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Comments by Peter Aronson
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Anti-King Chess. Each player has both a King and an Anti-King to protect; Anti-Kings are in check when not attacked. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]No, Anti-Kings neither check nor checkmate Kings.
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]While the Cannon-Pawn is similar in some ways to a piece in Four-Field Kono (the usual English name for the game), unlike it, they can capture by jumping over opposing pieces as well as friendly pieces. Now, I've been exposed to Four-Field Kono via one or another of R.C. Bell's books, so it could have been an influence, but the Cannon from Xiang Qi was a more immediate influence.
Mad Scientist Chess. Fetch me the Pawn, Igor! (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I suppose you could choose which side the newly animated piece belonged to, but as I noted below discussing attaching pieces to opposing pieces, there isn't really any reason to choose any side other than your own.
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The first capture, C hf-f7, is legal. However, pieces in Rococo don't get to make multiple capturing moves like in Checkers/Draughts, so the second capture, f7-f9, is not legal. Rococo Chameleons can make multiple captures with a single move (when the move fulfills the requirements of multiple attacked pieces capturing moves), but not multiple moves.
Index page of The Chess Variant Pages. Our main index page.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Fergus, Hierarchical Games in the context of the index heading are games like Stratego or The Jungle Game where there is a capturing heirarchy (A can capture all pieces, B can capture all pieces but A, C can capture all pieces but A or B, etc.). There aren't a lot of these games in the system, but we do at least a couple.
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]From the first paragraph of the section of the Rococo page titled 'Rules', third sentence:
Also, a player unable to move or who causes three time repetition loses as well.Yeah, the Immobilizer is awfully powerful. I am beginning to think that the variant where the Withdrawer is immune to immobilization may be the way to go.
Rhino. A set of pieces which combine the movements of the Mao with that of the Wazir.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Yeah, I was overly pessimistic about the Rhino's mating potential. Jorg has also pointed this out earlier. Thanks!
Chaturanga. The first known variant of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Pachisi and a related game, Chaupar, were sometimes played with long dice. Here's a picture of a set with dice. Wikipedia isn't all that good with traditional games, alas.
Imperial Dragon Chess. A variant of Xiangqi designed to appeal to western players. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'll have to guess, because our description is incomplete, but I'd say Pawn promotion is obligatory, and Dragon-Elephants do not un-promote when crossing back over the river.
Illusionary Piece Chess. A piece and a Pawn on each side are more powerful, but can not offer check or prevent bare King. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Illusionary pieces do not offer check to Kings -- they can move into positions that would normally be checking the opposing King, but it has no effect on that King.
Border Wars. Game played on the 42 edges of a grid, with elements of Shogi and XiangQi. (Cells: 42) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Flowerman, look at the victory conditions:
A player is considered vanquished and loses the game if all of the following conditions apply. (Bold added.) So converting the reserve isn't sufficient to win with by itself. You need to meet all four conditions.
Transactional Chess. Moves are grouped into transactions, which are not visible to your opponent
until committed. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've never personally had that much interest in trying to come up with a replacement for FIDE chess. Not that I don't consider it a worthy project, it's just one that's never interested me personally. However, to the extent that any of the games I've designed are suitable for that purpose, Transactional Chess is one of the last ones I would have selected. Really. it's more of a thought experiment than anything else: what happens if you try to apply the logic of relational transactions to a game of Chess?
Honestly, the closest I've come to next Chess type game is Not-Particularly-New Chess (probably Not-Particularly-New Chess II specifically), and that itself was more of a thought experiment itself than anything else. Actually, a lot of my designs are thought experiments, and most of the rest seem to be contest entries. This probably says something about me, but I'm not sure what. :)
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I really should update the rules one of these days. I would need to get my head back into Chess variants a bit more before I could do that -- at the moment family and RPGs have been absorbing my mental energies.
Mad Scientist Chess. Fetch me the Pawn, Igor! (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]One question, though: the instructions specifically say that you can attach a move part to an enemy piece, but why would you do that? I can't think of any situation where that would it would be advantageous to do that: it deprives you of a part you could add to one of your pieces, and gives your opponent more options. There's no real impetus to dispose of parts you can't use in this way (even spoilage is preferable, I would think). Was this rule included only to fit the theme, or does it have a real impact on gameplay?At the moment it just is there for the theme. When I was first designing this game, it still used check, which could, in theory, allow for times when adding a piece to your opponent would cause a stalemate. Unlikely, though.
A variation might be to have grafts remain under the control of the player who added them, regardless of who originally owned the piece. So if black grafted a fers to a white knight, he could move that piece as a fers (but not as a knight), potentially capturing a white piece. What's more mad-sciencey than mind control? Shades of The Other...Neat idea! V.R. Parton called such pieces 'Knightmares'. I used a version of them in my game Combining Knighmare Chess. Adding them, would, of course, make the game even more complicated, which might be an issue.
We have a listing for a Behemoth by a Donald Seagraves. According to the author, it was inspired by Juggernaut Chess by Seth McGinnis and Erik Wilson. Later, I wrote my own contribution to this genre, PieceEater Chess.
I wonder if Brainking.com got permission from Donald?
Novo Chess. War game chess variant from the Netherlands, 1937. (12x8, Cells: 96) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Actually, Ralph Betza's somewhat strange PASGL 312 Chess also features a train (and train tracks), but rather different than those in Novo Chess.
Actually, the Warlock is a bit like the Can(n)on from Antoine Fourrière's Jacks and Witches 84 or Bilateral Chess, which in turn was inspired by the Rotating Spearman from John William Brown's Centennial Chess. Admittedly the details are different, but the idea of a piece that can move or transform is not particularly new. (There are also games where the Pawn promotes as an entire move, instead of moving and then promoting as part of the same move -- this has some similarity.)
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board. (10x10, Cells: 100) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Actually, Cannon Pawns did show up in an unpublished game that Ben Good suggested -- Cannon Pawn Chess. It was FIDE chess with the Pawns replaced by Cannon Pawns. I don't remember if promotion was only to captured pieces or not. I made a Zillions rule file for it for Ben, and we may have played a bit of it by e-mail. If I recall correctly, in that environment, Cannon Pawns were awfully strong as compared to the Knight and Bishop.
Home Columns Chess. A piece cannot be captured when in its 'home' column.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You're right! Thinking about it, I'm fairly sure it's the comment and page that's correct, not the index entry and help entry. Unfortunately, after the last site move, I no longer seem to have a valid admin password, so I'm not in the position to fix it at the moment.
That is, alas, what happens when you edit one ZRF into another, and forget to update your comments. You will note the history entry has the correct inventor.
Ideal Values and Practical Values (part 4). Additional details on the values of Chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Actually, this page received a fair number of comments back in 2001 when it was first posted, but they were in the old comment system: see here for the older comments.
(Actually, most or all of this series of articles have comments in the old comment system.)
Black Holes. On 5 by 8 board with holes as pieces which also can be used for transport. (5x8, Cells: 40) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I made this game with Zillions but there is a problem, it doesn't work if there are multiple partial moves to the same location. Please look at it http://zzo38computer.cjb.net/Zillions/Blackholes.zrf and please tell me how to fix it!We've had a ZRF for this game up on this site for quite a while -- maybe taking a look at it might be helpful.
Horus. Game with Royal Falcons where all pieces start off board and most captures return pieces to owner's hand. (7x7, Cells: 44) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I haven't left entirely, it's just my mental energy is mostly elsewhere at the moment (I'm a sad butterfly, flitting from hobby to hobby, and at the moment it's mostly pen and pencil role-playing games that has my attention). The my use of the term 'lame', while fairly standard on this board, might have been improved on if I used Betza's 'non-jumping' instead.
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