[Rolrain]

This is gonna be a little lengthy, I'm sorry.

Reading a lot of discussion about PvP comabat systems, I noticed that games featuring successful PvP systems are very rare. By "succesful" I mean engaging, deep and fun. Another thing I noticed, when talking about PvP someone often comes up with some analogy regarding chess.

After seeing what has been done in PuzzleQuest (a blend between Bejeweled and a single-player RPG, where all fighting between the opponents happen over a Bejeweled board where players play one against the other, with spells altering the board), and how enthusiastical have been its reviews, I started wondering if the same concept could be applied to the MMO* / MU* world.

For the sake of the argument, let's suppose to have a full MMO, with its own ambientation, its own story arc, cosmogenesys, realms, cities, guilds, its own quests and everything. Now let's suppose that this game uses one of the most succesful "fighting" systems ever invented for all its PvP and PvE combats: chess. Let's suppose all combats happen as Blitz chess games, 5 or 10 min per player. Now, I'm not saying chess would be the perfect choice for this, what I'm interested in is exploring the possibilities such a scenario would give to game designers and players. Chess is just an example, and could be replaced with Go, some chess variant (maybe Crazyhouse, with Bughouse for 2v2 fighting? That would be fun) or some other custom board-type game purposely created.

The first striking consequence of this approach would be that all combat skills the player develops are his own, and not skills of the character played. If he spends 2 years playing and getting better and better, even his char death could not take away the skills he (the player) has developed. "Grinding" would be real training (maybe some thematic games against some Master-Bot in some kind of dojo, and Bot skill level would approximately match the one of the player) and thus it would never feel pointless.

PvE could be encouraged by making the player gain some very very rare special playing skills (some game modifier like the cards in Knightmare chess?) or by giving some kind of advantage (points?) to the city and/or family the player belongs to.

Many vs Many (city vs city?) combat could be accomplished ith some kind of cooperative play, where the match between the two factions would happen on one single board and players could kibitz and then vote their preferred move, maybe out of three, chosen by 3 "champs" of the realm (time controls would be a little slower in this case, of course).

Levels could be based on some kind of ELO, and some places/quests could be disclosed only to players above (or below) some limit.

Of course I see problems with all this, for example:

- Cheating: there will be the same problems all online chess/checkers/... servers have, people using computers to play. This can be dealt the same (painful) way these problems are dealt in chess servers. It's a problem, but I do not think it would be a show-stopper. Cheating could be somewhat limited by using some non standard game like some exotic (but balanced and fun) chess variant, some board game created ad hoc, or some game in which computers are not stronger than humans.
- It would be difficult to armonize the combat system with the game environment, it should be made a "premise" of the game. (I mean, if I play PuzzleQuest I know I have to play puzzles to defeat the monsters. It's a premise, I do not question it)
- If some "standard" boardgame is used, that could restrict the potential gamebase to players of that chosen game. If some non-standard boardgame is used, it HAS to be balanced, deep, fun and somewhat easy to pick up. And creating such a game from scratch is not easy, of course.
- You will need to find a way to motivate players to play PvE or to engage some kind of quest not involving PvP. Before I mentioned the possibility of some "special ability" that can be used in PvP, a la . There could be balancing problems, of course.
- PvP is good, but what about PvE?

I know all this could turn up to be some kind of chess-server on steroids, nonetheless the idea fascinates me. What do you think about it? Could attaching chess to a RPG be appealing for the regular player? Could attaching RPG to chess be appealing for the regular internet Chess player (if we choose chess as a combat system, of course).

Thanks