Non-Violent Chess

     Non-Violent chess was developed in response to the increasing violence in today's game environment. Walk into any store and all you see are shoot'em up games. Even the simple game of chess is a bit violent. You kill the opposing chess pieces. To me, as I played the game, the objective was always to capture the enemy king with as little killing as possible, but unfortunately it takes two to play the game in a non-violent way. That's when I came up with Non-violent chess. As the name indicates, the game is non-violent, there is no killing. The objective remains the same, to checkmate the king.

     But the new rule of not killing any pieces threw up some problems. One of the main ones was what if the opposing queen got to a square right next to the King? With the King only able to move only one square at a time, the game would end right there, with endless checks, so we gave the King the ability to move like a Knight when in check.

    Secondly, without the threat of any of it’s pieces being killed, the King could wall itself behind several pieces, and as we know, only the Knight can leap over pieces obstructing it. But a wall of pieces could be setup so that not even the Knight could get to it, effectively ending the game. So, another rule change became necessary. If a piece is moved to specifically obstruct the King from being put in check, that piece can be moved back to its previous position.

    Also to prevent the pawns from running into each other and clogging up the middle of the game, we gave them the power to move to the side(as in a capture move), if they are blocked. Pawns cannot be promoted and finally, there is no castling.