"Strategy Chess" game idea

This post is to describe a variation of chess that can be played by two people. As you undoubtedly know, chess is a fun, turn-based game, but it's a perfect information game which means to win you absolutely need to best your opponent intellectually. Suffice it to say, this aspect of chess makes it a big turn-off for most people. Therefore, this might be considered an improvement because an element of imperfect information helps keep things even for less experienced players. Make no mistake... these rules are (to the best of my knowledge) of my own invention and I have not fully tested them out. I call it Strategess.

So... let's start by laying out the starting positions for the pieces. P is Pawn. R is Rook. B is Bishop. N is kNight. Q is Queen. K is King. And O is bOmb. The bomb is not a traditional chess piece. The other pieces are included in any basic chess set... though P, K, and Q do NOT move as they would in traditional chess. Here's the starting board layout...

/-------------------------------\
| P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P |
|-------------------------------|
|   | B | R | N | N | R | B |   |
|-------------------------------|
|   |   | O | O | O | O |   |   |
|-------------------------------|
|   |   |   | Q | K |   |   |   | White side
|-------------------------------| ----------
|   |   |   | Q | K |   |   |   | Black side
|-------------------------------|
|   |   | O | O | O | O |   |   |
|-------------------------------|
|   | B | R | N | N | R | B |   |
|-------------------------------|
| P | P | P | P | P | P | P | P |
\-------------------------------/

Movement rules...

P - can move one space in any direction, including forwards, backwards, and diagonally.

B - same as normal chess - diagonal movement as long as its path isn't blocked.

R - same as normal chess - linear movement as long as its path isn't blocked.

K - same as normal chess - L-style movement from it's starting point.

O - linear and diagonal movement like a Queen in normal chess, but cannot move to an occupied space to "make a kill". This piece "kills" when another piece attacks it (both pieces are removed from the board when this occurs. An exception exists where an opponent can "diffuse" the bomb, and this is explained later.

Q - cannot advance, must always be to the left of every king on the board.

K - cannot advance, must always be to the right of every queen on the board.

Q and K - can jump over ther pieces and can move like a B, R, or N as long as the "cannot advance" rule is followed.

Winning...

In normal chess, the game ends when one player puts the other player in "Checkmate". In other words, the goal of normal chess is to capture the opponent's King. This variant is different. At the beginning of the game, each player (secretly) selects one of their pieces to be the "master piece". When the black "master piece" dies, all of the other pieces "forget" how to move and white wins. It's kind of like in Independence Day when Will Smith "uploads" the virus into the Alien Mothership and then all the "smaller" ships attacking Earth can be easily destroyed. This is where imperfect information comes into play. Obviously, each player must protect their "master piece", but to win they must figure out how to kill their opponents "master piece". This is slightly analogous to Stratego where the goal is to "Capture the Flag" except in this chess variant, the "master piece" can be used offensively.

The trick is any piece can be the "master piece", including Pawns and Bombs.

Bomb Diffusion...

Okay, so earlier I mentioned that Bombs could be diffused. This is a unique situation that occurs when the Bomb is attacked by the "master piece". When performing a diffusion, the player must reveal their attacking piece is the "master piece". Early in the game, this is probably a strategic disadvantage. Late in the game, it might be advantageous to get those dang bombs out of their so they don't block your B, R, or N pieces which function better when nasty bombs aren't in the way. A special rule is that if a player chooses a bomb as their "master piece" they lose the opportunity throughout the game to perform a diffusion on bombs that belong to the other player.

Final Thoughts...

Technically speaking, the dynamics described above seen interesting. I'm going to hopefully give this a try sometime soon. I still have to work out a way to secretly identify the "master piece" and keep track of it in a non-obvious way. My thought is a little tiny sticker stealthy affixed to the pedestal bottom at the beginning of the game. Suffice it to say... Happy Gaming!

New Bike

My wife and I picked up her brand new bike today. It's a 2012 Woman's Felt Cafe 7 in the "lemongrass" color. As a bonus, we ordered it with a basket on the front and sexy white fenders for riding in the rain. It turned out real nice. It also comes standard with a "coffee cup holder" which is pretty awesome. And it has a "kick-stand" which is incredibly plebeian and much less awesome than my bike which is 100% kick-stand free. Anyways... we're probably the only people in the Northeast who acquired a bike today since about half a foot of snow fell on the ground. We swear... we ordered it two weeks ago when temperatures were in the fifties. What a difference half a month makes!

Humble

This post is a listing of games I have bought through a nifty program called Humble Bundle. The Humble Bundles are usually 5-7 small games that are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Humble Bundle #1 - Bought on 5/11/2010
World of Goo - 2D Boy
Aquaria - Bit Blot
Gish - Cryptic Sea
Lugaru HD - Wolfire Games
Penumbra - Frictional Games
Samorost 2 - Amanita Design secret link

Humble Bundle #2 - Bought on 12/15/2010
Braid - Number None
Cortex Command - Data Realms
Machinarium - Amanita Design
Osmos - Hemisphere Games
Revenge of the Titans - Puppy Games secret link

Humble Bundle #3 - Bought on 8/8/2011
Crayon Physics Deluxe - Kloonigames
Cogs - Lazy 8 Studios
VVVVVV - Terry Cavanagh
Hammerfight - Kranx Productions
And Yet It Moves - Broken Rules
Steel Storm: Burning Retribution - Kot in Action Creative Artel
Atom Zombie Smasher - Blendo Games secret link

Humble Bundle Voxatron Debut - Bought on 11/10/2011
Voxatron Alpha - Lexaloffle Games
Blocks That Matter - Swing Swing Submarine
The Binding of Isaac - Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl
Gish - Cryptic Sea
Jasper's Journeys - Lexaloffle Games
Chocolate Castle - Lexaloffle Games
Zen Puzzle Garden - Lexaloffle Games secret link

Humble Bundle Introversion - Bought on 11/30/2011
Darwinia - Introversion Software
Uplink - Introversion Software
Multiwinia - Introversion Software
DEFCON - Introversion Software
Voxel Tech Demo - Introversion Software
City Generator Tech Demo - Introversion Software
Dungeons of Dredmor - Gaslamp Games secret link

Humble Bundle #4 - Bought on 12/13/2011
Shank - Klei Entertainment
Super Meat Boy - Team Meat
NightSky - NICALiS
Jamestown - Final Form Games
Bit.Trip Runner - Gaijin Games
Gratuitous Space Battles - Positech Games
Cave Story - NICALiS secret link

Christmas

[written on 11/27, posted on 12/13, silly me] Jen and I have our Christmas tree! We will decorate it tomorrow. We also got pretty white snowflake stockings and a matching tree skirt. For the second year in a row we've selected a short five-foot-tall tree. It looks nice. In other news, Kitty joined us at mother's house for Thanksgiving. Strangely, he *never* left her living room... despite having the opportunity to roam anywhere he wanted in the house. Speaking on Thanksgiving, though, Jen and I got to play Seven Wonders and Carcassonne... which were both excellent games. The former seems to be more complex with a moderate learning curve, but with gameplay that's geared more towards "rounds" because they go quickly (or they would if less time was spent explaining things). Carcassonne was super easy to learn, yet seems to have a reasonably complete strategy with the different ways to score points. I played Carcassonne against Jen, my brother, and my dad. Throughout the game I was in dead last place by a large margin, and then scored 36 points at the end because of my farmers and finished in 2nd. Good times.

Midnight

Jen just left for a midnight showing of some werewolf movie. Weird. Right?

Creating Posterity

I think a fun activity with little ones would be to find an interesting Wikipedia article everyday and talk with them about it.  You could even constrain the search by only choosing articles that were linked from the article from the previous day.  I think this would be much more educational and intellectually stimulating than (for instance) reading the cover story on the daily paper.  As a child, my own daily ritual related to the world included either reading the sports pages or watching Sportscenter.  I assure you there isn't as much diversity in blinding following the local sports teams everyday.

I will admit that part of the impulse to do Imageless was to concoct an elaborate backdrop of fictional stories and mythologies that would be appropriate for a young mind.  In the first season, there are definitely a bunch of stories that are PG-13.  There are others that are solid G or PG.  I don't think there are any R or NC-17 ones.  It would be interesting for me to go back and actually rate them to see how well I actually did at coming up with child-appropriate short tales.  I fear I may not have done as well as I hope I did.  Speaking of which... mark your calendars.  The next season of Imageless begins on Monday!