News:
Well, I’m sorry to say this, but I did not reach my goals of 10,000 new words for my Frostfire draft this week. I’m ending the week with a little over 5800 words, barely halfway to my goal. I’d gone into this week knowing it might be a bit rough, with my wife needing me to do a bit of babysitting and nighttime potty training still playing havoc with our sleep, but I didn’t consider how much the start of school would affect things. I did have an idea for Lord of the Rings Chess, but we’ll get to that later.
My “day-job” is running Kuhn Tutoring, an online math and physics tutoring company. School is starting, and already that’s led to an increase in the amount of tutoring I’m doing above summer levels, as well as the amount of time I need to spend on advertising and related activities. All that is good (I’ve got to make a living, after all), but does take more of a bite out of my writing than I’d thought. There was also this one infrared scene where I had to do a bunch of research that ate a lot more writing time than I would have liked.
Still, I made it through, and even though next week will likely result in a schedule that is even more full of tutoring, as long as I can keep making significant progress on my writing that’s good. After all, almost 6000 words isn’t that bad considering I’m not yet a full-time writer.
It’s not something I want to make a habit of, but failing at a goal is not so terrible. My characters have to fail, so why should I be immune? Failure can only be avoided if you never try anything difficult, and what’s the fun in that? The primary reason I set goals is to encourage me to make progress, and while I didn’t get as much progress as I would have liked, my goals are still helping me to make more progress than I would make otherwise. Check out my other blog post for why the secret to success is setting the right goals. For next week, my goal will be to hit 8k words, come tutoring or high water!
In other news, this morning I randomly came up with some ideas for Lord of the Rings Chess, a fun variant of chess where all but one of the pieces move like normal, with some pieces getting special abilities and where winning conditions are tweaked to fit a Lord of the Rings theme. It is completely un-playtested, but if any of you want to give it a try, you are more than welcome. I’ll probably try it out in the next few weeks or so for kicks and giggles, and I’ll let you know how it goes.
Without further ado, I present my ideas for
“Lord of the Rings Chess”:
Sauron is the king of the black side. He cannot move (the only true change in movement), but can kill anything that is 1 space away. Cannot be killed
White side wins by getting Frodo to the far side of the board. Frodo is a pawn with a ring sticker on the bottom (so white knows which pawn is Frodo, but black doesn’t).
Black wins by capturing the Frodo pawn? That seems very easy…but it would make sense as a winning condition.
Gandalf/Wizard – white queen. Moves like a queen. If a piece is within either a horse move or a regular queen move of his position, he can sacrifice himself to remove both himself and the other piece from the board…or can he protect a certain piece so that anyone attacking that piece destroys both itself and Gandalf but leaves the attacked piece unharmed? I kind of thought it would be interesting for him to kind of redo the Bridge of Khazad-dum sacrifice thing, but what are your thoughts?
Eagles (white bishops) – can carry a friendly piece with them while they move. both they and the piece they carry can attack where they land. The carried piece must start off next to the Eagle and lands in the same position relative to the eagle. Cannot be used to carry pawns forward? Might be worth playing around with that. I’m a little concerned that this could be used to do essentially a 2 move win, especially if we add in Eagles being able to fly over things, which would make sense…Maybe it works if only the Eagle’s path must remain unblocked, but the Eagle can’t fly over things? This idea seems very fun, but would probably need to be tweaked to make it work without breaking the game.
Rooks – Ents. Can move both Ents for a single move if they’re traveling in the same direction
Black Queen – Witch King/Ringwraith. After moving, it can choose 1 piece in its “line of sight” (anywhere it could travel to the following turn) to freeze in place. That piece may not move on whites next turn (that piece could get carried off by an eagle, but cannot move due to Aragon’s leadership)
White King – Aragon. Moves like a king, but any white piece in an adjacent square (a square the king could reach) can move with him the same way he moves (they stay in the same position relative to him and may attack anything in the space they enter) This ability is called “leadership.”
Black bishop: Saruman – When he moves Black may move up to 2 black pawns, anywhere on the board
Black Rook – Trolls, or Balrog? (Balrog can only be killed by Gandalf/Wizard?)
Non-Frodo White pawns can turn into wizards when they go across the board. Black pawns turn into Ringwraiths (same abilities as white/black queens)
White horse: Riders of Rohan. They can jump over friends or trample enemies kill any black pieces that lie along the path they travel (cannot jump/trample/kill Balrog, black rook).
Black horse is Shelob or Gollum?
Shelob- Can kill pieces that lie in her path
Gollum – If surrounded by white pieces he’ll switch sides?
For simplicity’s sake, let’s just call the black horses Wargs and say that they trample things just like white horses, and similarly they cannot trample/kill/jump the Ents (white rooks). That way at least 1 special move is effectively the same for both sides, reducing the complexity slightly.
It’s pretty weird, but it could be fun, though!
So yeah, that’s Lord of the Rings Chess! Let me know what you think!
For Frodo!!!
Have a great week, and Just Keep Writing!
Timothy Kuhn