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🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 27, 2005 02:46 AM UTC:
<P><B>Note: This comment contains spoilers regarding the plot of <I>The Chessmen of Mars.</I> If you haven't read it but are planning to, you might want to skip this comment.</B></P> <P>Reading <I>The Chessmen of Mars</I> helped give me insight into the design principles behind the game. The Chessmen of the title refers to the practice in one Martian city of playing Jetan on a large field with people as the individual pieces. Contrary to the usual way of playing Jetan, capture was by victory in combat rather than by mere displacement. In the cover of the book shown on this page, you can see an example of this combat. My book, incidently, has a completely different cover. It shows a male rykor with a kaldane attached and a female rykor with her back turned and a kaldane preparing to attach itself.</P> <P>Although the book says that capture by displacement was the usual way of playing Jetan, we know the game was actually invented by Burroughs for use in this book, not by Martians, and prior to his use of the game in this book, there was no usual way to play it. Given that a life-and-death game of Jetan is one of the highlights of this book, it makes sense that the rules were chosen for the sake of literary drama rather than for the sake of gameplay.</P> <P>In the novel, the person playing the Chief controlled one whole Jetan army. He decided where the pieces moved, and he was the Chief piece. The Princesses were the prizes of the game, and he was playing to rescue one in particular, John Carter's daughter, Princess Tara of Helium, probably named after Terra, the planet of her father's origin. If this had been a Chess game in which he played the King and Tara played the Queen, Tara would have been exposed to danger while our hero would have been kept safe from it. This would not have made him look very heroic. But with the rules of Jetan, Tara was kept safe from harm, whereas our hero got to display heroism, courage, and chivalry while fighting for Tara on the Jetan board. The cover shown on this page shows the end of this game.</P> <P>So, yes, the game is too drawish when capture is only by displacement. But Burroughs actually designed the game to showcase the heroism, chivalry, and bravery of Tara's suitor in a game where capture was by mortal combat. In that respect, the rules do what they were supposed to.</P>

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