Comments by joejoyce

Well, you'd certainly want a large board, so starting at 10x10 is good.
Since all the pieces in this game jump (but not [currently] the pawns) the
effects of square loss would be effectively reduced. You might even want to
let the 'High Priestess' replace (or even add) squares. And if you did
that, you might let the 'Minister' destroy squares. Their ranges would
logically be any empty squares they could legally move to. They would
cancel each other out at squares within the range of both. But letting the
Minister destroy occupied squares would swing the game far over to offense,
unless, maybe, you allowed the High Priestess to resurrect... Anyway, that
the 2 pieces have limited movement (for ABS) is a decent limitation for
pieces that can create or destroy squares. The priestess could extend the
board; a decent restriction would be that a square surrounded on 3 of 4
sides by emptiness cannot be connected to a square that will have more
than 1 side next to emptiness. So bridges would have to be 2 squares wide.
This particular application of player power over the board probably pushes
well into the shallows of the Rubicon itself. This is terrain in a
wargame. But it is true that holes are as good a terrain abstract as
squares. How many chess variants have specific pieces that create or
destroy the board itself? That destruction of squares could well be going
too far, especially since this is not a wormhole variant we're talking
about. That would be a different game.

Hi, Mats. I hate to preempt you, but I refer you to the 'Jumping General'
in 'Two Large Shatranj Variants'. It appears as the queen analog in Grand
Shatranj and as the royal piece in Atlantean Barroom Shatranj, both games
currently being played on this site. It does work very nicely. It even has
a new unique graphic which incorporates an elephant and a war machine,
which appears in current games. And as soon as this computer/internet
illiterate figures out how to accomplish it, the games will be available
as public presets with unique rules sets. And rather than go through
lawyers, I suggest we duel it out. After all, I can establish prior
copyright; I just need better computer skills and advertising. If Gary is
willing, I choose him as my second. And should there be an interested
party lurking, feel free to choose sides. 
Seriously, this does point out the extreme difficulty of coming up with a
genuinely new piece, especially one that is actually broadly playable.
I'd be surprised if I were the first to propose this piece. I am curious
as to how you figured its value as that of a rook. Short range jumping
pieces are apparently not well represented in popular games. Is this a
defect in the nature of short-range leapers, or just random chance that
this piece is only really represented by the knight- and alfil-types?

Okay, count me in. I can come up with at least one thing by Christmas. :-)

Gentlemen, let me stick an oar into these murky waters. My first question
is: what do you mean by 'big board'? If you accept FIDE as the standard,
then anything above 8x8 is 'big'. I would argue against that and the
ideas that you need really powerful pieces, or even many pieces, and more
than 1 move per turn. (At least up to, say 25x25 ;-) At 19x19, Go does
quite well with merely putting non-moving pieces on the board one at a
time. I've worked at 'large' sized boards (10x8, 10x10, 9x21, 16x16)
and, now that I'm looking at it, the general trend is the larger the
board, the fewer the pieces, and the ranges in 'linear' distance often
decrease, but that's because the 9x21 is conceptually also 3x3x3x7 and
the 16x16 is similarly also 4x4x4x4, so you can't go very far in any one
'direction'. Okay, you might think that last bit is all bs, but Go still
elegantly demonstrates you don't need powerful pieces for a large board.
And the 9x21 game (189 cells) is a chancellor chess variant using only the
standard 9 pieces and pawns per side of chancellor chess. The 16x16 game
(256) uses only the standard 8 pieces and pawns of FIDE per side. 
Andy Thomas has made some excellent points. I think he's right in all of
them. I just need to know what size we're talking about, and am curious
about the line between chess and wargames, like say 'Axis and Allies'. I
would recommend HG Wells book 'Little Wars' as an excellent example of
what is clearly over the line. (It's also got great photos.)

Hi, Gary. A good part of our difference is merely a semantic debate. I,
too, agree with the ideas you express: 'My point was simply that large
boards are a good home for long-range pieces and more types of pieces.'
That's 100% accurate, and I agree with you. My problem here is how you
define 'large', and if greater numbers, longer ranges, and more
different pieces are required by larger (not 'large') boards. The point
about Go is that a 19x19 board is small enough that 2 players merely
putting unmoving stones on the board one at a time in alternating turns is
a good game. And it isn't even chess. My 16x16 4D game uses only a
standard FIDE piece set, with close to FIDE moves, and starts with a piece
density of 12.5% My 9x21 game starts with a piece density of 19%. Grand
Chess, as well as 2 of my large shatranj variants, all start with a 40%
piece density on a 10x10 board. Maybe my argument here is one of
aesthetics. Larger boards do not require larger numbers of pieces. Elegant
simplicity is a valuable goal in game design, for it increases the
playability of the game. And 10x10, or 20x20, is not 'large' - for
square, even-numbered boards, 8x8 is about the smallest size that gives a
decent game - clearly 2x2 and 4x4 are useless, and 6x6 is 'the easy game
for the ladies and children' and early computers, so 8x8 is the bottom.
For odd numbered boards, 5x5 is useless, and 7x7 is Navia Dratp. Still not
much room below 8x8, and 7x7's can have their bishop setup problems.
Please, define your terms. ;-)
On piece 'powers' - this is where I was tongue-in-cheek, in describing
pieces with diminishing *linear* ranges. On a 4x4x4x4 board*, you can only
possibly go 3 at most from your starting position in any one direction, but
you have a lot of directions in which to go. A simple rook, moving
linearly, can reach 12 positions on this board. A knight, in the middle,
can reach 23, using only its 'L-shaped' move. Even from a corner, it
reaches 12. *Of course, the board is actually physically 16x16, divided
into 4x4 sections, and movement rules simulate the 4x4x4x4 board, but you
could use Great Shatranj pieces, none of which move more than 2 squares,
quite successfully on that board. 
I am not arguing against any position as much as I'm arguing for mine. If
you say 10x10 is big, and requires at least 25 pieces per side to maintain
the 50% starting density, and we need amazons at least, then I'm arguing
against you. ;-) Enjoy. Joe (and I know I left a lot out, but next time)

Hi, Gary! You always take me so seriously. :-) 
 1 You've defined 'large, medium and small' in reference to FIDE. Okay,
then I stand by my initial statement. ;-)
 2 On women, children, and early computers: When I did a bit of research
on 6x6 a while back, as well as Los Alamos Chess, I ran into variants from
the 1800's that were specifically designed as easy chess for the ladies
and (precocious?) children. First, I will say, for the record, I am a New
York liberal, living smack dab in the middle of the NY metro area, on the
east bank of the Hudson River. Then I will (gently) point out that the
line you object to was sarcastic, and that NY liberals (even if they are
only fake liberals and don't really mean it) are not likely to seriously
espouse such a position. Second, after the 2 extremely bitter and
hard-fought draws I've played against zcherryz, if you think I'd
seriously maintain men are innately better than women at chess, you're
crazier than I am. And as far as kids, I'm 58. I have a 32 year-old son
and a daughter who will be 25 in 25 days, and comes off our car insurance!
As far as I'm concerned, probably most of the people on this site are
kids. And I can tell ya, I'm certainly not beating them all. :-)
On the serious side, we do have a few points of agreement, in that we both
apparently feel (from what you said) that 8x8 is actually the smallest
decent size for a game. [Before the winners of the 44, 43, 42... square
contests kill me en masse, let me admit to a number of awesome small
exceptions discussed some other time.] And we can agree to call 10x10 and
20x20 'large'. But I still maintain that a large board gives much
greater scope for elegant simplicity. Too many pieces can muddy the theme;
you might as well play a wargame. [I design those, too.]
As always, these discussions with you get me thinking. Enjoy! Joe

I don't understand what you mean about having to make pages for the presets. Aren't their pages just like the following:

Atlantean Barroom Shatranj which is the url for Atlantean Barroom Shatranj? I'd love for people to actually know I made the presets. I suppose it's questions like these that demonstrate why I'm not an editor...

Okay, Gary, I stand chastened. 'Scum of the Earth reporting for
barnacle-scraping duty.' I meant no offense in relating what most 19th
century men thought about the general abilities and capacities of women
and children, conveyed in the form of a game deliberately dumbed down to
allow for their 'innate inferiority'. And I included computers in that
disadvantaged group with Los Alamos chess - a 6x6 game dumbed down for the
early computers. I was implicitly contrasting statements from the past with
what we know now. I don't think I could beat today's computers, either.
You wouldn't need a Deep Blue to beat me, a shallow HAL would be more
than adequate. ;-)
Your note made my morning. I'll try to be better, but I'm not a serious
person, so I may slip. I am, however, a serious designer - you know I'd
love to design games professionally, but it's a killer field to break
into with no computer skills. So I enjoy what I do and maybe some day,
I'll get lucky. In the meantime, I have a deep interest in the theory and
practice of game design. And this topic of big board CV's, while I
undoubtedly will never make a penny selling chess variants, is something I
find extremely interesting and very useful. You've seen a couple of my
non-chess games, Spaceships and 4War. I see very strong connections
between them and chess, on more than one level. 4War grew out of
Hyperchess. And I'm just starting to explore a Spaceships chess variant.
So I don't see a sharp line between 'genres'. They cross-pollinate. 
I'm very interested in this topic, but I'd like to see a number of
approaches to big board variants. For example, I oppose adding pieces
because there's more room on the board. (This is undoubtedly a minority
position, however. So I'm working to get the viewpoint adequately
represented and examined.) And I oppose having a large number of different
pieces because you've got all these pieces you just added because you had
more room and now you're trying to figure out what to do with them. This
affects playability in many ways. And I think playability is the first
consideration of game design. Not the only, but the first. Enjoy. Joe

Great, Tony! Three pages, with 5 presets, are now waiting for approval.

David, thank you very much.

The basic idea of this game is excellent. The geometry of the board is
intriguing, and I'm impressed by the cleverness of fiting the board into
100 squares (for the 100 square contest). 
I, too, have a question on the knight's move, however, prompted by my
attempt at an answer to Jeremy's question. I figured this way:
 - the central squares are not 'really' on board B, they are 'really'
on boards A, B, and C, most likely simultaneously but apparently on any
level at will.
 - for the 'dabbabah' move to happen, the knight must move 1 'up' from
B to A on the central square on which it starts, then it 'turns 90' and
moves 2 across board A to the side, ending between the 2 moves made as if
the knight started on board A, move 2 to the side, then turned 90 and
moved 1 along the side. Or start the other way and do the same thing on
C.
However, if that's correct, then the knight can be considered to be on
board C to start, move C to B to A on that same central square for the 2
square leg of its move, then turn 90 and move 1 square off the original
central square to end. And that would add 4 squares to the knight's move
in the diagram, the 2 light squares next to the lower left-hand corner of
the boards A and C central holes. So I may not understand this very well.

GO CHESS

Was well into the second mile of my walk, just past the local police and
fire stations, when my comment to Gary about Go being just a ferz and
wazir movement away from chess ran through my head, bringing the following
train of thought. Play a game of Go. As you put your stones down, mark them
with either an 'X' for ferz or a '+' for wazir. A stone gets an X if it
is not connected to any friendly stones when it is placed. It gets a + if
it is connected to one or more friendly stones. Captured pieces lose their
markings. When the Go game is over, the captured stones are used to fill
territory, the Go score is calculated, and the captured stones are removed
from the board. Then the chess game starts. White moves one piece either
along a line to the next intersection, W, or diagonally across a square to

the opposite corner intersection, F. Last person with pieces wins the
chess game, and scores one point per piece left. The total score is
figured as the sum of the two. Still not chess, but getting there. Okay,
no king? Make all the pieces pretenders. The last one left on a side gets
promoted to king, with a king's W+F move. Still not chess? Drop the Go
scoring. Play Go only for chesspiece placement, using all the rules of
placement, capture, and when the game ends; but no score. More pieces?
Allow a friendly piece to move onto and combine with another friendly
piece. The N is a W-then-F mover, for example. Combos of Fs could build
alfils, elephants, and bishops. Combos of Ws are dabbabahs and rooks. You
could even set aside a certain number of moves at the beginning of the
movement portion of the game to be used only for combining moves. You
might even restrict all combining moves to this part of the game. You
could have to make a single king, also. Now, you place your piece atoms
and fight to destroy your opponents atoms in the placement stage, build
your complex pieces in the combo stage, then play chess in the movement
stage. This is Go morphed into chess, but where did it cross the line?

I tried the Logical Followup to the Duke of Rutland's chess preset twice,
and got the standard chess rules and an 8x8 board, with the Logical title
in large black letters. Maybe it's me ;-)

Gary, I'd be very happy to have you and anyone else who wishes playtest
this baby bear. Thanks. Joe