Veney Ideas Megapost 2025
Veney has been dormant for a while. In my lackadaisical, mixed approach to spitballing 1. improvements on the “main” game, 2. variant rules, and 3. experimental proof-of-concept twists on basic chess concepts toward my sorta overall thesis, I’ve ended up with an unwieldy, disorganized list of crazy ideas. It’s been over a year since the last veney update, and I have a blog now, so I figured why not dump ’em here? Enjoy!
Above: John Sham Kin-Fun (aka John Shum) being cartoonishly attacked by five dudes with swords in a scene from the 1985 Hong Kong action film ‘Yes, Madam.’
January 17th, 2025
MY BIG THREE
■ Dagger & Disarm balance: Having two blades out means you can’t use special moves of the other technical pieces and maybe you can’t place technical pieces from reserve. Both your hands are occupied. Having only one blade out allows the use of all special moves. This aims to provide more dynamic playstyles and reduce the effects of loss by rapid disarm spiral.
■ Self supports Disarm: The Self, when wielding a single blade, can provide disadvantage for disarmament (either by seeing the piece in its 1-square non-lunging range or in its full range; tbd)
■ Looser Stepstones: A more open approach to the placement of stepstones (engagements), starting with none in play and allowing their placement anywhere in the Self’s measure on your own side of the board.
ETTIQUETTE / PERSPECTIVE
■ Resort: Reset by agreement, game continues. Both players can agree to reset the pieces as if a retreat has been played. Not a draw. The game continues.
■ Sennichite: The term sennichite from shogi is used in some(?) kenjutsu traditions to name the act of not finishing a match when one could have, instead prolonging it disingenuously for whatever reason. This is seen as bad form. It seems to me related to the forever problem of veney: the struggle between wanting to see something magic happen and playing the fight legitimately, i.e. ending it as quickly as you can.
■ Constructive Mercy: In contrast to sennichite, this is an approach to veney-ing where the stronger player meets the weaker player where they are at, for example by not drawing the dagger after having reduced the other player to one blade. By doing only as much as is necessary, playing defensively, we are maybe able to discover more; both the weaker player, in being able to see their mistake and what they can learn from persisting, but also for the stronger player, in allowing themselves to sit with the game and play in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise, instead of seeking swift termination.
■ “Escape” (ending): Maybe running away is a type of ending different than resignation, different even than a draw. The assumption so far has been that if you flee a duel, you “lost” on account of assumed notions of honor or inherited chess rules. But is it really “losing” to run away from a fight that you would lose? Why assume this preconception?
...There is also a possibility, mirroring real life, that the player who escapes may consider it an escape while the player who pursued the fight may consider it more akin to a resignation or a loss. The factors aside from life and death are subjective. For example, a draw by agreement is a kind of dual victory, isn’t it? We both survived and the fight is ended (though maybe only temporarily).
A friend pointed out to me that when one player is winning and trying to win, they are creating a situation in which the other player may be compelled to flee, and fleeing, while not winning in a traditional sense, remains in opposition to the attacker’s winning aims (They put this more interestingly, maybe).
Credit in part to Yuri Chess, which got me rethinking the confined definitions of how chess games can end.
■ Living Disarmed: Similarly, I had always assumed the implication of a disarm or a resignation was that you’re at the mercy of the winner, your life in their hands and practically equivalent to death, if their goal was to win the duel. From a purely technical perspective, however, the game ends when I withdraw my last blade, so checkmate by touch against my Self becomes impossible. The game endings where I am defined as vanquished are not longer an option. So, it’s kind of hard-coded into the rules as written that to surrender means to live. Regardless, of how literally you take this, in general, I think I missed an opportunity to discuss resigning as opposed to losing in the same vein as double checkmate vs draw. Like, if you resign, you lose but you’re alive(?), and if you lose by checkmate, you lose and you’re dead. There’s some kind of multi-axis spectrum of endgames there. But I guess it remains up to personal style whether it’s better to lose and die vs lose and live, and it also comes down to the story/role-playing element that some indulge in.
CLARIFICATIONS & QUESTIONS
■ Backwards Opposition: I have persistently failed to update this. When performing the blade’s special move, “opposition,” the rules do not have anything to say about pushing the opponent’s blade backwards, toward your first step, potentially waaay backwards and into disarmable overextension. Well, as a house rule, I tend to play with backwards opposition only going as far as one square (similar to how you can only push their blade one square over the center line).
■ Disarm, Early Failed Checkmate: If a player makes the classic EFC, an early and overextended/untenable Sword-checkmate attempt which is often seemingly available on the second or third move, is this is an instance when one can execute a disarm on overextension? I.e., can you disarm a blade from a square where it has just failed to take the Self? The ambiguity lies in the fact that it could never really have landed on that square, requiring a checkmate to do so. And by that extension I guess, could you disarm any overextended armament after it has just taken a piece? The answer is obviously yes (but hasn’t been explicitely stated), so the answer to the question about the EFC seems also to be yes. Usually, however, so early in the game, we seem to just say “no, that’s untenable.”
■ Control: Balance & Jutsu: Does control mean that the Jutsu can’t take the Balance when it’s in the same measure as the Self? Yes. Another Jutsu weakness, boo hoo. Unless we allow it the ability to fend the Balance regardless, as a Jutsu counter against the Balance’s control! But replacing the Balance on the next turn would simply fend the Jutsu again, starting the Jutsu player back at their turn with one piece fewer on the board. Okay, forget I said anything about this.
■ ...Or: What if control only stops the Jutsu from blinking into the measure?
■ Jutsu support vs. Control: Jutsu cannot support for disarm into a Balance controlled measure. (This is already in the notes for disarmament but not explicitly in the notes for control.)
■ Death Spell is an ending:I love getting really finicky with distinctions between types of endings, and, as such, intend to add the effect of “Death Spell” to the list of ending types (as well as potentially “escape,” described above).
■ Ambiguities of Hirakamae: The way it’s written makes some uses of the double-move a little unclear. We also need to clarify that the opponent moving their pieces into the measure doesn’t end your hirakamae. Also, can you meta-move? Can you glare? No. Can you intention? Yes, hell yes. Can you meta-move and then place the f.e. and move it to end hirakamae with a double move? Uhh. Could you... place a dagger and then throw it? Or place a piece at all? Is hirakamae crazy? Yes.
■ Untenable Disarm: Should an untenably positioned armament, not yet called out, be able to perform or support disarmament? Yes to perform on the condition that it acts upon a square now within its range. No to support (if called out). Can’t 100% tell what’s the right answer to the latter. But “no” feels smart, “yes” feels too easy. Obviously, if the acted-upon square is also out of range, then no.
■ “Passing Your Sword through Yourself”: To avoid confusing and disappointing blunders around this stipulation, maybe we should clarify by saying that it only matters when the Self does not move. Otherwise, the two pieces move simultaneously and you can think of it like [nonlinear] castling. In some cases, it may seem like a disarm for example must be facilitated “first” by the movement of the Self enabling flailing or a Guard support, for example, but no, the Self and Sword still move simultaneously. Also, per Jeff: “If the Sword’s range is determined at the end of the concert, then logically so is the Lantern’s range.”
■ Piece Placement, unnecessary verbiage: The stipulation that “range constraints still apply” in the placement rules can only ever be relevant to the Lantern―i.e., you can’t place the Lantern out-of-measure and into flailing―so, we should probably just say it that way (both in the placement rules and in the Lantern rules) ...unless that ends up even wordier.
■ Notation for resign: Probably just # without a move preceding it, or maybe ---# (the latter meaning pass, checkmate)
■ Question: Why am I, as a duels guy, passively utilizing the battlefield analogy of the pawns’ movement and attack being different and reliant on one another?
REFORMULATIONS / PREFERENCES
■ Feign by Seeing: In addition to adjacency (or instead of?), the Cloak and Self can perform feign by being a knight&8217;s move apart from one another.
■ Negation revision: There may be a need to mitigate one-sided pursuit of jutsu-takes-jutsu. Perhaps negation can only be played when both pieces are on your side, or in your Self’s measure, or suchlike. Perhaps when negation occurs, there is an ancillary fend as well. Perhaps the attacker’s Balance is fended, or the attacked gets to choose a non-critical piece to fend. This way, if you’re up against someone who you know is good with the Jutsu (ha ha), you can’t just chase the pieces around into a negation without any downside. This could help to bolster the Jutsu in the RPS system.
...I’m re-reading this now and feeling completely differently about the whole thing. Since it only matters if someone is good with their Jutsu, it seems actually like a fun and weird tactic to get extra annoying with your own Jutsu by chasing theirs around. Whatever!
■ Dagger Throw Odds: Increase the odds by rolling throw sticks equal to the number of measures between and including the measures occupied by the selves. At close range (in the same measure), the dagger throw is a 50/50 chance at checkmate.
...or, it’s the steps between the selves divided by two, rounding up, minimum of zero, maximum of five(?)―this way, when the Self pieces have no steps separating them, the dagger throw is a sure kill that passes through engagements. The idea being that the dagger is extra deadly at closer range.
■ Discard Odds Determinant for Dagger Throw: Success determined using the discarded pieces somehow to determine dagger throw success, such that the more desperate you are, the more likely a dagger throw is to work, possibly including situations where a dagger throw is a 100% chance, mitigating overkill of taking pieces and keeping the game lively. Simple version of this would be some kind of “pick a hand” concealing of the discarded pieces in a series or by arranging them on a measure and the throwee names a square without looking; you pick your own, you’re safe, if not, you’re got. Could also be like a mini game played with the discarded pieces, mini-chess or rock-paper-scissors or something.
■ Positional Determinant for Dagger Throw: Success is not determined externally by chance but rather when the position on the board meets certain requirements; any one or some combo of multiple factors. The throw line still has to be clear or stepstoned obviously. Maybe the final enabling thing is that the throwee uses a turn to place a piece from reserve? Like they’re momentarily distracted. Could reintroduce chance at that point, but would be a bit overcomplicated.
A few ideas:
- Any takes-takes-takes cued up advantageous for target player
- Target player’s armament left behind Self
- Target player’s armament overextended
- Target player has engagements in more than two measures
- Throwing player has Jutsu in discard (spooky, boosts Jutsu)
- Target player makes any move that doesn’t act upon one of thrower’s pieces (e.g. place; withdraw; pass; or a move without fending, taking, pushing, or swapping)
■ Deterrent-Determinant for Dagger Throw The condition that allows a dagger throw (with 100% success) is the target player doing some kind of action that we don’t like, e.g. lantern sniping or whatever. Just cheat the whole process of writing sensible rules by continually adding to a list of things that make you susceptible to dagger throws. Amazing. Credit to Brushy.
■ Thrown Dagger Retrievable: Marker for lost dagger placed behind the self piece that it missed. Or, a toss of the sticks one short of success is a checked throw; the thrower supposedly doesn’t throw it after all, and you just keep the dagger on the board. (This means a one-stick throw never loses your dagger?)
■ The Turnstone: I am dissatisfied with the free engagement, which I’m now calling the turnstone. It doesn feel like it’s successfuly doing the both-players dynamic thing I wanted it to do. This comes down to how it’s controlled, how it moves, and what it does.
In The Verdigris Pawn, by Alysa Wishingrad (or perhaps only in the commercially available actualization of the board game in the story, Fist, designed by Crab Fragment Labs), the pawn is controlled by whichever player has sight of it. However I came across it, I believe this was the inspiration for the turnstone piece. So, something like that might be a good direction to move back in. More notes:
Turnstone state-aspects:
- Flip (has two sides like a coin, dark and light)
- Square color it’s on (dark or light)
- Which player’s side of the board has it
- Which measure it’s in
- Which square it’s on (perhaps if sharing the space with another piece?) (Or what if all it does is prevent any other piece from taking that square and is otherwill null?)
- Facing direction (it’s like a little bug, or it has an arrow/notch on one side which points in orthogonal or diagonal directions
Turnstone facilities:
- Use as a stepstone
- Blocking or allowing leaping over it
- As extra range for the Sword, like the Sword’s special range thing that never ever comes ups
- As a pawn that can fend fendable pieces
- Occupying the same square with another piece, making it unfendable or something
- Determining which measure or side of board can be used for play on that turn
Old turnstone mumblings: Each turn, the active player makes their moves or plies or whatever and they must conclude with an action upon a certain piece―let’s call it the turnstone―which acts as a centerpoint of contact for interaction, an engagement if you will (would have to maybe rename the engagements to continue this theme) which is also a turn counter. So you fend the turnstone, pick it up, pass it to the other player, they ...uhh move and then place it and then it’s your turn again? And you end by fending it to them again? It’s like a priority thing? And can be turned around by not fending it or by handing it back somehow but how and what then what... idk
■ Ruin blocks Glare: Because it’s a big block. Intuitively, it seems that a piece which is, in practice, a sort of obstacle should block light, however it differs thematically from the Cloak and Guard in that it’s a piece of environment, not directly wielded by hand and able to be immediately positioned in front of the eyes (still taking this all very literally). The Ruin is disembodied and floating somewhere else in the scene, able to be worked around. And what is solidity, anyway? This is all made up. And the deeper piece theme is “nothing,” after all.
■ Lantern Hell, Flailing in Concert Only: Various players have suggested taming the perpetual laser beam of flailing by making it possible to flail only in actual concert with the Self. This was actually its original design, but I felt that it was too limited. Then special guest Tyler suggested that the stale flailing position could be renewed by the Self making any move while still out-of-measure with the Lantern, enabling a simultaneous flail move, rather than having to move the Self back into measure and make a flail move only on the next turn when the Self moves out-of-measure again (which was my slower original idea). I still haven’t tested this much. Flailing is already a mess. I dunno, I’m scared.
■ Intention by seeing: Jutsu’s intention can be used also when the Jutsu is able to see the targeted piece. I’m not sure more intention opportunities would even make a difference, but I definitely want it to. Maybe it would be nice to change the intention range (from the current same-measure-or-diagonal) to simply the Jutsu’s sight (instead, not in addition to)? But would this bring control into the equation? (Suggestion of Lorxus and J)
■ Sword Range Boost: This allowance of extra distance has never come up in my own games. There must be a more applicable method of creating the same intended effect.
■ Retreat: No one ever does it? I have only ever managed to force an opportunity for myself to retreat once in dozens of games played. Jeff retreated successfully once due to my own lack of awareness/initiative, so that’s a good sign, actually. Typically, when you want to retreat it’s because you’re at a disadvantage, and when you’re at a disadvantage it’s easy for your opponent to press an attack and stop your retreat by putting their Self on your side of the board. Maybe just remove this method of preventing retreat from the rules? Or somehow allow a quicker method of retreat? Maybe when the Self reaches the last step?
■ Observation: Opening Free Engagement is a big advantage and should probably be disallowed of the first player (Suggestion of Lorxus and J). I was initially resistant to this, unable to see past the inadequate solution of just pushing it off to the second player or some later turn, where it’s still an advantage. However, I’m coming around to it. Others have documented that there is a serious first-player advantage that needs to be mitigated. On the other hand, I may end up changing the whole piece into the above described turnstone and don’t want to bother reevaluating until then. For now, I think I would honestly rather play without the piece and see what that’s like.
NEW MOVES / RULES / MODES
■ Cloak in Face: The Cloak has two special abilities based on its actual use in fencing, enveloping the opponent’s blade or obscuring the outlines of one’s own body. However, we’ve missed the third, which is tossing it your opponent’s face, momentarily blinding them. I think this was suggested to me by someone, but forgive me, I don’t recall who.
■ Blade Capture, Manipulation: An idea by special guest Tyler. What if you could move your Cloak while still holding the captured blade along with it? This could allow you to capture and then reposition an opponent’s blade before they sever the Cloak, repositioning the blade for disarm or opening a line of attack.
■ Megajutsu/Paradox: Idea of Jeff’s, a sort of a minigame like my orb moment (see below) played on a separate board, somewhat like the “Dream„ card in Magic: The Gathering.
■ Seirawan Placement: Piece-placement mechanic invented by Yasser Seirawan for his Seirawan Chess (I wrote this, but is it true that he was the first to invent this kind of placement? idk); his fairy pieces can be placed on an empty square when a piece makes its first move and leaves that square.
■ New Rhythm: Fair Turn Order: How to materialize this algorithmic pattern (WBBWBWWBB...) mechanically into a piece-passing or some other physical tool? Is it possible? See also Marseilles Chess (double moves with a balanced one-move to start for white) and "Progressive Chess" with a rapidly accelerating tempo of one moves, two moves, three moves, etc.
...a simple solution to mitigate the first-move advantage would be to simply give the second player a double move of any two pieces on their first turn, including a move and one piece placement, if they want. Is this too much? Idk, would have to experiment.
■ Dire Veney: Aside from the dagger, you only get one additional piece from reserve after you’ve chosen one by placing it. Maybe a more fun and less threatening name is needed. Maybe some alteration to the clear hierarchy of Guard, Ruin, Lantern, Jutsu(?) is needed. Maybe not? Because the Guard is taken by the Jutsu, commonly understood to the be a weak piece.
NEW PIECES
■ Donkey, “3-D” Measure-Movement, and Others: To start with, we mustn’t forget all these old ideas from the site launch which were mostly not explored―except the donkey. The donkey explored.
■ Duck: The very popular “Duck Chess“ variant uses something like a free engagement + ruin. But why a duck?
■ Orb: Orb is placed, moves as King, all movement and play is constrained within a measure until the orb is shattered (taken by a blade). Turn order during the orb moment becomes progressive chess (factoring in veney’s existing double-moves somehow).
■ Bells?? Powerless piece that must be taken first with blade or Self in order to make a move which deals checkmate.
■ V. R. Parton’s esoteric RPS mechanics: “A Mimotaur is incapable of attacking another Mimotaur...;” and the Ximaera, which cannot capture but is subject to capture. Endearingly screwy rock-paper-scissors-like mechanics rediscovered in reading about V. R. Parton’s “2000 A.D.” chess variant. The Ximaera is kind of Self-like? But Parton keeps it more strictly technical/non-violent piece by focusing it’abilities on switching places with other pieces.
■ Pawnlike multimovement: A piece whose non-attacking movement pattern is different than its attacking movement—but more than just a pawn. With thematic and board-structuring intention of making the pawns rely on one another to form something stronger. But as an available chess thingy, it doesn’t have to only do that.
■ King movement: This is extremely simple, but how come we don’t have a piece anymore that simply king-moves? The game feels like it’s missing something fundamental without that piece. (Long ago, in early development, the Self moved this way. The free engagement technically does move this way while in play, but since you probably don’t want to lose possession of it, everyone only ever moves it diagonally.)
NEW TERMINOLOGY
■ Terminology: Leaping Types ― In veney, there are two (arguably three) different types of leaping. They are not yet identified with names, but are distinguished in the rules regarding the Sword, Cloak, and Balance. The latter two pieces can leap over any piece, while the Sword can only leap over pieces of its own color. From there, we could make a general distinction between obstructable leaping and unobstructable leaping; maybe a certain piece cannot leap over the Ruin, etc.
■ Terminology: Corresponding squares ―It would be useful to have a word for the corresponding square in other measures. We could just call them “correspondent,” I guess. For example, W1, W5, W9, and W13 are a set of four correspondent squares. W1 and W5 are a pair of adjacent-correspondents (correspondents in adjacent measures). Each square also has either one or two “adjacent correspondents,” as with the Jutsu’s blink movement. Credit for this suggestion goes to someone at MFF whose name I didn’t catch.
■ Terminology: “Ply” ― I learned this word super late in my process. “In two-or-more-player sequential games, a ply is one turn taken by one of the players. The word is used to clarify what is meant when one might otherwise say ‘turn’.” (Wikipedia) This could simplify a lot of language in the rules, which I’m sure I will get around to sometime in the next ten years.
■ Terminology: Measure or “Quarter” ― Robert’s suggestion. A more comfortable casual usage that happens to also make sense with the expressions “close quarters” and to “give no quarter.” However since there are other veneys possible with longer or different boards / different measurings of measures that don’t result in four quarters, it’s safer for my purposes to keep calling them measures or something else non-count-specific.
■ Terminology: Center Point ― We forgot to name the place where the free engagement starts. Would this mean the other “interstices” are also “points?” What are they called in Go? They are generally called “intersections” or indeed “points” in English.