Clausewitzian Chess Variation

Purpose

This tool is a chess variant designed to demonstrate the possibility of modeling complex cognitive concepts in simple, well-known games. More specifically, the effort that led to the tool’s creation focused on understanding the complications that arise in complex systems of systems. It is important to note that in its current form the tool is an engineering prototype. The focus was on modeling concepts and not about game polish or production level development. We leave further polishing to future efforts and/or to the open source community.

We vary the standard rules and play of chess to directly model fog of war, friction, force composition, and asymmetric ends (limited versus total warfare). In this context, we define fog of war as hidden or uncertain information about one’s self or one’s adversary. Likewise, we define friction as the inability to receive or execute an order as desired. Chance heavily influences both of these notions. In addition, we let players select their starting pieces and layout to achieve composition. Finally, we have altered the notion of victory in the game of chess so that our variant is no longer a zero-sum game (both sides can now simultaneously win or lose). We include in the repo a companion guide PDF that details these concepts.

The companion guide PDF describes all major game elements and includes a discussion of how each element manifests in the game and why it was included in the design. In addition, the guide contains instructions on how to run the software tool and how to play the game. Finally, the companion guide PDF discusses our findings from internal playtesting, known issues, and recommendations for next steps.