People in this forum often request the inclusion of some new chess variant.
As proposed some time ago in passing -- fr.lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/legal-computer-assistance?page=4#34 -- I think it would be great to have an experimental area on Lichess in which new variants could be tried.
I'd like to refine the proposal with the idea that the variants should be definable interactively, without intervention of staff. At first the choice would simply be the size of the board, and the pieces, chosen from the existing set. Then some set of fairy chess pieces en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_chess_piece could be added. Then, with time, the definition of arbitrary pieces could be allowed, and further parameters and options (reintroduction of taken pieces, randomness, number of moves by turn, etc.) might be introduced based on requests.
But just the basic parameters (board size and pieces) would already be fun and cover many known variants, and the rest could come with time, when people feel like doing the effort.
Right now Lichess has only implemented a few well-known variants. But Lichess would be the perfect environment to experiment much more deeply than has ever been done before. If a suitable environment is created, fun variants would probably emerge through natural selection (some variants would be played more, forks could be done to make them even better, etc.). And of course experimenting itself would probably be fun.
As proposed some time ago in passing -- fr.lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/legal-computer-assistance?page=4#34 -- I think it would be great to have an experimental area on Lichess in which new variants could be tried.
I'd like to refine the proposal with the idea that the variants should be definable interactively, without intervention of staff. At first the choice would simply be the size of the board, and the pieces, chosen from the existing set. Then some set of fairy chess pieces en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_chess_piece could be added. Then, with time, the definition of arbitrary pieces could be allowed, and further parameters and options (reintroduction of taken pieces, randomness, number of moves by turn, etc.) might be introduced based on requests.
But just the basic parameters (board size and pieces) would already be fun and cover many known variants, and the rest could come with time, when people feel like doing the effort.
Right now Lichess has only implemented a few well-known variants. But Lichess would be the perfect environment to experiment much more deeply than has ever been done before. If a suitable environment is created, fun variants would probably emerge through natural selection (some variants would be played more, forks could be done to make them even better, etc.). And of course experimenting itself would probably be fun.