Main Quest: Part of what I hope to do over the next year(s) of my life is to live the evolution of the tabletop roleplaying game through a series of games, readings, and experiences. This 'pilgrimage' is inspired by memoirs like Of Dice and Men by David Ewalt and Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf. I'm continuing this ongoing series with a few more thoughts about my experiences trying to up my chess game... You can find part one of this series here.
It's worth explaining why I've decided to start this exploration of the history of tabletop RPGs with this series on chess.
Dungeons & Dragons is the original tabletop RPG, but the seed of the game was planted in the soil of the historical miniature wargames of the time. The addition of fantasy elements such as magic and monsters to the otherwise dryly accurate games of conflict across the ages wasn't universally accepted at first, but the wargame Chainmail is the predecessor to D&D.
However, wargames have their origins in ancient games of strategy- particularly chess- making it an important part of the ancestry of D&D and other tabletop RPGs.
Chess is believed to have originated in eastern India in the 6th or 7th century as the game chaturanga (a word meaning "four divisions"). The titular four divisions are the divisions of the military that the pieces of the time were meant to represent: the infantry, cavalry, chariotry, and elephants. Over the course of the next six or seven hundred years the game spread throughout Europe, and by 1475 there were enough changes to the game that it resembled what we know today. Unlike the various editions of RPGs that have been printed and reprinted in the past several decades- the rules of Chess have remained largely the same since the 19th century.
Chess (you can call it "Queen's chess" or somewhat paradoxically "The King's game") is played on a checkered gameboard of 64 squares in an 8x8 grid. Both players have 16 pieces of the 8 orders that range from pawn to king. Each piece moves according to rules of its own and can capture opposing pieces by coming to occupy the opponents square with that movement. The objective of the game is to checkmate your opponent by placing his/her king under an inescapable threat of capture.
This all sounds simple enough right?
That's why I thought I knew how to play the game.
There are only 18 possible moves that a player can make at the start of the game, but with each subsequent turn the number of possible moves increases drastically and exponentially. The complexity of the game lends itself to rigorous study of strategies and counters to them, but even with memorization success involves keen analysis of the long game to determine how you will establish dominance of the board and hem in your opponent's king.
Fortunately for me, just like most any game with an appreciable amount of complexity- this game seemed to lend itself to the hacking and remixing that is common in the game design arena of today. In the late 18th and 19th century there were chess variants that evolved into more modern wargames. In 1780, the Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig (a German) took inspiration from the game of chess to create a battle emulation game. This would be "kriegsspiel" or "war game," a chess-like game that better reflected the military of his day.
