A BRIEF HISTORY OF WAR & GAMES

Up until modern times, warfare consisted mostly of close quarter combat. True,
there were long ranged weapons, such as the bow or musket, the catapult or
cannon. But these were seen as supplementing the troops. As late as the
Napoleonic Wars, battles were still being decided by the infantry charge. The
firearms of the day had a limited range, not to mention were rather slow and
inaccurate.

Games of material capture, such as Chess, Checkers, Tafl, etc - while quite
different from one another, along with being abstractions - all have an
underlying close quarter sensibility to them. Captures are made by moving ones
own piece onto or right next to an enemy piece.

WWI, RIFLE CHESS, AND THE BIRTH OF THE SHOOTING GAME

It is difficult for us today to appreciate the profound effect the first World
War had on the world. Especially because it has since been eclipsed by WWII. But
rapid advancements of technology from the mid-19th to the early 20th century,
especially in artillery, meant that when fighting did break out, then the nature
of war, both how it was fought and how it was thought about, would be changed
forever. Combat was now done by standing back in a bunker and blasting away at
an enemy that was on the other end of a field.

In 1921, in the aftermath of WWI, W.B. Seabrook considered that Chess should be
updated to modern times and invented Rifle Chess. Rifle Chess introduce a new
form of capture to Abstract Strategy Games - shooting. With shooting, pieces
strike at a distance. The attacking piece does not move. Rather the opponent's
piece that it could normally reach is captured and removed from the board.

The problem with Rifle Chess - as it is with so many other Chess variants - is
that Seabrook created an interesting idea (shooting captures) and then simply
tacked it onto FIDE Chess with no thought to its overall effect on the game.
White has a huge advantage since it is the first that can move it's Queen out
into the middle. What usually follows is a mid-game massacre, where pieces on
both sides are captured in rapid succession. A typical problem is that there are
not enough pieces left to make a viable endgame. Rifle Chess is one of those
variants that is usually played more out of a sense of novelty rather than any
serious strategic consideration.

The issue is that shooting alters the nature of the game on a fundamental level.
In all other games, a piece has to move in order to capture. This is true even
of games with exotic forms of capture, such as Fanorona. But here the piece
remains in the same location. Except for the removal of the enemy piece, there
is no appreciable change in the board. What is missing is the concept of
"exchange" - which is key to so many other games. In the strategy of "exchange"
a piece can capture another piece, but only by moving into a more vulnerable
position.

FIXING A FLAW: HIPPOLYTA, TYRANNOS, AND DOUBLE BARREL RIFLE CHESS

I began to experiment with shooting captures in different ways. One creative
approach when faced with a flaw, is, instead of trying to minimize or eliminate
it, rather embrace it - magnify it and make it the focus. I took the two deadly
Queens from Rifle Chess and filled up the board with them, creating a 64 Queen
slaughter-fest. I named it Hippolyta. The rules for it can be found here:

http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi/91388?do=sho\
w;id=1730

One element I thought was absent from Rifle Chess is the concept of "cover". Try
to imagine a large, extended gunfight where all the combatants are standing out
in an open field, fully exposed to one another, trading shots. It seems absurd.
People would naturally seek some sort of cover - a wall, a trench, a tree, etc.
- to at least partially protect themselves.

Now it happened that at the same time I was experimenting on shooting games, I
was also working on a new Chess variant. In this version, Chess would be played
on an Alquerque board. In Alquerque, pieces follow the pattern on the board. So
the way a piece a can move and attack - and consequently be attacked from - are
determined not so much by the type of piece but rather its location on the
board. The game of Smess (aka Take the Brain) had a similar idea. (If anyone is
interested, the rules for that game, called Andalusia, can be found here):

http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi/91378?do=sho\
w;id=1733

So the pieces on the "weak" spaces would at least be shielded from diagonal
attacks. Extending this idea of "cover," I also created a Barricade piece. This
would act as a sort of movable Block and aid in defense. The slightly larger
board would mean the pieces could be more spread out as well. I gave the game an
ancient Greek theme and named it Tyrannos. The rules for it can be found here:

http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi/91391?do=sho\
w;id=1729

As I was playtesting Tyrannos, I was still struck by the absence of the usually
dynamic of attack/counter-attack. Consider that in order to attack another, a
piece must first move into the same line of sight as the enemy. However, with
the next turn, the opponent will then shoot that piece before the first player
has a chance to attack. It occurred to me a simple solution to get around this
was to give the players two moves on their turn instead of the traditional one.
Here I tried it on Rifle Chess, because that is the oldest and most widely
played shooting game. But it is a mechanism that could easily be applied to any
shooting game. I called it Double Barrel Rifle Chess. The rules for it can be
found here:

http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi/91383?do=sho\
w;id=1732

HEAVY ARTILLERY - CANNON AND WHIZ-BANG

I then became curious to see if there were any other Abstract Strategy Games out
there that featured shooting. I found several that had some shooting. For
example, the Archer in 3M's Feudal. But shooting was treated as a special
maneuver and not really an integral part of the game. The only one that could
really be labeled as a "shooting game" was PyroMyth's Cannon. If there are any
others, I would be interested in learning about them. The rules for Cannon can
be found here:

http://www.pyromythgames.com/products/cannon/Cannonrules.htm

In Cannon the power of shooting is offset by limitations on direction and range.
This reflect the reality of heavy artillery. While quite deadly, they are also
bulky and awkward. The line of three to create a cannon is a similar mechanism
to the phalanx in Robert Abbott's Epaminodas. Extending this idea, I created a
kind of shooting Epaminodas. I gave the new game a WWI theme. Which I thought
was appropriate, considering it was that event that gave rise to the shooting
game. I named it Whiz-Bang. The rules for it can be found here:

http://www.zillions-of-games.com/cgi-bin/zilligames/submissions.cgi/91394?do=sho\
w;id=1731

CONCLUSION

I'm hoping to take the lessons I've learned working on these games and use them
to develop new ones in the future. I have a couple of different ideas I'm still
playing with. But I also would be interested to see what alternatives other
designers can create. Shooting games are a very rare and much overlooked
category of Abstract Strategy Games.