Setting aside my intrinsic love for board games, the aspect of this discussion which fascinates me the most from a Less Wrong perspective is the use of words and categories. How do we arrive at a distinction between whether games are "variants" or "in the same family"?
Each category has strongly-bound traits and weakly-bound traits, such as "a matrix of regularly-spaced locations where game materials can be positioned". Even the category of abstract games has traits bound to it, like deterministic non-randomness.
Almost twenty years ago, I made several custo...
I'm interested in your concept of Chess feeling like it's complete, as if it has completed a platonic solid. You remedied its incompletions with the Cardinal and Marshal, but Omega Chess attempts to fill in the lack of leapers by introducing the Champion and Wizard. The design of Omega Chess was similarly motivated by this sense of completion, but it seems its design locates the gaps in different places from where the design of Grand Chess locates the gaps. Did you consider this? And how did you come to this conclusion?
Just a note to confirm that we are also meeting on Saturday, October 9 at 8pm at Tenacity Craft!