Comments by JianyingJi

I would suggest that at the beginning of the game only allow the black
player to spinnach, this would balance the first move advantage.

Absolutely a must read for formalizing variants. Will definitely be one
of my references for my variants in the future, and will safe a lot of
typing too :-) now that I can just refer to Rule zero

This variant can be easily handicapped by giving the weaker player 
an extra amount of zorkmids at the start. the amount depending on
the deference between the players.

this is absolutely amazing. a very clear exposition and easy to follow.

The thing that intrigues me the most is a move leading to stalemate is
not allowed. which get's away from the fuddily rules in FIDE and other
variants dealing with stalemates. I think this is a worthwhile rule to 
adopt in other variants.

I think part of the trouble with this variant, and the reason that people
hesitate to try it is the lack of a coherent theme, by theme I include 
abstract themes such as all pieces have abstract quality X. 

this game have various categories of pieces:

King : royal

Squire, Viceroy, Pawn, Crowned Knight, left/right schzzhi: normal, 
      i.e. no special powers but can be effected by others

Bobber: extending powers (to itself)

dazzler, hyenna : immobilizer

archer, zednick : confabulators

yanzee : invulnerable

extentialist : morph

teleporter: transports self.

I feel there's a excess of categories and overlap between the powers 
between the pieces. this game would be better I think if no two pieces
have the same higher power. for example having had the dazzler both 
hyenna and yanzee is somewhat superflous.

similarly archer is a more coherent piece than zednick which has 4 
unrelated powers, so it would be a better games without zednick.
A compromise would to give the power of the zednick to the bobber
which creates the stretegic tension of whether to keep the bobber 
around or to confabulate it with some other piece to increase that
piece's power.

I think the more constrained variant below might be easier to start 
with:

all the normal pieces and the king.

King : royal

Squire, Viceroy, Pawn, Crowned Knight, left/right schzzhi: normal

Dazzler: as the immobilizer and giver of invulnerability

archer: as the confabulator

bobber/zednick: moves as bobber or can confabulate as a zednick

teleporter: transports itself

extentialist: cycles through all the non-royal pieces, on 11th move it 
              sleeps, than another cycle, then explode.

I think I have preserved all the ideas in your game and simplified it
a bit. hope you find it interesting.

this is a very nice page that provide info on a whole class of pieces.
I like its organization very much

how cool, I was just wondering about leapers for a variant I was 
designing. this is perfect for it. and the diagram of the where all
the leaper go is great, a very good exposition

It seems to me that the elephant in xiangqi (on the blackside) is
most likely and almost certainly an import from india since china
has no elephants. the character used on the black side is that of 
elephant which would be quite strange if it originated in china. so
certainly that perticular character and that piece must have come after
contact with india. 

The cannon piece almost certainly originated in china, since
china invented gun powder quite early on.

Also the different symbols on each side almost hint that it might be 
different army game once, with different powers on the sides, though
there might have been a more prosaic reason, that all the pieces have
different symbols between the sides since the original pieces were carved
and the only way to tell the sides were the characters. (red and black
came later)

And finally, since it is the elephant (xiang) that gives name to the 
whole game, that is if translated directly word for word xiangqi would
be elephant boardgame (qi having being derived from weiqi) and that 
elephants only known in china after contact with india, it is very likely
that modern xiangqi derives from indian source.

A great and detailed page. However the images are not visible due to some 
mal formed link addresses ie the wrong slash being used. nonetheless the
contents are very useful

It might be interesting to try the following modest variant of ximeracak:

0: all rules as Ximeracak except as noted below
1: when the general is under check it can switch with
   the pegasus, provided of course the pegusus is not
   also attacked.

This simple modification will increase the pegasus's streategic value
which will make people be more careful before putting pegasus in harm's
way, and keep it in the game for the end game. In fact it should have
the overall effect of decreasing the apeal of captures in the game.

Since ALL FIDE laws apply, I would say the answer for the question is 
most likely the following:

1: Fifty move rule, the stalemated player gets to roll the dice and if 
the opponent's roll or one's own removes stalemate before the opponent
manages a checkmate then the game continues otherwise if it is still a 
stalemate after fifty moves then draw (probably extremely unlikely)

2: This is a tricky one, most variants would probably say that definitely
double step allowed for a2 but a1 I'm not sure, though I think it 
probably should be allowed

3: I think that should be a yes

Hope we'll have adrain's take soon

I wonder what about fWD? 
And what adjective should be used with this kind of elephant?

This been an idea I been thinking of for a while. It pleases me to no end
that someone has made a variant along these lines. It would be great to
see more variants using 'influencing' as an element in them.

Since white has slight opening advantage, it would be more equitable
if the game start with black refusing one move from white and then 
white move and refuse black then game continues as described ...

The page was not index so I'm writing the comment here:

Here's a modest variant:

immortal pawns:

Pawns promotes on the owner's last three ranks. 
Promotion required on last rank only.
Pawns promote to captured pieces only.
Pawns are return to the owner to be dropped, if captured.
Dropped pawn drops only to the first four ranks of the Pawn's owner.
Drops takes a whole turn.

Comments:

These changes are motivated by the desire to make it possible 
to resurrect any piece and have after some captures to restore 
back on the board the full 32 piece complement, and to do so with
minimal change to the rules. It seemed tweeking promotion as the 
simplest way to do that

Really well designed and explained large variant without the clutter that
often afflict them