Chess pieces as characters?

[Hypersmurf]

King: Fighter. Lethal on Melee. Useless in ranged combat (High armored low dex?)
Queen: Might be a wizard or a sorcerer?
Bishop: Of course, Cleric. There would be two, different religions or different domains?
Knight: The most obvious is the Knight or the Paladin. Again, two.
Rook: Here... I have NO idea. An archer? A Golem?
Pawn: Foot soldiers? Hirelings? Low level fighters? Warriors?

I remember a 'How to play chess' book I had as a kid, that had nifty illustrations.

The pawns basically had sandals, loincloths, and leather helmets... I think they were armed with spears.

The knights, obviously, were armoured horsemen. The bishops were clergymen of some sort, though armed with a very martial-looking sceptre.

The rooks were archers firing from mammoth-howdahs.

The kings carried daggers, and in most of the pictures were cowering behind someone else

The queens were sorceresses of some sort - their attacks were represented as lightning bolts from pointing fingers, blasting opponents backwards...

I'll have to see if I can hunt out the book - the pictures were so cool!

-Hyp.

 

[Gez]

My take:


King: Fighter.
Queen: Druid. (Very good mobility and offense.)
Bishops: Cleric and Wizard.
King Knight: Paladin.
Queen Knight: Ranger.
King Rook: Rogue. (The idea is, he's not the tower, but who's hidden inside spying and waiting for the King to give him a target and the order to assassinate.)
Queen Rook: Bard. (Likewise, but more social and less brutal.)
Pawn: Aristocrats.

 

[wmasters]

Re: actual chess, I could see bare possibilities where a pawn might become a Knight instead of a Queen, but is there any reason for a pawn to become a bishop or rook instead of a Queen?

Yes, on occasion. It's easier to force a stalemate if you're opposing queens rather than rooks or bishops, so if you're confident of the win the rook can be a better choice on occasion to make sure your opponent can't get out of losing.

 

[hong]

I remember a 'How to play chess' book I had as a kid, that had nifty illustrations.

The pawns basically had sandals, loincloths, and leather helmets... I think they were armed with spears.

The knights, obviously, were armoured horsemen. The bishops were clergymen of some sort, though armed with a very martial-looking sceptre.

The rooks were archers firing from mammoth-howdahs.

The kings carried daggers, and in most of the pictures were cowering behind someone else

The queens were sorceresses of some sort - their attacks were represented as lightning bolts from pointing fingers, blasting opponents backwards...

I'll have to see if I can hunt out the book - the pictures were so cool!

-Hyp.

I think I remember the exact same book.

 

[Matafuego]

Thanks a lot for the replies!!

The idea of REAL flying towers is a very good one, but i wanted the Pieces to be NPC's and not buildings, maybe I'll just make them have the weird towers but with two NPC's called Rook as well.

The main reason I thought the King ought to be a fighter is: yes, he's the guy that we are trying to protect BUT if you approach him, you are dead unless you have backup... Marshall is very good as well...

The Queen throwing Lightning Bolts and Teleports was exactly what i envisioned, that's why I said Wizard (instead of Socerer... although...) Druid? The problem I see with Druid is... flavor... The Kingdom must have some VERY HEAVY connection with nature in order for the Queen to be a Druid.

The Bishops I think are clerics, maybe different alignments? As in: Lawful Evil, Lawful Good in a Lawful Neutral kingdom?

The Knights.
One of them is a Pally, it seems set. I like the Ranger idea, or the Barbarian idea, although I have a hard time putting them in a kingdom flavour-wise. Maybe the Blackguard idea is the way to go, the same with the Bishops. Lawful Good Pally, Lawful Evil Bguard... TWIN brothers...

The Rooks... THIS is the hard one. Powerful Charge sounds GREAT. Minotaur Rooks? Dwarven Rooks with the Dwarven Defender PRc? What's the Stewart defender thing? Devoted Defender maybe protecting both King and Queen? The idea of making them Golem's is attractive though. I don't want to go the Chariot route because it means this characters only represent the pieces IF they are in the chariot/elephant/thingy...

And the Pawns are also complicated!!
Because they should be important, but actually they aren't! Eight is a small number for being "generic" in an RPG but it's a large number in chess for them being "generic".
There are two ways to go... maybe the pawns represent the army and so they are... not important. Or maybe they are Eight something. Eight brothers? The Eight sons of King and Queen? Eight Clones? I don´t think I´ll end up representing the way they could transform into other pieces, it´s far too complicated, although the magic thingy where whenever one dies they take his place is GOOD!

Well thanks a lot!
I'll need to sit and think this for a long while...

 

[Gez]

Eight powerful vassals of the Kingdom. Eight great merchant families. Eight generals.


I don't like much the idea of having a Paladin and a Blackguard together.. The Paladin's code would cause him to stop working for the Kingdom if there's a Blackguard or an evil Cleric in a prominant position. That's why the ranger works better in my opinion. One of the Knights is a paladin with a mount, an inspirational leader of troops, probably in charge of the city watch or the standing army. The other Knight is a ranger, with a horse as his animal companion, who commands the troops patrolling the roads and protecting the small towns of the kingdom.

Druids are not necessarily just eco-terrorists and tree-hugging hippies. They are the masters of the natural forces of the world, tied to the magic of the seasons, the winds, growth and fertility, and so on. This fit well with the medieval idea that in a kingdom, the land and the crown are the same thing.

 

[Matafuego]

Gez... you're starting to make a lot of sense...
Yes, I forgot about the Code of Conduct!! =/

Then what about Bishops?
If the Queen is a Druid... Both of them are clerics? What's the difference? I though of them being different alignments because they move through diferent paths... But it's true, the Paladin would kick'n scream...

 

[Khuxan]

I really like this idea. My take:

King: Auda ibn Jad - male human aristocrat 4/marshall 9
Queen: Ryssa ibn Jad - female human archivist 11/loremaster 2
Bishop 1: Hayat - male orc healer 9
Bishop 2: Merat - female gnoll dread necromancer 9
Knight 1: Muham - male human paladin 1/sorcerer 6/eldritch knight 2
Knight 2: Du'ad - female human hexblade 9
Rook 1: The Red Beast - half-fiend advanced elephant barbarian 3
Rook 2: The Black Monolith - magical construct advanced elephant knight 3
Pawn 1: Zayd - male halfling aristocrat 3/fighter 2
Pawn 2: Banan - female human expert 3/wizard 2
Pawn 3: etc
Pawn 4:
Pawn 5:
Pawn 6:
Pawn 7:
Pawn 8:

Don't ask me why the Red Beast is a half-fiend, or why it's set in Arabia but with elephants. I came up with this stuff on a whim.

The one thing this experiment taught me is that I don't know many Arabic names

 

[Pbartender]

Rook: Here... I have NO idea. An archer? A Golem?

You could always make them siege engines... Catapults or trebuchets or the like. Sure, a team of engineers fires the thing, but it's the engine itself mounted on a castle tower that's the called the rook.

 

[two]

just to clarify

A pawn which promotes can turn into any other piece of the SAME color EXCEPT for the King OR Pawn. You can't promote a pawn to a pawn, i.e. leave it as a pawn. It must change into something else.

There are cases when promoting a pawn to a knight forces checkmate where promoting the same pawn to a queen would not (due to the knight's odd L-shaped capture/movement abilities).

When pawns are promoted to pieces other than queen, knight is the most common.

Sometimes people "underpromote" as it is termed when a lesser piece (biship, rook) will also force checkmate or mate-in-X (which the queen would as well). This is a stylistic move. Sometimes it is to rub salt in the wound...

Note that there are also occasions where you could checkmate the enemy if you were allowed to promote a pawn to a piece of the enemy's color, i.e. make your white pawn a black queen (you are not, however). This is because the king can't move through or capture pieces of its own color. So, for example, if you move a pawn to the 8th row, and uncover a check upon the enemy king by doing so, and the only spot the enemy king could move is into the promoted pawn's square (capturing whatever the pawn promoted into), this would instead be checkmate if the promoted pawn could promote to the enemy's color. Because the king could not move into that square - you can't move into your own color's square.

Anyway.