Ratings & Comments
By the way, Race Chess is kind of like Rollerball Chess, which was an entry into some contest or other, and is actually kind of neat. You realize that the regular annual contests would be much more boring if Hans were born on February 29? (Yes, I know. I pirated that idea.) --JCL
The very concept of Ruddigore Chess leads immediately to, 'What is the state of a bare King?' The mind boggles, at least my mind does. --JCL
How about Syncretic CHess? Another way to think about Feebback Chess is to enfeeble the pieces when they are toward the back of the board (i.e. closer to their first rank). This could be done by laming or spaciousing (whatever, this is a concept, not a finished product). BUT, the pieces would regain their normal powers as they approached the far rank. AND, you could lift an idea from M-Chess, and give them different augmentors depending on what ranks they stand on, perhaps leftward augmentors on righthand columns, etc. THEN, you could make it Archoniclastic, augmenting pieces depending on what color square they stand on. AND THEN, you could apply this to Peter Aronson's Chess with Cyclical Armies! AND AFTER THAT, you could work on the hex version for three players!! ('Basingstoke, John') Ahh, yes. Basingstoke it is. --JCL
Speaking of different topologies, I could swear I once came across a variant where the position of a piece within a square had an effect on its state or capabilities, but I have, perhaps mercifully, forgotten everything about it that might enable me to track it down. --JCL
Daniel, do you realize that the site icon in the upper left-hand corner takes you to the index page? I have visited regularly for years, so I have the 'What's new?' page bookmarked. --JCL
Make your pages have a 'printer option!' That way I could take your data home with me and actually use it!! Also, put a 'home' buttin at the bottom of each page, it would make site navigation easier... Thanks, Daniel
Very nice game. It is highly playable. Very enjoyable. The double teams interact in a cooperative way. The board is interesting to play on, especially with the center squares which change your piece types. Although the game harkens back to Chaturanga, even the 4-player version of Chaturanga, and other 4-player games, there is a lot on ingenuity here. The idea of changing piece type in the center adds some of the ancient flavor too. The double team environment in-itself adds a new element in many ways. The rules are simple to grasp. Traditional chess moves are used, along with the ancient moves in the center. The center, of course, alludes to the traditional struggle in chess to capture the center. The game is very nice. By that I mean that it is graceful and evocative. Nice game. Try it!
If you think Ruddigore Chess seems playable, by all means test a bit more and write it up! You're the inventor. I just blathered away with a crude sketch of the rules and a crazy suggestion, you saw the possibilities and found the specific rule-set that makes it work -- in other words, you do all the hard work, it's your game. <P> You'll mention me, of course, but you know I would never have pursued the idea further...
The idea is, it's grid chess, but each grid rotates 1/4 turn after each move; and alternate grids rotate backwards -- e.g. a1 goes to a2, and c2 goes to c1.
I wrote the program that displays the board and lets 2 people play, more than once, in different languages. Long lost, of course, even if you could find compilers/interpreters for those languages.
Orbital Rotating Grid Chess is like Pinwheel Chess except that e4,e5,d4,d5 is one cell, (so far just as in Offset Grid Chess, but...) and the other squares in c4-f6 are another cell, and the remaining squares in b2-g7 another, and the remaining squares in a1-h8 (in other words, the 28 edge squares) are another cell. And they rotate in opposite directions. Chaos!
Knight's Tour Rotating Grid Chess, not the right name, but you take a Knight's tour, and each turn the pieces on a1 move to b3 and the pieces on c2 get transferred to a1, and so forth
And finally, Brownian Motion Chess, where the squares are randomly inserted into a linked list, unknown to the players, and each turn everything moves forward on the list one step.
All that was from just one of my densely-typed two page articles in N/A in early 1970s.
I have all the back issues, and some other stuff, packed in a box to send them away, but I never get around to doing it. So nag me.
Critique: Pinwheel could be played postal, which was the only mode back then, but you'd be crazy to try. Both pinwheel and Orbital should be playable (and even fun!) in a noncompetitive online situation.
Knight's Tour is just an over-the-top thingy all us CV designers like to do, and Brownian Motion is over-the-over-the-topmost.
--
gnohmon
I have no idea whether or not it's really playable, but judging purely by the text, the number of ingredients in the recipes, and the quality and amount of spices, I would have to guess that this is a very fine piece of work. Applause.
So, given the amount of chatter about Chatter Chess and Ruddigore Chess and so on, do we need 'virtual' comment pages so we can discuss variants that haven't actually been posted? Then, going forward, the comments will be where they belong. I mean, who's going to think about looking for comments about Ruddigore Chess attached to the Archoniclastic Chess page? Also, to David, I like the little subtle link to the recent comments at the top of the What's New page, but I don't think in GMT. Maybe we could include the current time in GMT, or the time elapsed since the last comment, or something like that.
Peter, I've recently been playing Grand Camelot in another venue. Grand Camelot is a four-player version of Parker Brothers Camelot game. (To the peanut gallery: Yes, I know it's not a chess variant; let me finish.) Grand Camelot has two unusual features for a four-player game: 1 - Partners sit side by side. Translating to this game, Red and Green would be partners against Yellow and Black. 2 - The turn sequence is a 'figure-8'. Translated to Chaturanga 4-84, that would be Red - Yellow - Green - Black (repeat) This small change works surprisingly well, and I've wondered if it would be as successful in a 4-player CV like this. I generally find 4-player abstract strategy board games annoying, but Grand Camelot is lots of fun and very exciting. Also, the comment about the ZRF being double-dummy brought an idea to mind. Has there been a CV (e.g. Bridge Chess or Whist Chess) where the players bid to achieve a certain outcome? The partner of the 'declarer' sits out, and the defenders play without communication. This might be a possible thing to design. One could even play a Feeback version with ones physician, attorney, and accountant.
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