Interpenetration, a sketch for a stragy game

Interpenetration is a variant of Particle Joust in which no pieces can move sideways, making every move a forward move.

The basic pieces would be the straight-mover, the diagonal mover, and the straight and diagonal mover. Let the pawn or the unit be the straight mover. Let the diagonal piece be the fusion of two such pawns. Let the straight-and-diagonal mover be the fusion of two such diagonals, or just a diagonal and a straightmover. The knight will be the Shogi knight, or a quarter of a Chess knight. The Thetan is still dangerous. The Lance is in its element, as it was always vulnerable to side attack in Particle Joust.

Interpenetration could be about the ninth rank, a flag, or just annihilation, by using a wrap-around rule.

To eliminate sideways movement. Now that is a step. Absurd und poetic.

The mirror is still here. The kerf is here. Perhaps even the zilch is here, as an aid to spirits. The spirit is here, but spiriting only forward. Perhaps the plutonium spirit is also here. A spirit that passes thru pieces that are adjacent, including diagonals. A maxima spirit. In a wraparound board, a long move can increase attack frequency. A spirit can pass far into enemy territory in order to kill the near. But annihilation joust really isn't about territory, unless the drop rule is applied to the home three ranks. No king. Just material at war. Material that seeks unequal trades, or to take without giving.

The Switch is a teleporter who only moves by exchanging positions with friendly pieces. He is a sort of hole or portal, through other piece can trade their positions. I don't know which letter yet to use, but this is a great piece. A piece for the thoughtful?

The Kerf or the Krazyhorse or the Killjoy. The K moves only by capturing, and can capture many times in a single turn. But the killjoy never moves in the same direction twice. The Killjoy is a Krooked Road w/o improvement. The Killjoy is perhaps even better in Forward Only Interpenetration. Because there is only forward movement, a killjoy will/can capture only one piece per rank. There is a poetry to this slicing. A zigzag knife thru material. The carving of a god. The war god. For the k-piece is bloody, killing with every step, and stepping forward for more blood with every kill. Stack pawns could play the non piece. Or stacked Vs. (We would have the I, the V, and the W. The trident would serve as the O.)

The trident becomes the "O." Now it is two tridents that combine to form a kerf, or a positron, or a knight. And every morph would be the result of a forward movement. The game would lose no speed. A morph is a threat. As a fusion increases range.

The spirit could normal move diagonal. He's an undead trident, or a spirit that stalks thru space like trident, preferring to pass thru pieces like a chess rook.
As mentioned, the spirit could be given the easier pass of all connected pieces, in forward direction. This might be too much.

Because the board offers wraparound possibilities. A player can opt to not move certain pieces, keeping them instead where he dropped them after their most recent wraparound, or from the game start point. A player can set traps for pieces he knows must come to him. A player's home territory is where the enemies are forced to come, like it or not. A player's home is also the way home for enemy pieces that want to make themselves available for drops. The middle 3 ranks would be the no-drop zone. A no funny business mandatory meeting.

Or a 7 by 7 board could be used, with only the first rank used for dropping. A piece could wait safely in the seventh rank, as the enemy can never attack there. As this would require sideways movement. This would tighten the board. Increasing the population density of power pieces.

Interpenetration emphasizes facing. The pieces are directionally focused. This was generally true in Particle Joust, but Particle Joust allowed sideways movement, which is a dilution. The name of the game is alternating current. To rivers that want to destroy one another.

Home territory is the staging zone. Both players run continuously into one another's staging zones. (Drop zones). The enemies seventh rank is an ideal place to hide, the only rank exempt from danger. Kind of absurd. This also blocks enemy staging, as enemy staging blocks seventh rank transport. This thickens the battle on the edges. The seventh rank is an ideal place to merge, as the merge will be safe until dropped yet again in a safe place (presumably).

A person could play 3 dimensional interpenetration. Holy shit. This reminds me of that 3-d tic tac toe program I once programmed in Pascal.

In 3D-Interpenetration, each player still only moves forward in his own monopolized facing. But he can also move diagonally up and down. A trident in the middle would have 9 moves, 9 possible captures. A Theta in the center would have 24 or something (hard to calculate) possibilities. 6 opposite/complementary directions in 3 dimensions. Each players has imperative direction, the opposite of one other player, and perpendicular to the others. 2 players could each pick a team in each dimension. It would almost require a nice computer program to make this game sensible/playable, but the potential is amazing.

Or it could be made a rule that non-opposite pieces cannot be captured. This would mean they were only either in the way or conveniently available for spirit-travel, etc. Or blockers and openers of space for the Z.




Or, perhaps the craziest yet. One Dimensional Particle Joust. One Dimensional Stress. Important pieces? The Spirit, the Lance, the Transfinite. The Non. The S (slayer) becomes a God. It is an accelerated particle, fed friends to accelerate its progress into enemies. Non longer nonlinear, it is perfectly linear.

One could have 7 different mono dimensions meet at their central square. And pieces could move into other dimensions from here. One could easily manage wraparound in monodimensional play. 7 one-dimensional loops, each seven spaces long, meet at the same fourth square. This would be a managable 7-dimensional game. Or one could do the same with 5 or 9 dimensions, or even eleven. An eleven dimensional game is pretty god damned insane. Or how about a 13 dimension game? This would put the Common Square (Hypershape) at the 7th space in each dimension. The board would be seven strips. The 7th space would often be already claimed. Could be too crazy.

But back to one dimensional Particle Joust. We should at least make the line a loop, yes? And perhaps allow drops freely. Yes. Or we could have a long line, 81 squares, and stick to the 27 square zone. Or just a nine square zone. Or we could use a Flag piece, which can be over-jumped by knights. We can here use jumpers of different potency, as jumpers become more significant. We can here use the Nons potently. The Nons come into their own. And so does the Golden Spirit. The Delta and the Lance are one. The Standard Infinite Forward, capturing and being captured. Through empty space. The usual. But we still keep in the Spirit. The Spirit is a beautiful piece, especially in one dimension, where pieces cannot move backward. The enemy is easier to line up/damn up, and the Spirit passes thru, capturing its choice.

We could do with 4 such lines and have a manageable 4 dimensional game. 4 lines of 16, like chess. Except for that shared hypercube. We would actually have 61 squares. We could call it Hypercubic Monodirectional Morphological Fusion Joust.
The On and the Non. The 1 and the 0. The basic team piece. Advance and hold. Two beautiful simple pieces. The knight is a hook, or a curve. The positron is a brutally simple slayer, a sort of nuclear weapon.

Fusion and fission become especially important here. The On or the One is a perfect cheap sacrifice for the Five, also known as the Slayer.

Yes, he used the digits this time as ideograms. The 10 digits could offer a rich game. 10 good pieces would do it.

The One is the simple Shogi style pawn.
The Two is the piece that can move and capture forward and backward equally. The 2 faced piece. Moving one or two squares in either direction. Fast and flexible.
The 3 is the curve or the hook. A potent piece in One Dimension. A piece that can get around Nons. A taker of Kings. (If Kings are used, perhaps a One should be a king. A crowned One. Or a circled one. Or call it a TEN. )
The 4 is the one dimensional Theta. It moves twice, and can capture twice. Each time it moves on or two spaces forward.






Distracted by thoughts of 3 dimensional Stress. The interdimensional pieces would have to be kept simple. Like Ms that live and move on a perpendicular plane.

Another idea. 2 dimensions, but one is vertical. Stacked lines. Most pieces do not climb up or down. Only a few. Perhaps elevators and droppers. The evalators and droppers are stuck perhaps in their vertical dimension. This is actually quite similar to Particle Joust, but visualized differently. As if with gravity and height, rather than length and width. But to have a vertical ninth rank is beautiful. A real board would have to be split level. Just like fucking Star Trek, bitch.

The pawn would be stuck on its current level, forward one. Neither climbing nor descending. Pieces would be captured from above or below, diagonally.

Units would have to merge in order to gain the power of ascension. Flying units could bound/zig zag. Birds of prey. The pieces must be carefully balanced.

The Red Loop, the Blue Loop, the Yellow Loop. They have one square in common, and this is their white square. This white square is the portal/bridge between the dimensions. Pieces have great power here. But they are also at great risk. If the game pieces are faced visually, then the players could be allowed to move the piece into a new dimension in either direction, and this choice will establish what is relatively forward for that piece. It is faced as it moves from the White Square, into a monodimensional square.

Or fuck it. Let's go Hyper. Let's go Four Dimensional. Or Fifth fucking dimensional. To repeat myself. Almost got to maintain that facial polarity, else the game too much to think on. The 2 is more special, if facing is standard.

But then twin dimensions might be nice. The game would be binary. The 2 would be potent in the middle. Owning all four directions. And the others stuck in one. The Square Squared ---that's meeting square, which is double-dimensional. The game board would be a cross, two loops that intersect at one abstract position. 16 space lines would not be too long. 11 would work also, and this would be a nice 21 squares total, with the 21st square being the magic square. Or call it the Twin Square. A transfinite could speed to this square to help in another dimension. It just occurred to me that friendlies will be in one another way. We need a special rule or perhaps a switch piece. The switch piece might have just become an essential piece.

Lets get back to stacks. To stacked lines. Instead of forward faced, the pieces could be upward faced.

Twin loops could meet at two points. Or one could have demolition derby with little or no dimensional crossover, just dangerous common squares. One could have an infinite piece that moves rook like in any direction, in any dimension. A queen as far as this game goes. The four faced piece. The two faced piece. The one face piece. Twin paralleled one-dimensional Moebius loops, overlapping at two points. And one could over lap a perpendicular set of twins at one of these points. This square would be 4 dimensional, a hypercube. We would have one, two, and four dimensional squares in the same game. Or the perpendicular twins could meet their complement twice, at the same two squares. So we would have many squares and and just two hypercubes. Nothing else. The Queens would be 8-faced. Perhaps this requires promotion by capture. Or just merging in the usual fashion. Or both. Should the Switch piece be unlimited? Or should his ability be confined to his dimension? Or do the pieces promote dimensionally?

One face. Two faced. Four faced. Four faces on the hypercube is eight directions. Eight functional faces. And one lands on the hypercube with one's current facing. And the mirrors respond accordingly. The spirits get seriously trippy here. As they can pass through dimensions as they are passing through adjacent pieces.

The jumpers might have a hard time getting on the hypercube, as they are not designed with such problems in mind. But this is nice in a way. It adds a comedy to the jumpers.

The Non functions much like a Parcheesi blockcade. A Non on a Hypercube is a serious blockcade, a dimensional blockade. And it is allowed. A Non on each hypercube would block all dimensional travel, unless the Switch was made multi-dimensional.

Most pieces should still be one faced. To keep with the directional theme. The multi-faced pieces are takers from behind, assassins. Higher beings. A mostly empty board gives infinite pieces the ability to attack other pieces from either direction. We could allow a smooth uninterrupted movement/capture between the dimensions. Or we could say that piece must land on the hypercube to switch tracks. This makes possession of the Hypercubes crucial.

Even a one faced piece can switch dimensions. It simply makes its choice when moving from the hypercube. And it continues in this dimension in this direction.

I see now that a 3 space jumper is crucial, as this 3 spacer can jump from behind a spirit, and thus be protected from the other side of the Non it is jumping.

It's nice to whittle it down, but nice also to offer variety. Merging is generally a good game ingredients, but perhaps not always. Give the player a choice between quantity and quality. Either is a risk. More eggs in one basket, but its a nicer basket. Some players may specialize in using simple pieces in tandem. No one likes to trade expensive pieces for cheap. And expensive pieces are often threatened. At the same time, they are the supreme counter-threats.

A king piece might be nice in Mono Joust. A one faced, one spaced piece. A weakling who needs protection. Or the King could be an O. An O is dangerous enough. Perhaps just a Binary, an M.