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George Duke made an interesting comment while discussing Jetan. He said:
(1) It is a straight-line descent from Burroughs to contemporary Joyce in
short-range projects ongoing... Published 100 years ago, the fact is Jetan
acquired widely-assorted imitators and acceptance within its own new genre
-- being one of just few dozen Chess clusters of all time outstanding...
short-range project pieces acquire effectiveness with moderate weakening in
keeping with others of their kind...

In keeping with tradition [George and my tradition, established about 2005,
of arguing over everything], I will disagree slightly with George about my
own work, but he has made an excellent start to a discussion of ERB's
chess ideas. I hope to see it continue. A discussion of Edgar Rice
Burroughs and chess would be a valuable addition to our current Comments
section. I've never played the game, but was fascinated by it as a kid,
and would love to learn how it plays. 

Burroughs' game, from what I remember, was essentially created from the
ground up by him [to the best of my knowledge], and certainly deserves to
be at the head of its own chess cluster. My particular work [difficult to
distinguish from Christine Bagley-Jones particular work] in the shortrange
project comes out of the shatranj cluster, heading in the general direction
of Jetan, and landing right next to it with Lemurian Shatranj [thus
demonstrating that the Lemurians were descendants of the original Martian
colonists of Earth.] But it veers away again with David Paulowich's
Opulent Lemurian Shatranj, which is clearly the next and best game in
'my' shatranj series. My own follow-up to LemS was Chieftain Chess, which
actually belongs in its own cluster, perched by the edge of chess'
conceptual space, that mental area in which all chess games reside. 

How many clusters are there, and how are they related? Clearly, FIDE is a
child of shatranj that resides in the cluster containing the games using
the basic BNRQK pieces and their compounds, amazon, archbishop, centaur,
chancellor, dragons bishop and rook. This cluster is connected to the
shatranj supercluster [which it is, being a cluster of clusters] by a
bridge of games that include Tamerlane's Chess, for example. 

Clearly Shogi and Xiangqi stand at the front of clusters. What are the
other large clusters, or even small, distinctive ones? Do R. Wayne
Schmittberger's Wildebeest Chess and C. Bagley-Jones Sky delimit a cluster
that employs the long-leapers? Surely Ultima, Rococo, Maxima triangulate on
the center of another cluster that sits on the edge of chess. 

How do you categorize Falcon Chess, or Mats Winther's work? As a general
category, you could see them all as 'one-off' games, FIDE Plus, as
distinct from the first category of FIDE, above, which could be
characterized as SuperFIDE. [As an aside, it would seem highly likely that
any 'next chess' would come from one of these two categories.] This is
the most common of game designs we find, for obvious reasons. And in most
cases, the games are 'add-on' rather than 'replacement' games. They add
a new piece to the existing FIDE pieces [or shogi pieces or Xiangqi...],
increasing board size, rather than removing a standard chess piece and
replacing it with a new one. 

Ralph Betza's Chess with Different Armies is another supercluster, albeit
a very small one. CwDA established a genre, based on themed replacements of
standard FIDE pieces. The theme of course is the replacement of the
different pieces with variants on just one piece, a different piece for
each army. [Hmm, did he do a queen-themed army? That would be a very
interesting little contest: design a queen-themed CwDA army that plays
evenly with the others.] But the armies *are* different; rather than having
a common origin, they have a common value. And I think they would fall a
bit ahead of now on that hundred year Jetan to shortrange project
conceptual timeline. 

Clearly the overall geography of 'chess space' is organized
evolutionarily, with Darwin, Lamarck, and mixmaster all operating to
varying degrees. For a good example of mixmaster, you have a little cluster
of games that all attempt, apparently with varying perceived amounts of
success, to combine [elements of] Xiangqi, Shogi, and FIDE into one [more
or less normal-sized] game. But what I've discussed so far is but a
glimpse of general principles. These are the beginnings of the broad
outlines of the geography, but what are the key factors, where are the
continents, and how do they connect? 

Size alone is not an adequate factor, but level of replacement, level of
addition, are telling for the kind of game you'd expect. Jetan, for
example, at 10x10 is only slightly larger than the 'big three' versions
of chess played today, but its level of replacement is 100%, and it adds a
pair of pieces. What tells you most about how it will play as a game? 

Well, another excessively long post, so I'll stop here, If anyone wants to
join in, feel free.