Beginner's Guide To Space Chess
This is the beginning of an illustrated series exploring the possibilities of chess in three-dimensions, in preparation for the construction set that I'm sculpting and casting. It will be fun and accessible for the non-specialist, but I advise you to do stretches first for flexibility, or it might hurt when I shove Byzantine shapes through the sphincter of your mind's eye.
1. What This Is & Is Not
2. Which Way Is Diagonal?
3. Leapers: More Than One Knight
4. The Board, or "Matrix": Shelves Are Obsolete
5. Improved Playability With Computer Graphic Mediation
Today's Installment: What This Is & Is Not
This series will explore the potentials of 3D chesslike games. "Chesslike" is a better term for this than "Chess."
"Chess" with a capital C usually refers not to a particular challenge, but to an international community of players who recognize a time-honored set of traditional equipment and rules. Their consensus on an official standardization is very much like spoken language, calendars, or software protocols, in that you have to take it or leave it. Too often the designer of a particular space chess variant will claim they bring the "true," "real" descendant of the game of kings. It's irrelevant, because there is nothing about a mental sport that is somehow inherent to reality. Just because hundreds of millions of people know how to sit down and play it with you does not make it sacred. Attempting to influence a global standard with the invention of one man or woman is a fool's errand for two reasons.
#1. The world ignores marketing hype on the box of an innovative game for the same reasons they ignore or resent a claim of the superiority of Esperanto. "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door" would not hold true if mousetraps were a form of social interaction. You lose the advantage of familiarity; attempting to keep it is a lost cause. That's just as well, because:
#2. It would ruin the game you invent, since what works for a good play experience in 2D does not do so in 3D. The most faithful translations of Chess to 3D are too large to understand, they can take weeks to finish, the King is so mobile it's nearly impossible to bring checkmate, and there are many other flaws.
Don't take an engineering approach to changing hidebound social traditions, and don't take a hidebound traditionalist approach to engineering a tactical challenge. Space chess designers sometimes get confused by the mixture and get the worst of both worlds.
So forget "Chess" with a capital C for a moment. Spare yourself its memorization of book openings that have long since been plumbed dry of creativity. Stray outside the metropolis of those who will play it with you, into the uninhabited, infinite frontier of chess variants. Life rewards the ability to improvise, whereas Chess is a challenge that has essentially been solved for you by centuries of work. Why not judge yourself not on how well you do after years of practice on the same task, but on how well you do the first time in unfamiliar territory?
There are two things I will not do. I will not propose to officiously establish standardized names and shapes for the new pieces. I do have to represent the movements with some kind of symbol, so I'll use names and shapes that I like on an ad-hoc basis, but ignore them if you don't like them. This is why I have abstracted the graphics; just concentrate on the paths they take and call them whatever you want.
Also I will not present a definitive rule set, but what amounts to a tool kit, a beginner's tour of the simplest options made available by 3D. The goal of the modular construction set I'm building out of silicone rubber, casting plastic and wire will be to cook from these ingredients a variety of armies, board sizes, and victory conditions, and sample them with and others to see what results.
Tomorrow: Which Way Is Diagonal?
Comments
brendand on Jun. 24, 2005 9:07 PM
Many ways are diagonal!!!
Yay for directions other than straight! :)
matt-arnold on Jun. 24, 2005 9:19 PM
I can see you're gonna like what is done to your mind's eye tomorrow.
brendand on Jun. 25, 2005 8:40 AM
Do I get an in-person demonstration? Will you be here before 5:30 (when I go to work)?
matt-arnold on Jun. 25, 2005 2:23 PM
Wow, I never expected you to volunteer to play space chess. Sorry, it's not finished yet. I didn't know you were into 3D chess! Not that there's anything wrong with that. :)
brendand on Jun. 26, 2005 6:27 AM
Well, I'm not. But I want to be. I still haven't had time to read that post you wrote this AM, but I will be sure to comment when I get there.
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