Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Modenstein 06-16-05, 05:27 PM	One of the cool things about Dungeon Magazine's new Adventure Path is the idea of Dragonchess. The description: "...Diamnond Lake's elite match wits over dragonchess, a popular game in which two sides of 42 pieces contest over 3 96-square boards representing the sky, the earth, and the underworld. Pieces include the griffon, slyph, oliphant, basilisk, hero, thief, and paladin. Scholars claim that the game is a metaphor for the celestial struggles of fundamental law, chaos, good, and evil. In Diamond Lake, it's principally another justification for gambling." Dungeon, July 05 p53 While the setting is designed for Greyhawk, this bit seemed tailor made for Eberron where Dragonchess must be a metaphor of the contests between Khyber, Eberron, and Siberys using various people and creatures as pawns to fulfill the Draconic Prophecy. One could easily see a few neat uses where giant three-tiered chess boards and human sized playing pieces comprise some giant or dragon's tool for charting the progress of the Prophecy as well as being a massive trap or puzzle. And now we know what to have the corrupt Church of the Silver Flame bishop and the King of Breland to do together to pass the time between politics and war, play Dragonchess. :cool: Didn't Keith Baker promise a Dragonshard on the games of Eberron eventually? It'll be interesting to see if this fits with his ideas . . .
Pharun 06-16-05, 05:44 PM	wow, that seems like it was made for eberron with the 3 layers. It would be cool to actually figure out rules and how the game could be played.
Modenstein 06-16-05, 06:06 PM	well, there are some "3-d" chess variants out there (if you watch the original Star Trek tv series Spock was a fan, but this is one main board with 3 small boards with 4 even smaller 'attack' boards attached rather than the 3 boards we are looking for), my guess is that you'ld want to start with rules from one of those and figure out how to use three boards - check out this site, apologies for the music and Trekness, but it does show the 3-d chess at work http://my.ohio.voyager.net/~abartmes/tactical.htm a-ha - google is your friend Dragonchess ~ designed by Gary Gygax in Dragon issue #100 no less http://www.chessvariants.org/3d.dir/dragonchess.html so I guess we got rules right to hand! ed. for spelling and poor typing :P
Modenstein 06-16-05, 06:17 PM	see this page for comments on better rules by sharper chess fanatics than Gygax: http://www.chessvariants.org/3d.dir/dragonchess.html and sample games for an idea how it works... (if you get chess lingo and notation) http://www.chessvariants.org/3d.dir/dragongames.html seems to be a bunch of Dragonchess sites now that I look... http://dragonchess.sourceforge.net/ http://web.ukonline.co.uk/robert.stevens/page2.html this page has in addition to the rules the game's backround and history in the Greyhawk setting: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/3956/dchess.txt also I find this from paizo's board on Age of Worms: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/dungeon/ageOfWorms/dragonchessRules It's unlikely that we will be publishing the rules for Dragonchess in the magazines. If you're interested in the rules, this site seems to have the best information: http://www.chessvariants.org/3d.dir/dragonchess.html. --Erik Mona Editor-in-Chief Dragon & Dungeon sigh, too bad --------------- anyway, guess this proves the claim that there is room for everything DnD'ish in Eberron... guess we have to give the credit for creating a so suitable for Eberron idea not to the Age of Worms and Dungeon Mag, but to Gygax and Dragon Mag! ;)
gaerfindel 06-16-05, 07:43 PM	I've said this elsewhere, but I've always envisions the fiends playing something akin to the Reflective Version of Klin Zha (http://www.tasigh.org/takzh/variant.html#reflective).