H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Nov 18, 2019 09:05 AM UTC:
It is true that new variants that just slam a number of sliders, leapers, hoppers and their compounds on a rectangular board of some size are not very innovative. Even if some of the pieces they feature have never been tried before. In a sense it is like they are all the same 'meta-variant' that has a number of adjustable parameters, and by turning the knobs you can set them to values that are never tried in that combination before. As Pritchard said: "it takes only 10 sec to invent a new chess variant, and unfortunately some people do". This doesn't mean that they cannot be entertaining to play, of course. Or that they are all of the same quality. Some non-trivial work can still go in picking the initial setup, making sure all pieces can be easily developed (remove any 'awkwardness'), all pieces are protected against possible quick attacks, and such. The spectrum of piece powers is also an important factor in how attractive the game is.
Still even there you can sometimes express a novel idea. In my variant Team-Mate Chess I used a collection of not-so-special pieces that were selected to not have mating potential (against a bare King) on their own, but always must force checkmate in pairs (similar to Bishop + Knight in orthodox Chess).
BTW, it seems my productivity is overrated in the list above: it says I invented 13 variants, but it attributes Wa and Tenjiku Shogi to me, while these are just historic Japanese games for which I made a rule-description page. (I also made such pages for Chu, Dai, Dai Dai and Maka Dai Dai Shogi, Paco Shako and Metamachy, but these were (justly) not attributed to me.) It also counts my article on FairyGen as a game invention, while this is just a description of a piece of software for generating End-Game Tables involvng fairy pieces.
It is true that new variants that just slam a number of sliders, leapers, hoppers and their compounds on a rectangular board of some size are not very innovative. Even if some of the pieces they feature have never been tried before. In a sense it is like they are all the same 'meta-variant' that has a number of adjustable parameters, and by turning the knobs you can set them to values that are never tried in that combination before. As Pritchard said: "it takes only 10 sec to invent a new chess variant, and unfortunately some people do". This doesn't mean that they cannot be entertaining to play, of course. Or that they are all of the same quality. Some non-trivial work can still go in picking the initial setup, making sure all pieces can be easily developed (remove any 'awkwardness'), all pieces are protected against possible quick attacks, and such. The spectrum of piece powers is also an important factor in how attractive the game is.
Still even there you can sometimes express a novel idea. In my variant Team-Mate Chess I used a collection of not-so-special pieces that were selected to not have mating potential (against a bare King) on their own, but always must force checkmate in pairs (similar to Bishop + Knight in orthodox Chess).
BTW, it seems my productivity is overrated in the list above: it says I invented 13 variants, but it attributes Wa and Tenjiku Shogi to me, while these are just historic Japanese games for which I made a rule-description page. (I also made such pages for Chu, Dai, Dai Dai and Maka Dai Dai Shogi, Paco Shako and Metamachy, but these were (justly) not attributed to me.) It also counts my article on FairyGen as a game invention, while this is just a description of a piece of software for generating End-Game Tables involvng fairy pieces.