Subject: RE: [FFML][FYI]All you ever wanted to know about GO (And you thought Genma and Soun were total idiots!)
From: "Paul Arezina" <arezina@acad1.stvincent.edu>
Date: 11/16/1998, 5:31 AM
To:

| Alandra wrote:
| >
| > [snip]
| > Do NOT start a thread about whether I am right, or wrong.
| > [snip.
|
|
| Well, I personally feel this really is a thread for the list.  (At least
| for those authors on the list who write in the Ranma universe.)  If we
| wrote that they love playing Crazy 8's, Old Maid, Twister, Shuffleboard,
| Poker, or Croquet it would matter to the story.  It would matter to the
| characterization.  It would matter to the mood, and even, perhaps, the
| plot.  (Witness the Gambler King arc in the Ranma storyline.)
|
| Fic authors *do* need to know what game the two fathers are always
| playing.  It's like the difference between whether a character plays
| Checkers, Bingo, Bridge, Chinese Checkers, Chess or something else.
|
| Whenever we see the board, we see that the game they are playing makes use
| *not* of black and white discs, but of small flat polgonal tiles shaped
| something like this:
|     ..
|   .    .
|  .      .
|  .      .
|  .      .
|  . .  . .
|
| Each tile has a different kanji (or maybe kana for all I know of Japanese)
| character written upon it's face in calligraphy.  The game is shogi (or
| shougi) and I have not the *faintest* idea how it is played and what the
| significance is.  It may mean they are intellectual giants of
| strategy.  It
| may mean they are complete morons.  My sneaking suspicion is it means they
| like to play shogi. ^_^

Actually, I think they're just playing shogi because it's one of the easiest
games to cheat at. The only factor in determining whose side a shogi tile is
on is which direction it points, 'cause they're all the same color. And, if
you flip a shogi tile over (as in turn it over, not turn it around), it
becomes a more powerful piece, usually, unless it's already been flipped in
which case it becomes weaker, but that's pretty obvious already, hmm? It's
rather like playing chess, only with more kinds of pieces and a much broader
range of objectives... and the ability to put captured pieces on the board
as your own. So if you want to cheat, you can flip your own tiles, flip your
opponent's tiles, turn the board around so you and your opponent swap
places, turn a few TILES around so they belong to your side rather than your
opponent's, palm a tile from the board and place it like a captured piece...
and since the pieces are flat, there's a lot less chance that you'll get
caught.

Oh, and shogi's usually played on one-quarter of a Go board. I think. So
it's possible for them to play either game.

Just the product of a little investigation I did a while back on the two
board games. *shrug* Thought you might like to know.

--G. Falconar