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Veney (Sword Chess)

Rules: https://veney.xyz
Patreon: patreon.com/veney

Veney is a swordfighting chess variant that has been described as “rules maximalist.” I look at it as a sandbox of weird fencing-like chess mechanisms. It’s eternally in open development, free to all, and, in fact, made of rocks and other found objects.


A photograph of my veney board and pieces-box sitting on a red cloth. This was taken before finishing.
 
A close-up photograph of some white veney stones sitting on the squares of the board

The current state of veney

The links page on here starts with a bunch of links to veney things that players have shared with me.

There are anywhere from 15—??? veney players at present on planet Earth. Each time someone contacts me to talk about veney, to share their sets and boards, provide observations and suggestions, etc., each time I do a search to find my own posts and happen across someone else’s, I am at once warmed, amazed, and grateful for where this thing is going, and also sort of terrified(? strong word choice) that for every person I see online, there’s probably another, at minimum, who I haven’t met. In short, it’s crazy to me that veney happened and is still happening, and the way it continues to connect me with others is something that I’m always learning from.

The main note that I get is “that’s a lot of rules!” It’s true. The official rules are very long, but there are, I think, two sides to this coin.

Firstly, the verbose ruleset is mostly a result of my own scattered process and amateur approach to logically parsing things out. It could be done better. I truly believe that the mechanics themselves intuitively make sense (if this is your thing at all) once you’ve played a certain amount; it’s just that this is an abstracted domain that we’re not used to discussing precisely.

Secondly, while the original inkling of the project was born in the desire to efficiently translate fencing onto the tabletop, as I got deeper into the chess mindset, I found that there was an infinitely more interesting space of possibility available in the realm of the grid and the object. What we think of as “Chess” is about as narrow as what we [laypersons, perhaps] think of as “lifeform.” This nebulous system of gizmos that shift, interact, merge, and divide fluidly in response to unlimited stimulus actually mirrors the contextually determined reality of the study of “sword,” “fencing,” and “body” in a wonderful way. In light of this, I can simply never close the book on veney. To finish defining the boundaries would be a foolishly ironic twist.


My future plans

Game ideas:

  • Address first-move advantage, which in 2.0 appears to be worse than in standard chess.
  • New formulations of stepstones (engagements), dagger and disarm balance, and some major adjustments to the rhythm of the game. See: public patreon video on these subjects.
  • Tinkering with the free engagement or “turnstone,” a personally unsatisfying piece.
  • Make the lantern movement less confusing.
  • Make lunge/return distances more intuitive.
  • Play with dagger-throw odds/mechanics.
  • All technical pieces move in concert?
  • Dozens more special moves, new pieces, suggestions from players, etc. to be tested.

Peripheral:

  • Create a video, as YouTuber-ish as I can stand, to introduce veney in a visually appealing and consumable way, indoctrinating the masses with my chess opinions.
  • Move patron support to Comradery.co?
  • Post up at a library, game store, or tourist district with an open board for games.
  • Learn the ludii game system and go code-brain for a month, trying to get a veney bot cooking.
  • Play more often, and play with more people. I have only played against six different opponents as of October 2024.


Playable spreadsheet templates for veney:

Standard board (W1 square - light)

Mirror board (W1 square - dark)

(See the changelog, December 12, 2023 for more details on these)

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