of a certain
type of new piece, how it affects the strategical situation, and what new
tactical themes are introduced, then my conservative implementations are
ideal.'
Both these statements, I think, are worthy of further discussion, and I
hope you gentlemen [and anyone else] will feel free to comment.

Hey, Andy, your question in our game about 10x10s prompted me to do 2
'kitchen sink'-type large game presets, a 10x10 and a 12x12. Because I
had an overstock of shortrange pieces, most of them my own, I used them in
the presets. Jeremy Good and I are pushing pieces in both. Should you be
interested in taking a look, here are the URLs:
/play/pbm/play.php?game=Lemurian+Great+Shatranj&log=joejoyce-judgmentality-2007-52-159
/play/pbm/play.php?game=Lemurian+Greater+Shatranj&log=joejoyce-judgmentality-2007-53-827
The non-standard pieces are described in 'Two Large Shatranj Variants'
and 'Lemurian Shatranj'. On the 12x12, I tried to create a smallish,
balanced, very powerful shortrange army. Each rank back increases in
power. While the 10x10 has decently strong pieces, its unusual feature is
the different pairings of pieces. There are 8 pairs of identical pieces,
and those 16 pieces, along with the remaining 4, also form 6 families of
similar pieces. These include 4 pairs of colorbound pieces which form 2
families. I'm trying to break a few stereotypes with these games.
Probably just proving I'm crazy instead.

In the comments on 'The Scout' [M. Winthers], there were a couple of
statements that I wanted to examine further. They are: 
M. Howe: 'Leaping-riders can be awkward and unbalancing because of their
ability to attack through pawn walls, but this is a good
solution.'[referring to the M. Winther Scout]
M. Winther: 'If anybody wants to study the characteristics of a certain
type of new piece, how it affects the strategical situation, and what new
tactical themes are introduced, then my conservative implementations are
ideal.'
Let me mention a pair of [what I consider excellent ;-) ] leaping riders
in the game Grand Shatranj, the Oliphant [moves diagonally] and the
Lightningwarmachine [moves orthogonally]. They are each 2-step linear
riders, sliding 1 square or leaping 2 squares then doing either again at
the player's option. So each may move 1, 2, 3, or 4 squares, leaping over
up to 2 pieces - if those 2 pieces are [or can be] lined up exactly right.
While a mere pawn wall cannot keep them out, their [short] range allows a
'lion defense' - post a piece or two inside the wall [back far enough]
and kill them when they land. Of course, their agility requires a really
solid defense, but it can be done, with the right piece mix. This game was
fairly well received; people seemed to like it, and it's gotten some play.
All the pieces were designed to leap, with the exception of the king and
the pawns. The rook analogues and bishop analogues were specifically
designed to crash pawn walls or any barrier. They are very dangerous
pieces, but, after a bit of playing, ways to handle them were devised, and
a pawn wall may work after all, it just has to be part of a defense in
depth, a new requirement. Chess, changed a bit. More strategic, if my
correspondents are right. And this game introduced both new 4-square rider
pieces along with 3 more different 2-square leapers that I thought were new
when I posted the game [2 of which I believe are still new, as no one has
shown precedence, though I consider them fairly obvious, and posted them
in this and a companion game at the same time]. But the game works well
because all the pieces [except N and K] are new [or close to it] and
rather different. 
I guess my point here is that sometimes you have to make a leap of faith
to get a good game. My questions, asked in all seriousness and humbleness,
because both of you are obviously talented designers and I want to explore
the avenues this game opens up, are: Is this game [Grand Shatranj]
actually as good as I claim? Can it be, if it's as radical as some might
think? Does it 'break the rules' in some sense and get away with it or
not? If it does, how does it manage it? Anyone who hasn't gone away by
this point, please feel free to join in. someone could ask: 'If it's
such a good game, how come it isn't wildly popular?' Mats would probably
say, I suspect, that it's not conservative enough. Is he right?

The rules are a little sparse. While no rule specifies, I assume a king
can't move itself off a board, although that could be interesting. Maybe
if they were on the same square on adjacent boards, or adjacent squares on
the same board, a king could move another king to a different level. [Let
the players move a piece per king, only the board the king is on.]  
Understanding how the unlimited sliders move 'through the kings' is
easy, with your diagram [once you figure everything out], but what about
pawns and knights? Does the pawn have to be able to move 2 squares to go
through to another board? If it doesn't get 'stuck inside' the
receiving king when it can move only 1 square, and it can move through
both and come out in front of the 2nd king, then it can capture by moving
diagonally through, and what about the knight? If a pawn can move through
a king by landing on it, why can't a knight? So, where does it come out,
in that case? If it must be next to the king, does it have to start only
orthogonally adjacent and end diagonally adjacent to the 2nd king, or can
it also start diagonally adjacent to the 1st king and end up orthogonally
adjacent to the second king?
Interesting big variant, needs some work to be more than an idea.

Started off reading this thinking 'what's Wellisch?' and, 'hey, this is
pretty good', but neither thought lasted. I found this an interesting idea
poorly executed. The rules could be much easier to understand. They seem to
me to be dense, esoteric, and hard to follow. The intro is a bit much; who,
or how many, can understand merely from what you wrote just what you're
talking about? Please, explain all the terms you use, in common English.
Another example is the setup diagram, which is cluttered with letters and
numbers. One letter, much easier to see and understand, could be used for
each piece, with the sides differentiated by the standard capital and
small letters, with no loss of info. I hate to say your names are worse
than mine, but... Also, knights are not usually considered colorbound
pieces, yet these 'knights' [Viceroys] are confined to 1/3 of the board,
and are closer to alfils in spirit and move than the knight. Finally, I
think the game needs either more pieces or fewer hexes; the pieces you
have are few in number and generally weak. The 3 knights cannot work
together, leaving 5 pieces, 4 of them of moderate strength, to cover 109
hexes arranged in 11 parallel columns. The 5 pieces? A 'hex' rook and 4
half-rooks. You probably need more piece types, as well. I'd suggest
adding 6 more pieces, preferably a combo of medium and [powerful, unlike
the 'knights'] shortrange pieces, and 4 more pawns, building up and
extending the left and right flanks to the 'sides' of the board. 
Interesting idea, nice use of the grain on a hex board, no meat.

A queen-moves/king-capture piece is basically an Ultima Withdrawer in FIDE
garb. It suffers from the same sorts of problems; the main one being that
it's annoying, in my opinion. It's like arming a tank with a pistol.
God's own speed, hits like a baby. Cut it down to a 3-square queen that
captures like a king, and you've got a much more reasonable piece, again
in my opinion, for a Napoleonics game. 
Tom Hartley's NAPOLEONIC CHESS looks interesting, but I'd love to
hear/see how it plays. I'd also love to play a Napoleonic board wargame
against him sometime; his variants reek of wargame; I like that in a
designer. But I'm still iffy about the play quality of his game. I'd
like to make a comment, but there's no way to attach it to the game page
that I saw. I'll look again.
The Peter Hatch Evil Horde army is another interesting-looking shortrange
army with heavy rook tendencies. The Q-K piece fits better here
thematically. 
But I, like David, question how well the armies were balanced by
playtesting before the game was posted. Be interesting to hear about play
results from both games.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/play-your-chess-and-eat-it-too-241017.php

Mats, David, Antoine: I'd like to thank each of you for the piece
references.   Fergus Duniho's Caissa Britannia is a fairly popular game,
I believe. So, with a little luck, someone who's had experience with the
prince consort will tell us what it's like to use the piece.

Hi, Charles. You're right about the miscount. And when I read over my
original comment preparatory to writing this, I did not like the tone, and
for this, I apologize. This is supposed to be a discussion, not a harsh
criticism. You get one free snipe at me.
I thought about this game for a while before I decided it didn't have
enough pieces for a chess game, in my opinion. I think it needs more
maneuver and piece interaction. I'm sure others will differ, very
possibly most. But here's my reasoning:
There are only 2 pieces of consequence in the game, the full rook and the
half rook, and they both have exactly the same mode of action, unlimited
orthogonal slide. [And the names Forerook and Hindrook are inextricably
entangled with Pierson's Puppeteers in my mind.]
The viceroys are ineffective. It takes a half-dozen moves to get one
across the board and into attack position. You see them coming; and all
you have to do to defend is step 1 hex, and they can never threaten you.
They need a better move. How about they keep their current move, but allow
them a color-changing move to any adjacent hex in addition. This would give
them a good close-in defensive ability. Maybe restrict the 1-hex move to
only the 2 rearmost hexes relative to the piece, keeping it weak, but
giving it a chance to support or attack any piece.
The pawns are very nice. I believe that is truly the only way to have
pawns, as pawns, on a hex board. But both flanks of the pawn line hang
totally unsupported in air. Even in the Eastern versions of the game where
the pawn line has holes, the entire front is covered - sketchily, to be
sure, but the line runs from side to side. I think this is a weakness, too
readily exploited by the rooks. 
The king is a 1-step that isn't likely to attack on such an open board
with rooks. 
Let's look at coverage. A half rook covers 10 to 15 hexes of 91. The FIDE
rook always covers 14 of 64 squares, a noticeably higher percentage. The
half rook acts much more like the FIDE bishop, which covers 7 to 13
squares of 64. The FIDE queen covers 21 to 27 of 64, the full rook, 20 to
30 of 91.
You're effectively using a queen and 4 bishops, without any meaningful
knight support [and low pawn support] to cover 91 hexes. 
I seem to have written a book here. I think you have a very nice game
idea, but only half a chess game. As a board game, this may play well, and
then I'll have even less to say, but I think it needs more. You've got
your basic longrange pieces, nice pawns but too few, and the king. Come up
with a few short and medium range pieces that work well, and you've got an
excellent game. Just let them have some area coverage for offense/defense
as you already have point and line pieces. Maybe do something that is more
forward than back moving to balance power.
Again, this is all my opinion. Andy ? likes this game just as is, so
believe him rather than me. If anyone who's hammered you the way he has
says this is a good game, it certainly must have something going for it.

Large boards are certainly difficult to work on successfully; with all that
scope, you have much more room for error. And you also run into a problem
of scaling vs. playability. Any sorts of simplistic extrapolations to
large size will run into a host of problems, many of which translate to
tedium. A certain creativity is called for, a walk off the beaten path.
That walk may often end tangled in brambles or floundering in a sinkhole,
but sometimes it will lead to places you only thought you'd see in your
dreams. I've seen some of David Paulowich's ideas. I think he'll come
out with a game that meets his high standards and is in keeping with his
design philosophy. I'll wish him luck, but I doubt he'll need it. I
will, looking seriously at superlarge variants, games in the 20x20 to
30x30 range, just above my posted games range of 8x8 to 19x19. Got some
practice, and think there are some guides to successful [2D] supergames. 
Moving multiple pieces per turn should speed the game up.
Don't get carried away with pieces or piece types. Too many of either
makes the game unplayable. Strict scaling to a 600 square board would give
each side 150 pieces, which is probably ridiculous. Around 50 pieces is
probably a good number as a general rule; this seems manageable.
Balance the pieces to the size of the game. Using standard FIDE pieces and
piece ratios is probably a bad idea. 'Eight of Everything' chess would
fit nicely on a 24x24 board:
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
RNBBNRRNBBNRRNBBNRRNBBNR
xxxxQQQQKKKKKKKKQQQQxxxx
All FIDE rules are in effect except:
1 castling, as the Ks and Rs are not aligned for it;
2 victory, which has new  conditions, primarily by capturing all your
opponents kings before you lose all yours;
3 movement, because you must move a different piece for each king you have
remaining on the board each turn, or you lose.
It's even got 64 pieces, fitting nicely with our general principle. But I
don't think it would play very well. It violates too many other principles
to be a realy good game. Enough for now, more later.

One of the nice things about this site is that you can get so many
different opinions. Sometimes I like a good design challenge, and the
superlarge game poses such challenges. To make it more interesting, I want
to use the FIDE unlimited sliders in the game, because they are 'too
powerful', and I want to design a new composite/compound/whatever piece
to be used in the game, too. [I can also juggle a little.] Oh, and the
game should be reasonably easy to learn and play, and not take too long.
There! Have I left anything out?
Okay, now just how will this be done? Anybody got any ideas? ... Figured
I'd start with Chieftain Chess, a successful [can be played without much
difficulty] 12x16 variant. Notice I'm defining 'success' very broadly;
maybe not broadly enough. Ultima/Baroque is an awesome game that it's
designer says is not playable without difficulty. As a game, it's not
necessarily successful; as a design, it is wildly successful, spawning
several excellent variants of its own. I'll be happy to get a game
that's playable, and I'm willing to leave that decision to others.
What are the characteristics of Chieftain that make it a viable game?
It's somewhat unusual for a chess variant. It's a multi-mover; each side
getting 4 moves per turn, to start. It does not have a single royal piece,
a king. Instead, it uses 4 semi-royal pieces, chiefs, all of which must be
captured to win. It uses command control [pieces are required to be
'activated' by a leader to move]. It has a low starting piece density:
33%. It only uses 5 different pieces. There are no pawns and no promotions
in this game. I think only the last feature has nothing to do with why the
game works. I also believe that every other feature listed is all but a
requirement for a successful superlarge game.

Charles, you lead me to ask just what, exactly, chess is. Specifically, in
this case, what the lower limits of chess are. I don't think there are
any hard and fast breakpoints where, if you've got [or not] one thing, it
is [or isn't] chess, regardless of what else is there. But I haven't
thought about this before, and would be interested in hearing your
thoughts on it, as, with games like this and 3D minishogi, you are clearly
designing some things near that edge. 
Sorry about the too-obscure reference. Pierson's Puppeteers are an alien
race introduced by author Larry Niven in the novel 'Ringworld', I
believe. Google the internet. They are famous cowards , and their leader,
the most revered creature of their species, leads from the rear, all the
way back, the farther the better. This exalted leader is called 'the
Hindmost'.

[Hey, David. Looking forward to seeing your designs at larger sizes.
Apparently we have some agreement on pieces.]
How do you get enough piece variety in a superlarge to make the game
worthwhile without overloading the player with reams of rules? One way is
to establish some basic piece types and modify each of them with a few
different movement rules. To make this work, you must have a good, clear,
simple, easily understandable symbology to go along with your good, clear,
simple, easily understandable and short [for playability] rules. So we
start by using David Howe's Alfaerie icons, something that is most likely
very familiar to anyone who plays variants and would be reading this, and
if not, the info is easily accessible. They are clear, simple, easily
distinguishable, and easily modifiable, all great virtues for any game
designer. Then we add a few simple symbols to the mix, that modify the
piece moves.
What sorts of pieces will we have? Let's look at '8 of Everything'
[which actually has 8 of each FIDE piece, but 24 pawns per side] for some
ideas. It's got 8 kings and 24 pawns, 32 pieces that move 1 square/turn.
It's got 8 knights, which move 2 squares/turn. It's got 24 bishops,
rooks, and queens, which as unlimited sliders, move up to 23 squares/turn.
That's it. Now, admittedly, the bishops, rooks, and queens can move any
number of squares up to their maximum, but there does seem to be a gaping
hole in movement ranges between 1, 2, and 23. We want some
intermediate-range pieces [well, I do, anyhow] to justify blowing the FIDE
board up to 9 times its proper size. And a decent piece mix; Bs, Rs and Qs
are all right in their place, but with all that space, we want a decent
amount of shorter-range pieces, including some cut-down FIDES and some
shortrange point and area covering pieces. 
Finally, we want a few kinds of leaders. Top dog is the king, but we will
also use other leader pieces. Every leader will be allowed to move 1 piece
under its command and within its [limited] command range every turn. This
should take care of little problems like how we work multi-move turns and
how to tame queens that can move 23 squares/turn.