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I spent some (to much!) time last night fooling around with Ruddigore Chess. I started by hacking and slashing up Fergus's Duniho's Chessgi ZRF, and seeing what happened. (Zillions is hardly the only tool suitable for this sort of thing, of course, but it is the one that usually comes to hand for me. Occasionally I worry about the effect this has on my game designing, since if the only tool you have is a hammer, everthing starts
to look like a nail. However, the essay <u>Zillions of Games: threat or
menace</u>, will have to wait for another day.)
<p>
As a frame, the battle represents a Loser-take-all battle between Sir
Ruthven Murgatroyd (white) and Sir Despard Murgatroyd (black) as to who
will be stuck being the cursed Bad Baronet of Ruddigore.
<p>
The initial rules were:
<ol>
<p>
<li><b>Ruddigore</b> Chess is a
<a href='../other.dir/chesgi.html'>Chessgi</a> variant, and all rules of
that game apply except when contradicted below.</li>
<p>
<li>Each turn that a player does not perform a wicked deed by capturing a
piece (their's or their opponent's), they must sacrifice a piece to
the curse. Pieces in hand may be sacrificed. Sacrificed pieces are out of
the game.</li>
<p>
<li>You may capture your own pieces ('If a man can't capture his own,
pieces, <strong>whose</strong> pieces <em>can</em> he capture?'). Pieces
of your own you capture go into your hand.</li>
<p>
<li>The first three turns are a Bank Holiday, and there are no captures or
sacrifices then.</li>
<p>
<li>If you run out of other pieces to sacrifice, and you must sacrifice,
you must sacrifice your King and lose.</li>
</ol>
<p>
The problem with this game, as a few minutes of thought would have told me,
is that it is far, far easier to capture your own pieces than the
opponent's. What you get is mostly self captures with occasional threats
in order to force a piece loss on the opponent, with the goal of having
them run out of pieces to sacrifice first. Not very Chess-like.
<p>
The made the follow changes then, attempting to get more pieces engaged:
<ul>
<p>
<li>Only the King, renamed the Baronet and given the ability to capture
(but not move without capturing) like a Knight in addition to moving
like a King [WFcN], can
capture friendly pieces (if you want something done right . . .).</li>
<p>
<li>The Knights are replaced by Gentlemen, which are limited Nightriders
(NN2).</li>
<p>
<li>Pawns are now Quickpawns which can always move two forward, and I've
eliminated en passant to encourage them.</li>
</ul>
<p>
This made a small difference, but not enough. So I eliminated the Bank Holiday, and made sacrifices required only on even turns (Sir Despard did
all of his wicked deeds in the morning, and did good in the afternoon).
This helped a lot, now you can capture your own piece on an even turn,
and deploy it on an odd one. Now, though, I'm wondering if the Gentlemen
are too powerful, since when dropped they can fork like anything. Maybe
Halfling Nightriders?
<p>
I also find I'm tempted to rename everything: Pawns into Farmers, Bishops
into Vicars, Rooks into Squires, and Queens to Stewards. But on the
other hand, if the move hasn't changed, it is confusing to change the name
of the piece.
<p>
Anyway, this is still very much an on-going project, and I'd appreciate any
advice anyone has.
<a href='http://diamond.boisestate.edu/gas/ruddigore/discussion/short.html'>This</a>
is a wonderful, if silly short summary of the plot of Ruddigore.
gnohmon wrote on Fri, Apr 26, 2002 03:14 AM UTC:I think that the silly summary is actually longer than a serious one would be; but it's lots of fun and reasonably accurate. Definitely a useful thing for those who don't speak the language. As for the game, it seems a worthy endeavour, but needs to be clever or else it will never. 'Mostly self-capture with the occasional threat'. Idea 1. There is no problem. Sacrifice a few Pawns to build up an attack; give checkmate, and win. You merely weren't sufficiently enterprising in your play. (This idea could very well be false, but deserves to be mentioned.) Idea 2. Make self-capture less appealing than other-capture. Pieces go in hand but are demoted? Something might work.
I kind of like the current version, and will play with it further. That is: - Sacrifice every other turn - Knights replaced by Halfling Nightriders - Only Baronets (Royal WFcN) can capture own pieces - Pawns are quick Pawns and no en passant I'll try to find some of my usual suspects to playtest with via e-mail, and see how it works.
I hadn't worked with halfing Nightriders before -- it's a very nice piece.
All halflings have shorter range the closer they get to the center, but
the hhNN is more extreme somehow, moving like regular Knights when in the
central 4x4 area. I'll have to use them somewhere else someday.
David Howe wrote on Fri, Apr 26, 2002 04:38 PM UTC:I have an idea for self-captured pieces: a self-captured piece cannot be dropped to a square which is threatened by a friendly piece. This should alleviate the use of self-captured pieces to checkmate or block checks.
That's a though, David. It does, of course, require you to keep track
of two classes of captured pieces. A few other ideas in that
direction:
<ul>
<p>
<li>Self-captured pieces go into your <em>opponent's</em> hand, not your
own;</li>
<p>
<li>Self-captured pieces turn into 'Prisoners', which can not be dropped,
only sacrificed to pay for the curse (this is a more extreme version of
Ralph's suggestion that self-captured pieces be demoted).</li>
<p>
</ul>
At the moment I'm inclined to allow full self-capturing -- it's, ah,
interesting.
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