Comments by Bn Em

My interpretation was that the forward‐only thing was just a pragmatic way of ensuring offensive play, sort of like a primitive cousin of the jeu forcé. Much in the same way as Draughts/Checkers has FO pieces.

with D2 rather than D7 that rises to 159

I'm thinking that this is because there is not a lot of experience in games with jokers.

At least in my case that's very much the reason; in principle the dicussion is very interesting (especially since a game I've been thinking about would involve a closely‐related, if potentially even more powerful (though less apparently‐random) piece)

My impression is that jokers are a bit like Querquisites and Smess/Ivory‐Tower pieces, in that they depart substantially enough from normal Chess dynamics that they'd take a good bit of learning to handle. And in their particular case, the art of dealing with them is in part (principally?) the fact that they reduce the value of strong pieces, especially if well placed: you can't freely move the queen if there's a joker ready to copy its move while still being worth (on average, presumed — though of course this ‘chilling’ effect increases its value correspondingly to the powerful pieces on the board) less.

I'd be interested to see how Jokers handle in games with (a small number of) really powerful pieces. I'd almost predict that capturing the jokers to free the power pieces (with maybe some judicious moves by the latter in between either while the J is still hidden in the setup position, or to give check) would be an important middle‐game theme.

But in any case for now you're probably one of the people here with most experience with the J :‌)

It could have been made clearer, but it's not so difficult to find: locusts spawn in the square vacated by a moving king, or result from the demotion of a capturing Leo

I think the use of ‘leaping’ where the other pawns simply ‘move’ suggests that they do, in fact, leap (making your diagram accurate)

One last detail: traditionally what you've put under Movement in the rules section is what the Pieces section is intended for. Whether you want to append it to that section as is or interleave it with the images is up to you.

Once that's done, this looks otherwise ready for publication

The term ‘Lama’ he uses for that is a religious title (incl., f.ex., the Dalai Lama); as best as I can tell the word is totally unrelated

face blowing a raspberry

That's also a good use of the extended‐ASCII range: ⟨:‌Þ⟩ (as opposed to the playful ⟨:‌P⟩)