Comments by jlennert
On Designing Good Chess Variants. Design goals and design principles for creating Chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I don't buy it. By that definition, it seems that Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a Chess variant, because the heroes win (in most scenarios) by killing a specific boss monster, but Losing Chess is not, because the victory condition is extinction, and Nemoroth also is not, because the victory condition is stalemate.
I would say rather that being a 'chess variant' is a matter of family resemblance. Games that resemble Chess more closely than they resemble other well-known games are deemed chess variants. Checkers escapes being termed a 'chess variant' mostly because it is, itself, well-known; someone with long familiarity with Chess who was introduced to Checkers for the first time could plausibly decide it was a chess variant.
This resemblance is generally a result of having several key mechanics in common with chess (including a uniform tesselated playing area, armies of pieces with different movement capabilities, alternating turns in which a single piece belonging to that player can be moved, capture by displacement, and a single royal piece whose checkmate or capture ends the game)--and also NOT having too many key mechanics that Chess lacks. But no single feature is either indispensible or verboten; it's just a question of whether the game, taken in whole, reminds us of Chess more than it reminds us of something else.
Good game design is ultimately a matter of generating appropriate reactions in players. Analyzing how people feel about games they've played (and why) can suggest new ways for a designer to elicit (or avoid) particular reactions. Making lists of things that contribute to an overall 'chess-like' impression seems like a pretty reasonable thing for chess variant designers to spend time doing. Assigning actual point values is probably reaching beyond the available data, though. Verify your models carefully before you trust them.
I suspect there's several concepts concealed in J�rg's [23]. One could be that squares differ only by their relative positions; for example, there's no square where you become immune to capture, or that can only be crossed by certain piece types, or whose occupation immediately wins the game. Though this would be violated not only by the river and palace in Xiangqi, but also by piece promotion in FIDE and Shogi, which perhaps calls into question the validity of that criterion. On the other hand, you can still make many kinds of 'terrain' just by altering the connections between squares; for example, you could have a 'wall' between squares (causing them to not be considered adjacent), or a 'portal' (that causes two otherwise distant squares to be considered adjacent), or a 'rotated' square (that turns forward movement into backwards movement, or orthogonal into diagonal, for example), all of which can be completely described purely as changes to the connections between squares. So perhaps you want a rule something like 'the squares comprise a regular tesselation of the playing field'. And possibly another requirement specifying the overall shape of the playing field (e.g. rectangular). Side-Topics: - Chess variants on boards with semi-regular tesselations - Chess variants played on an arbitrary graph
Ideal Values and Practical Values (part 6). A study of the value of the Furlrurlbakking piece.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Doublemove chess. Move twice per turn, with by King capture, not checkmate. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]So you're suggesting that checking the enemy king with the first of your two moves would result in a stalemate? Interesting, though it seems like that could be unsatisfying, and might cause a lot of draws. The obvious generalization of the rules of check is that the king is in check if it could be captured before the owner's next move (which in a doublemove variant would often mean within 2 opposing moves), but this has a couple of issues: 1) It is not always easy to tell when a piece could be captured within 2 moves, making it hard to determine when someone is in 'check' 2) The force required to checkmate a king that can move twice consecutively is quite substantial (see Betza's commentary on Monster Chess here: http://www.chessvariants.org/d.betza/chessvar/muenster.html ) And thus, various alternate rules proliferate to attempt to solve these problems. I invented a doublemove variant in high school (which I imagine has been duplicated by many other inventors both before and since) that required the two moves on a turn to be made with different pieces, and also stipulated that the second piece to move could not pass through the square that the first piece started on (thus, no instant revealed attacks). This has the advantage that a king is in check in any given board position if and only if he would be in check under the FIDE rules, and the doublemove helps only a little bit in escaping check (since the king cannot move twice). I don't know if that would be considered a 'true' doublemove variant, though, since no indivual piece can move twice during a turn. My variant also has obvious generalizations to three or more moves per turn that probably play equally well. I only ever played it once, though.
Fearful fairies. An experimental army for CadA, featuring the Dullahan (Ferz-Knight compound) and the Banshee. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Hmm. A Banshee (or even just a Nightrider) starting on d1 can reach c4 within 2 moves, forking king and rook. Black can play d5 or b5 to discourage it, though for some armies 1...d5 would invite 2. BNNxd5 (still threatening 3. BNN-c4+). I suppose d6 or b6 could also be used to preemptively block one tine of the fork. (And I'm not sure if white would be wise to develop his superpiece on turn 1...) Of course, even a compound with (0,3) such as the Frog or Half-Duck can likely threaten an undefended back-row piece within 2 moves. For example, a Frog starting on b1 can go to b4 and then a5, threatening an undefended rook if playing against the FIDE army. Perhaps not terribly difficult to defend against, but I don't know about 'tactically quiet'. Do you feel this is acceptable but, say, a Camel (1,3) is not? If I were forced to play against a Bison in a FIDE-like game, I imagine I would try to deny it early access to my fourth rank by guarding any space it appeared be aiming for with pawns. But I've never actually tried it.
I would be wary of declaring an opening array safe on the basis of the way it interacts with a specific opposing array. The FIDE army happens to have a piece on b/g that starts defended, is worth about the same as a Frog, and can flee without moving a pawn first. Suppose we shuffled the pieces on both sides with some algorithm similar to FRC. Would that be likely to produce a problematic case like your b/g test, or a calm one like your a/h test? Put another way, are the problems you had with the Frogs on b/g a special case that is unlikely to recur with different armies, or is every future CwDA army going to need to carefully check to make sure the Fairies can't easily win a piece against them in the opening?
On a related note, has anyone tried playing with the Avian Airforce from Ideal and Practical Values part 3? That army features WDD, FAA, and WFDDAA, and so should also be able to make long-range attacks on the back rank.
Doublemove chess. Move twice per turn, with by King capture, not checkmate. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The fact that you can't capture the king in FIDE chess is a *consequence* of the check rules, not a separate rule. Any move that would give your opponent the opportunity to capture your king is illegal; the issue of whether you're allowed to make the capture if you had the opportunity therefore never comes up, but the easiest way to explain the concept of check in the first place is by reference to the hypothetical capture of the king. So, to recap, the laws of chess do not allow you to make a move that leaves your king 'in check'. If 'in check' means 'able to be captured by your opponent before YOUR next move', then when your opponent is about to get 2 consecutive moves, it would be illegal for you to make a move that results in a board position where your king could be captured within 2 opponent moves. Thus, players would need to foresee the capture 2 moves in advance just to check whether a particular move was legal. It would still not be possible to actually capture the king, because every possible series of legal moves would result in the king being checkmated (and thus trigger the end of the game) before such a capture actually occurred. (Exactly as in FIDE Chess.)
Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thanks, Muller. This is a neat little tool. Could you go into a little more detail about how the columns work when some of the pieces are colorbound? With two colorbound pieces, I get two columns in rep2.txt, which appear to be same-color and different-color, respectively. But with 3 colorbound pieces, I get 4 columns, one of which is all zeroes (including its total board positions), and none of them are labeled. (Also, none of them are identical, even when all 3 colorbound pieces are the same piece-type and owned by the same player...) I did some experimenting with mismatched royal pieces. Interesting result: while it is commonly known that KNN v K is drawn, it appears that NK v K (that is, a single royal knight + commoner vs. king) is generally won! (89% won with black to move, longest win 29 moves, if I'm reading these results correctly.) I suppose that shows the value of sacrifice. How difficult do you think it would be to modify this code to accommodate 'lame' leapers, bent riders, crooked riders, and/or pieces with only 2-fold symmetry?
Every Man a Pawn. Each piece has the powers of a Pawn (except promotion) in addition to its normal powers. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]A game rule is not a collection of words, it's an abstract specification of how the game transitions between different states. People who are playing Chess according to rules written in English and people who are playing Chess according to equivalent rules written in another language are playing "the same game", regardless of the fact that different words are used to describe it.
By the same token, "pawns may move 2 spaces forward on their initial move" and "pawns may move 2 spaces forward when beginning a move from their second rank" are the exact same rule in the context of FIDE Chess, because "the rule" is actually just a specification of which game states can transition to which other game states, and the set of possible transitions is the same in both cases.
They are different rules in the context of some Chess variants because they no longer describe the same set of state transitions. When someone is inventing such a variant, it is reasonable and appropriate for them to choose whichever generalization of the rule is best for their variant, regardless of which exact words someone somewhere decided to use to describe the original rule.
Though game designers who hope eventually to release expansions for their games should definitely think about how their rules will ultimately generalize in order to avoid headaches down the road...
The pie rule merely prevents the pie-slicer from cheating; it won't magically make him any better at game design. If you have two players who both understand the game very well and your problem is that neither of them trusts the other to create a fair initial position, this will solve your problem. But if a designer already intends to make a balanced game and is having trouble with the execution of that intent (which is the assumption I see in most discussions about how to balance games), this doesn't help you at all.
Actually, that's very often not what it does. The pie rule only works when both parties are highly adept at their assigned tasks. If the slicer is poor at balancing but the chooser is good at gauging each side's strength, then the slicer cannot help but include some imbalance that the chooser will exploit, and thus places himself at a disadvantage no matter what he does. Conversely, if the slicer is good at design but the chooser is poor at evaluation, then the slicer may deliberately provide misleading cues and trick the chooser into selecting the weaker side.
Thus, in many cases, applying the pie rule to game-balancing encourages confusing and misleading design decisions, to minimize the odds that the other party can correctly identify or utilize the advantages of each side. I think that would generally be regarded as undesirable.
But even in the best possible case, it only motivates you to balance the game, it doesn't provide any tools for doing so.
Is it unfair if it amplifies the inherent advantage one player already has? More to the point, is it desirable for it to amplify advantages in this way?
Also, I think there are real differences between the skills required to play well, to evaluate positions accurately, and to design an interesting and balanced opening position. There's certainly some overlap, but it's also quite possible to be noticeably better or worse at one of those things than the others. I could perhaps make a better guess at the material value of many fairy pieces than some chess grandmasters could; that wouldn't imply I could beat them with those pieces.
On a related note, if there is a particular piece that I'm very good at using and that my opponent is not so good at using, I can give myself an advantage by giving that pieces to BOTH sides. If I were playing against a chess grandmaster, I certainly wouldn't give both sides FIDE pieces. In fact, I would be tempted to give one side FIDE pieces, and then deliberately make the other side stronger, in the hope that my opponent will just choose the familiar pieces that he knows how to use.
The whole pie-cutting problem just becomes a whole lot messier once the question of skill comes up.
Nothing is wrong with adding any gameplay element, skill-based or otherwise, if the players feel it enhances the game. But the subject of this thread does not advertise a skill-based gameplay element, it advertises a method for achieving game balance. Those are completely different things! If I'm acting as a game designer, I don't want a technique I use for balancing my game to change the nature of that game or alter the skills required to win.
I never thought it was supposed to be a handicapping system, I thought it was supposed to be a system for creating an initial board position from which a typical player would have equal chances of winning regardless of which side he played. So I am pointing out that: 1) At best, this sytem merely provides MOTIVATION for creating such a position. That's kind of like adverising a "method for lifting heavy objects" and then revealing that the method is to offer a higher wage to employees who can lift more. You aren't solving the problem, you're hiring someone else to solve it for you; the actual problem still needs to be solved by someone at some point. 2) Although this method aligns the player's incentives with the goal in an idealized case, there are many realistic cases in which the player can actually gain a larger advantage by strategically UNbalancing the game, rather than making it as balanced as possible. So you need to carefully consider your circumstances before employing it, even just as a motivator.
Courier Eurasian Chess
. Eurasian Chess meets Courier-Spiel.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I doubt that someone who is not already familiar with Cannons could deduce all the movement rules of the Cannon and Arrow from those diagrams. The Pawn diagram does not indicate whether it can cross the river (as every other diagram does). Is the rook really estimated to be worth only 8/7 of a bishop? The bishop no doubt benefits from the wide board, but that's a larger effect than I would have guessed. Is there another factor I'm missing?
Looking at the wiki page source, it looks like most of the page is actually embedded HTML rather than normal wiki script. Based on your description, it sounds like you're not seeing that part.
Oh. I guess I overlooked it because it has no moves shown.
For the Crown. A commercial crossover with deck-building games. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Now seeking playtesters for the second expansion. There's currently an announcement at the top of the Victory Point Games main page; instructions to apply are here.
The variant you describe is listed on the site under the name Compromise Chess.
Archabbott Chess. Introduces the Archabbott piece which moves like Bishop + Wazir + Dabbaba.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Such an app would basically just be an interface to a giant table listing pieces for every possible combination of moves. Assuming you could create that table, the app would be straightforward. I question its usefulness, though.
Firstly, most of the table would either be empty or taken up with obscure pieces that few would be interested in. For every combination of squares you could light up that corresponds to a common compound, there's a ton of combinations like "forward and left as a knight, forward and right as an alfil, or backwards as a ferz or rook" that are just weird. I'm sure you can dig up names and variants for several pieces like that, but it could take a lot of work if you're really being thorough, and the odds of a user stumbling upon any particular one of them are pretty low.
Secondly, for popular pieces, there would be an unwieldy amount of information to display. Take a look at the Piececlopedia page for the Bishop-Knight Compound, for example; it's got a bunch of different names and has been used in a ton of variants (the list on that page can't possibly be complete, but it's already more than one screen of info).
Thirdly, your database would have to leave out (or misrepresent) a lot of important and interesting pieces, because pieces aren't defined only by which squares they move to. The Knight, the Mao, and the Moa all move to the same squares, but they take different paths to get there. Some pieces, like the Cannon, require a hurdle to move. Some pieces capture differently than they move; Ultima is a variant based around giving every piece a different method of capture. Some pieces can make special moves under specific circumstances, like the pawn's initial double-step or en passant capture in FIDE. Some pieces just have weird special rules, like the ability to capture multiple times during their movement, or copy another piece's movements, or move other pieces with them.
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The FIDE laws of Chess do not forbid threefold repetition; rather, law 10.10 allows either player to claim a draw in the event a threefold repetition occurs.
In the absence of such a rule, the game would presumably go on forever, with neither player willing to break the cycle. The threefold repetition rule is simply an observation of the fact that if both players find an endless loop preferable to other options, then they have both implicitly consented to a draw. It doesn't change whether any position is theoretically won, lost, or drawn, it just cuts short the infinite loop.
For the Crown has many unorthodox pieces, and is adding more with each expansion. However, material values are quite different than they would be in a FIDE-like context, due to differences in piece density, deployment (dropping) rules, and various other factors. And mate #s are completely irrelevant, since both players have the ability to bring new pieces into play as the game goes on, and therefore bare king endgames do not arise.
I have composed rules and recommended piece values for using the For the Crown pieces in a point-buy chess variant, which are available on the publisher's product page. I believe I have subjected these values to rather more rigorous analysis than George has used in this thread, but I still consider them to be educated guesses, at best; I haven't tried to get more precise than nearest-pawn, and it wouldn't surprise me if several were wrong, even by that loose standard.