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Charles, zzo38, thanks for the comments. Each points to a design feature I found essential for controlling the playability of the game. First, I'll speak to zzo38's googolplex of piece types. The Warlord scenarios use 5 piece types, just like the original game Chieftain Chess. To achieve playability with very large numbers of pieces requires, I think, simplification of the piece types. As variant designers, we often add a "new" piece or pieces for each extra square or pair of them we use to place the additional pieces on. The very large shogis, I think, represent the futility of that approach. Proliferation of piece-types clogs the analysis of moves unduly. For my truly large games, those approaching the 100x100 "goal", I'm offering an optional 6th piece. But unlike the other 5, it is not a unique piece, but a combination of existing pieces that fills a need in that size game. And still, no piece moves more than 3 squares in a turn. How you manage playing a game of this size in a "reasonable" time - which, for the sake of argument, is a couple hours for the smallest sizes to a couple weeks for the largest - answers Charles' comment about "huge" games being those larger than 150 squares, more or less. The trick, of course, is organization, and on 2 levels, one being operational and the other conceptual. Leader rules allow organization of 5 - 10 individual pieces into one "superpiece" which moves and fights as a cohesive whole. The individual units within the superpiece essentially act as hit points representing the offensive and defensive strength of the piece. The specific combination of units within one superpiece dictate the tactics used both by and against the formation. Seeing the game as a diceless wargame allows the players to organize their thoughts in a highly useful way as they compete for victory. The Battle of Macysburg uses 84 pieces/side To fight a "3-day" battle for control of the center of the board, where the city of Macysburg is located. Each side's pieces are organized into 4 corps of 3 divisions each. Each division has its own leader which can activate the entire division each turn, provided all the (surviving) units start in command control each turn or can be brought into command range by leader movement during the turn. Each division also has a detachable self-activating unit which can freely move anywhere on the board. The corps come onto the edge of the board 1 at a time, the first at start, the 2nd on turn 5, the 3rd on 15, and the last on turn 20. (Turns are organized into 12 move days, with an optional night turn allowing rally of casualties.) Each corps is 20-22 pieces in size. I was shooting for something that felt a little like Gettysburg in the US Civil War. So the game is organized as a meeting engagement where forces come on board over the course of time, and from all different directions. Each player's divisions come on spaced several squares apart, in shifting locations that encompass half the board for each player. Day 2's units enter on an axis almost perpendicular to day 1's units. And there are 3 levels of victory. Tactical victory is complete control of Macysburg at the end of the game. Operational victory is chasing the opponent's army off the board. Strategic victory is destroying the opponent's army. Grin, and I can tell you from experience in this one that, after you've massacred half of each army in about 3-4 turns late on Day 2, you want more pieces. You find yourself wishing you had another corps showing up real early on Day 3. The rules and components have been through a large number of playtests - for a chess variant. For a wargame, not so many. That explains why the pieces work so well together tactically - they actually show the value of combined arms on both offense and defense - but the scenario quality is somewhat spotty. All the scenarios I've posted are fun the first time played. But not all of them have high replay value, in my estimation. Some of them display a sameness in the games that starts to show up after a few plays. The game was always fun, but after ~3 plays, you knew how the basic flow of the next one would go. There were no real possibilities for strategic surprise, it was always start on opposite sides and meet in the middle. The game uses variable terrain, and the specific terrain arrangements affected the details of the flow, but not the strategic possibilities in these scenarios. As I pushed pieces, both by myself and with my developer, Dave, certain patterns and alignments of space, time, terrain and pieces jumped out at me. The game is playable at 2 scales, one with full activation of pieces, and one with limited activation - specifically, the number of activations is set to ~1/4th of the on-board army size at start, and does not change during the game. No completed playtest game has gone 40 turns, in any of the scenarios. In limited-activation games, it takes about 12 turns to get 6-8 squares from your territory into your opponent's territory in a successful campaign. This info let me put together the introductory scenario A Tale of Two Countries, a 12x24 square game with 8 activations per player turn, 4 home cities per player, 4 leaders and 32 other units/side at start. It is meant to play in the 90-180 minute range. A "teaching" game takes 4 hours, though, based on experience. The games have lasted between 15 and 35 turns, with victory determined by a player having a friendly unit in an enemy city at the beginning of the friendly turn. Reinforcements may arrive, on home cities, on turns 13, 25, 37..., but no one's made it to turn 37. Replacements, at the rate of 1 per 4 casualties, also arrive on home cities, 2 turns after they become available. This is a nice, tight little wargame with very good replay value, even solo, although the game plays differently solo.
Of course, there are some variants on these pages played on infinite boards. I have thought a bit about infinite-dimensional games as well. I suppose any large size is workable, especially if pieces have short moves: the game becomes a large map, which you could zoom in on a sector of and make relatively normal-looking moves. (It becomes a discrete version of many RTS games.) Infinite-dimensional doesn't admit as good a visual tool. :P
I have once thought of a chess variant which although the rules will fit in a few pages, the game cannot be played in this universe, because the number of different kind of pieces is exactly a googolplex (and the board is very large too; obviously the number won't fit in the form to enter chess variants into this website).
32x32! To think that I group many of my own games of 13x12 upwards on a text file as "huge variants"!
Some time ago, I got into a discussion where I argued that a 100x100-square humanly-playable chess game could be designed, design requirements including being played in a "reasonable" amount of time. Just posted rules and 2 complete games on BoardGameGeek, here: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/850601/chess-wargame-fusion-ii-success/page/3 If you go back a page, you'll find another complete game on that page. So far, I haven't created anything larger than 32x32, and likely won't go past 36x60 at home, but proof of concept is easily demonstrated with "The Battle of Macysburg", a 32x32 which is crowded on Day 2, and already just over 10% of the target 100x100. Macysburg and "A Tale of Two Countries" demonstrate the 2 different levels of conflict, both corps/army and brigade/division, the game plays on, and either game can be scaled up as much as you want. My practical limit is the size of my game table. Should anyone be interested, I sprang for some nice looking pieces. If you are interested, email me, and I'll send you printable files of board and units.
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