As you can see in Wikipedia “Chess variant” entry, there are plenty of chess variants all over the world. People use different boards, pieces, rules or different number of players to create lots of funny new games.
When I saw these chess variants, I asked myself: “If I’m going to make my own chess variant now, why do I do that after all? Is there any good reason to change such a perfect, classic board game?”
Soon I realized that when Hindus created “Chaturanga”—the origin of chess-like board games—in the sixth century, maybe their intention was to reconstruct an epic battle of armies (“Chaturanga” means “army” in ancient Hindu epic poetry) by a game on a flat board. And the most likely reason of why they used a flat board is because they believe the world is flat at that time (see here), and surely also for game-play convenience.
And here I found a pretty good reason: Nowadays we know the world is in fact an orb, not flat anymore. So how about play chess on a globe?
When I say “globe”, I mean an absolutely spherical form, like a ball. And then I made this wooden model:
 |
| An absolutely spherical chessboard. It can roll like a ball. |
It’s not a cylinder or something similar to a ball. It’s a perfect sphere with no borders on it, just like our planet Earth.
That’s a good reason for me to make a chess variant now.
To be continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment