The Dragon's Dance

[Jubal]

The Dragon's Dance

So this one grew out of a recent RPG campaign, in which I took a character with maxed out boardgaming skill. Said character was also a carpenter, and sculpting boardgame pieces ended up being a way to make friends and influence people as the campaign drew on. Not many of the rules were fleshed out during the campaign, so I decided to actually get round to writing the full ruleset. I thus present the Dragon's Dance rules PDF:

Download

It's in the same sort of family of games as chess, with no randomisation but a large range of pieces and tactics possible. Do let me know if you get a chance to play and test it!

[Glaurung]

Sounds interesting - I'd like to see it played, though I suspect I'd struggle to play it myself.

Some questions / thoughts:
- I'm not sure how the game can start - if there are no pieces on the board initially (and particularly none in fortresses), then surely none can be introduced?
- I assume there are only two players. Do they have a side of the board each, or can they introduce their pieces in any camp?
- Do you think it would work as a four-player game? Perhaps with fewer pieces per player.
- It might be worth rewording the rules so that they don't rely on chess moves - not everyone will know those.
- The regicide variant seems to have an unfinished sentence - "... also protecting them from." I think this variant might lead to a very long-running game; some mechanism for declaring a draw or stalemate might be good.

[Jubal]

I did indeed completely forget to write the starting setup (which should be that the king starts in your left hand corner camp, surrounded by three footmen). I'll update the rules soon/tomorrow. One can introduce pieces to the camp that is nearest to any fortress you occupy.

It could theoretically work with four players, but I think it'd need significantly cut down rules and a slightly changed board perhaps as the current one doesn't actually have fourfold symmetry. Might be worth trying though.

I will indeed write better explanations of the moves etc when I get time.

As for stalemate, I think I need to play a few games to work out what the right answer is there. Regicide means that the player cannot be defeated by capturing their king, only by being wiped out or defeated by territorial control. I don't know whether that would make a vast difference because I'm not sure what the more common form of victory would be.