The "Five things I've done that you probably haven't" Meme

[jducoeur]

Coming late to the party, as usual, but what the heck:

1. Navigated for an airplane at age seven.
2. Demonstrated (the hard way) why one should always wear a bicycle helmet.
3. Built the first known board for a game that hadn't been played for ~700 years.
4. Written a technical article that was obsolete before it was published.
5. Proven that it is possible (if deeply unwise) to turn a single-player videogame into a multi-player one.

(Was going to list "Participated in every extant Carolingian guild", but on review there are still two or three I haven't done yet...)

Comments

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

I played my first game of Byzantine Chess this weekend.

I liked it a lot.

How much have you played it?

[jducoeur]

Moderate amount. It's probably the most-played Chess variant in the SCA, although it's one of those slightly fringy games. That is, it's definitely period, but it's a little weird -- it's from a Spanish source describing how Chess is played in the Byzantine empire, on the other side of the world. So I take it with a modest grain of salt.

Overall, it's not a bad game, although I wouldn't say it's one of my favorite period variants: the bishop is ridiculously weak even by period standards, the pawns less useful than usual, and the rook is insanely powerful. A nice change of pace, but not as deep as some games.

I'm fonder of some other variations, including the four-player Chess of the Four Seasons and The Forced Game, also from the same book. (The Forced Game is my favorite way to foul up modern chess experts. It's straight period chess, with one difference: if you *can* make a capture on your turn, you *must* make a capture. Totally messes up every chess strategy...)

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Well, I feel a bit validated now, because those -- along with the weakness of the queen -- were my observations about the game.

The forced capture sounds kinda cool.

[jducoeur]

The weakness of the queen isn't peculiar to Byzantine -- that's standard Medieval chess. The modern hyper-powerful Queen came about only at the *very* tail end of SCA period.

Broadly speaking, period chess is like modern, except:

-- Queens move one space orthogonally;
-- Bishops have a short leap of two;
-- Some of the weird fiddly bits (castling, the initial pawn move) were occasional variants, rather than standard.

Overall, the result is a slower, more strategic game, with less of a tendency to turn suddenly...