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Non-royal Kings, AKA Commoners AKA Mann AKA Man, etc., are hardly a new piece. I suspect you could find at least a couple of dozen varients on pages that already use them without any real effort. Royal Pawns, on the other hand, while also not new, are a lot less common.
Yes Peter, you are correct. And thanks for pointing that out as many who are new to chess variants may not be aware of non-royal kings. This non-Royal King is also the Joe Joyce General (from his Modern Shatranj), and the piece undoubtably lives in many games by many names (as you point out). Joe Joyce recently told me, 'It [the Fighting King] is exactly the same piece as the one in your recently-posted 6 Fortresses game, ...the one in 6 F has a feather, and the new one doesn't...' Please do not think I was trying to invent a new piece in these games... I was only trying to create a chess variant that had a very slight modification which would greatly alter the play of the game. In regard to Royal-Pawns; I was not familiar with them from other games... However, as I was writing this comment Joe Joyce told me of Jeremy Goods' 'Royal Pawns Chess.' So I just looked that game up, and felt a bit awkward at what I saw because my variant, though created independently and later, is very similar to Jeremy's. Had I been aware of Royal Pawn Chess I would not have posted 'Fighting Kings.' As a later comment: I just now looked at Bruce Zimov's Knightmate - this game has 2 non-royal kings and a royal knight. Very Interesting.
Gary, your game, with its castling rule, is a worthwhile improvement on Royal Pawn Chess which is more of a gimmick game. Though similar, I very much welcome it.
Thanks Jeremy. Somehow I missed (or overlooked) the arrival of your Royal Pawns Chess. Sorry about that. Joe Joyce and I chat a good bit and if it were not for him I'd still be unaware of your creation. You and I certainly had similar ideas here. I feel like I was involved in one of those ESP experiments where person 'A' goes to a location and person 'B' tries drawing the scene. There is a case in which 2 chess problem composers created nearly identical problems at about the same time... each unaware of the other's composition.
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.
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