Variant Chess: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|'''[[One World Order|World President]]:''' So this will be our home for the next few weeks. I hope you play a good game of 3-dimensional chess, Captain.

 

[[Seen It a Million Times|We've all seen it]] before. It's the far-flung future, or an alien planet, or even a [[Wizarding School]]. The two characters are talking about the latest plot point over a game of [[Chess]].

** A similar game from the same people is [http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Andy/Games/monochess.html Monochrome Chess]; the same idea of a board that has been divided and you only control the pieces in your territory, but it uses regular chess pieces rather than icehouse pyramids. All sorts of recursive game development going on...

* Homeworlds, which also uses Icehouse game pieces, simulates combat on the scale of star systems. [http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Andy/Games/ILoveHomeworlds.html#TheTrueSpaceChess This page] posits that Homeworlds is the true "Space Chess" because it is an abstraction of space warfare in a way that other variants are not (it even talks about a few of the other examples on this page).

* [http://www.intuitor.com/forchess/ Forchess]: four-player, two-on-two chess (and it also has a free-for-all version using the same rules).

* Tile Chess, where the board is made of multiple free-standing tiles, thus allowing a non-standard board that keeps changing shape, and allows up to ''six'' players at the same time. It's very fun.

* Chess960, where the starting position is chosen randomly from 960 possibilities. Invented by Bobby Fischer.

* ''Proteus,'' where the pieces can change identity repeatedly throughout the game. Also introduces a new piece that can't move but also can't be captured.

* [http://www.omegachess.com/ Omega Chess] deserves special mention as it gives the impression of actually having the intent to take the place in mainstream board-games on which [[Chess]] has historically held a monopoly.

* Games like [[Shogi]] (Japanese chess) and [[Xiangqi]] (Chinese chess) are related and similar to international chess; both Western/international chess and these games themselves started as variants of the Indian game ''chaturanga''. Some of these games, like makruk (Thai chess) can be played on an international chess board with the same pieces.

* Byzantine chess, which is played on a round board instead of a square one, was created after Pope John VII declared chess the product of "pagans" and banned its play from Christian lands. The monks who invented Byzantine Chess reasoned that, as the circle was a symbol of the sun, and thus a symbol of God, a circular board could not be "pagan". They got away with it.

* Alice in Wonderland chess, which uses two boards, one of which is initially empty. Each piece, immediately after its move, "teleports" to the corresponding square of the other board (the move has to be legal before the "teleportation" and you can't move to a square if the corresponding square on the other board is occupied). This creates bizarre situations, e.g. if you want to protect your king from a check by moving a piece in front of the king, the moving piece needs to start its move on the board without the king. This, and other quirks of the game, make traditional defence useless and allows for some attacks impossible in traditional chess (for example, thanks to the fact that the same square on both boards can never be occupied, moving behind enemy lines is much easier).

* ''Guide to Fairy Chess'' by Anthony Stewart Mackay Dickins (1971). A good history of a particular group of non-standard chess problems, pieces, and boards played since the late 19th Century, and their evolution and additions through the 20th Century.

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* A particularly irksome moment in the ''[[Storm]]'' comics has the protagonist teaching a whole city to abandon their bloody gladiatorial games because chess is so much more fun.

{{quote|Strategy is limited to each player waiting for the other to make the first move. End of game is followed by deathly silence. Unlike old-fashioned chess, there is no winner. There is also no loser. After several years, the radiation subsides enough to permit another game to begin ... if there's anyone left to play it. Also, a new chess set is used which MAD is now designing -- with caveman-type pieces.}}

 

== [[Film]] ==

** Thud! is apparently a Variant [[wikipedia:Hnefatafl|Hnefatafl]].

** Another [[Terry Pratchett]] book, ''[[The Dark Side of the Sun]]'', briefly features a chess-like game with living pieces.

* ''[[Dune]]'' - from "Terminology of the Imperium":

{{quote|CHEOPS: pyramid chess; nine-level chess with the double object of putting your queen at the apex and the opponent's king in check.}}

** In [[Diane Duane]]'s ''My Enemy, My Ally'', Kirk has gotten a bit bored with "traditional" 3D chess and so his recreation chief creates a 4D variant using a cubic version of the chessboard and very precise [[Chekhov's Gun|transporters]]. McCoy then has a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] when he beats Spock at it. When he had never played it before. ''From a position where Kirk was about to resign''. [[Diane Duane]] really [[Author Appeal|likes]] McCoy.

* Since ''[[The Culture/The Player of Games|The Culture]]'' revolves around the protagonist's unsurpassed game-playing ability, it's unsurprising that a lot of the games that get mentioned are variants on the abstract strategy theme. [[Calvin Ball|Azad]] itself is somewhat chess-like, except for the room-sized board ... [[Dissimile|and the changing pieces ... and the multiple side games.]]

* ''[[Godel Escher Bach]]'' proposes a game in which (certain parameters of) the rules are represented as pieces on a second chessboard, so that on your turn you can move a piece or change the rules. Or there could be only one board, so that on your turn you are moving a piece ''and'' changing the rules. Unsurprisingly, [[Defictionalization|some aficionados have actually tried this out]].

* ''[[Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World]]'' features a game called chess, with different but overlapping pieces compared to the basic version.

* In ''The Starfollowers of Coramonde'' by Brian Daley, one ruler played chess with candles topping the pieces. The wicks were of randomly varying durations; when one went out during a game, its piece was removed, even if no other piece was in position to threaten it -- or if the player had been just about to win with that piece....

 

* [[wikipedia:Three-dimensional chess|3D chess]] was used often in ''[[Star Trek]]''. Spock was obviously a master. Features as a plot point in one episode where Spock repeatedly beating the computer at chess is a clue that the computer has been tampered with, because it'd originally been programmed to match his ability. As the rules were concocted ''after'' the board was designed just to 'look' futuristic, there are several sets: one involves being able to move several small four-square 'attack boards' with pieces on them to different clipped-on positions on the three main boards in lieu of moving a piece by itself.

* Sheldon and Leonard play 3D chess in one episode of ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]''. After Leonard loses several times in a row, Sheldon suggests that "perhaps three-dimensional Candy Land is more your speed."

* ''[[Double the Fist]]'' had Steve Foxx travel back in time to make the world better by killing Captain Cook, but Cook's crew had force fields and rayguns and fought Steve's allies to a standstill (don't ask) so Steve accepted an offer to settle things peacefully over a game of chess. Holographic 3D chess where moves and captures were declared by announcing Cluedo-style murders.

* ''[[Lexx]]'' had a live-piece chess game in one of the [[Mind Screw|trippy]] later-season episodes.

** 3 Prototypings: Skaia becomes a planet and the pieces have achieved sentience so its's more like a real time strategy war

** 4 Prototypings: A giant mass of roots encase Skaia

** 12+ Prototypings: [[Eldritch Location|They are supposedly to eldritch to understand beyond this point]]

 

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Game Tropes]]