Variant Chess: Difference between revisions

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[[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]].

"Fantastic Chess", "Wizard Chess", and "Future" or "[[Space Noun|Space Chess]]" are more specific terms based on setting. [[Human Chess]] is a subtrope (so see that page for those examples). Also see [[Smart People Play Chess]]. [[House Rules]] can act as a [[Super-Trope]] or a [[Justified Trope|Justification]] depending on the circumstances.

 

 

== [[Board Games]] ==

* Martian Chess; each person controls one quadrant of a chessboard, and it uses icehouse pyramids rather than regular chess pieces. Everyone automatically controls pieces in their territory, so every time you capture an enemy piece you lose the capturing piece. The winner is based on value of captured pieces. From those good people over at Looney Labs, it was mentioned in ''[[The Empty City]]'' as an alternative to the more popular game of Icehouse.

** 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).

* Stealth Chess (not related to the ''[[Discworld]]'' sort below): The pieces are pictures on tiles, facing away from the other player, and you can arrange the pieces any way you like at the beginning of the game. Since the other player doesn't know what your pieces are you can bluff when moving pieces. They also introduced Super Castling (Rook Teleportation) and some other wacky unique moves.

* 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.

* 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.

 

== [[Film]] ==

** There was also the climax of the first book, which took advantage of Ron's [[Chekhov's Skill]].

* ''[[Discworld]]'' has [[wikipedia:Stealth chess|stealth chess]].

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

** Apparently it has [[Defictionalization|evolved into an actual variant of chess that is some people actually play]].

* Chess, or "shah", is played on both worlds of [[Raymond E. Feist]]'s ''[[The Riftwar Cycle]]''.

* David Eddings' ''[[Belgariad]]'' occasionally refers to a chess-like game being played by superhuman forces, and the books each have a chess-related title (the protagonist is the titular ''Pawn of Prophecy'').

* ''Tom Corbett, Space Cadet'' has [[Recycled in Space|space chess]], played in three dimensions using a cube of intersecting light beams and neutral-buoyancy balloon pieces.

** 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.

* The ''[[Liavek]]'' books have "cylindrical shah". "Regular" shah seems to be [[Call a Rabbit a Smeerp|chess with a different name and different names for all the pieces]]; cylindrical shah is a variant in which the players pretend that the board is a cylinder with the two sides touching- meaning that the player can move a piece "off" one side and "onto" the other. There's a complicated incident where some characters get stuck as the pieces in a game of [[Human Chess]] between gods, and realize partway through that they're playing cylindrical shah, not the usual version.

* The ''[[Green Rider]]'' series has Intrigue. The game is described as having messengers, generals, knights, spies, and a queen and king. It can be played between two people or with a third member, called the Triad. The Triad can choose to ally with either player but can also choose to be neutral. He or she can also break that alliance at any time. It's intended as a teaching tool for noble youths in the arts of treachery, tactics, and strategy, and is often used as a motif in the stories for the same.

 

* 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.

* One of the things that gets interrupted by the Batphone in the old [[Batman (TV series)|Batman]] TV series is a game of chess, played on four or five layered boards.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Tales of the Questor]]'' has a four-player variant with the same social role as [[Poker]].

** 0 Prototypings: A constant stalemate between two kings stuck on a 3 x 3 board

** 1 Prototyping: Normal chess

** 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]]

 

* When ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'' used his super science to [[Flowers for Algernon Syndrome|make Sheen super-smart]], the teaching montage they went through had Sheen win at a game of three-tiered chess, and ''then'' a normal game of chess.

* Used a few times in ''[[Futurama]]'', one with a [[Star Wars|holographic chess set]] and another with multi-tiered Scrabble-ish game.

* Triplicate Girl from the ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (TV series)|Legion of Super Heroes]]'' sometimes splits in three and plays against herself in a game of chess. The chess board is, of course, in two of her colours (orange and purple), and the pieces float above the board. One wonders, though, how she tells the difference between the identical, triangular pieces.

 

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[[Category:Game Tropes]]