Comments by joejoyce

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.