Single Comment

Constitutional Characters. A systematic set of names for Major and Minor pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Tony Paletta wrote on Sat, Dec 13, 2003 11:15 PM UTC:

Peter,

Parlett does start his discussion of movement in two dimension with: 
'Before exploring two-dimensional war games it is desirable to ESTABLISH
a terminology of movement and capture, as a surprising amount of
confusion, ambiguity and inconsistency is exhibited in the existing
literature of games.' (emphasis added)

It's unclear to me whether he's trying to (1) describe common usage, (2)
summarize dominant practice (3) prescribe usage or (4) simply provide a
basis for his further discussion so he can write the book. The inclusion
of hippogonal leads and his criticism of Murray me to (3) or (4), but it
isn't that clear.

Pritchard (as encyclopedist, but also as popularizer) tends to go with the
primary source descriptions and is generally descriptive rather than
prescriptive. He (properly) avoids taking positions except where a game
author's conventions are truly strange (and even then, he is seldom
outright critical -- though sometimes revealing a droll wit in the best
tradition of British writers).



All,

Just to summarize some of my main comment lines (personal opinions and
preferences) in this long thread:

(1) I'm not a fan of jargon-for-jargon's sake. If connected to a
specific convention the author feels is necessary in presenting his/her
own work, present the material in a context and do try to be
straight-forward, clear and reasonably accurate in your terminology.  

(2) Personal naming conventions (for pieces, but also for other concepts)
belong inside an author's body of work. This allows you to rethink your
choices, frame your decisions within the context of their use, and present
what you feel is a finished product.   

and (initially least) 
(3) Some existing naming 'conventions' -- orthogonal and diagonal as
used in hexagonal chess, for example -- suggest parallelisms with more
familiar, well-established concepts from chess and mathematics that simply
don't exist. Since the terms don't convey what they appear to convey,
there is a good case to be made for not following those naming
conventions.