RicOlie_2

Thanks for detailing your church services. Now for this:

darth_ender said:

RicOlie_2 said:

Another question:

Why do you not take Jesus' request to "Do this in remembrance of me" literally? You have the bread and wine which are blessed, but without transubstantiation. Why is this? Jesus said that it was necessary to eat his flesh to inherit eternal life in the Bread of Life Discourse (John 22-71). What interpretation do Mormons give to that passage, as well as the Last Supper passages and 1 Corinthians 23-32.

 We do take it in remembrance of him.  I don't need his literal flesh and blood to be reminded of him.  And though I don't want to sound argumentative, it sounds quite clearly to me like a metaphor.  Christ also says he is the bread of life in the same discourse (in John 6, it's nice to see you make omissions now and then ;) ).  So does the bread become Christ, or is he already made of bread?  See what I mean?  Christ is also love.  We are the light of the world, as is he.  It's all metaphoric imagery.  Hope that doesn't come off as a rude answer.

Can't believe I missed the chapter number....

Now, the thing is, the word Christ uses for "eat" translates as "gnaw" or "munch" and not the regular word for "eat". Why use such a word if he meant it metaphorically? Of course, he himself wasn't speaking in Greek, but the fact that the gospels use that word indicates that they took it literally. Here's the other thing, why did he not attempt to clarify if he meant it metaphorically? We read in verse 66 that "As a result of this, many [of] his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him." Only the Twelve were left after this, and he started out with a huge crowd! Don't you think he would have explained that no, he didn't really mean that they had to eat him, if that's why they were all leaving him? Nowhere do Paul or Jesus say, or imply, that it is merely a symbol, in my opinion. It is always "this is my body," or "this is my blood."

P-1f

C-c6

You can use abbreviations for the pieces, if you want. I'm pretty sure I can figure them out, as long as you use different ones for every piece. CR, CN, C, and F work just fine, and I will be using B, W, F, and C. I'm not worried about getting the two F's mixed up because we have different armies, but I'd rather not spell out the piece name every time.

Another question:

Why do you not take Jesus' request to "Do this in remembrance of me" literally? You have the bread and wine which are blessed, but without transubstantiation. Why is this? Jesus said that it was necessary to eat his flesh to inherit eternal life in the Bread of Life Discourse (John 22-71). What interpretation do Mormons give to that passage, as well as the Last Supper passages and 1 Corinthians 23-32.

Interesting. I'm pretty sure the Catholic Church forbids, or at least heavily discourages, celebrating the Passover meal as such, but my family does have a tradition of having a meal similar to it, on Holy Thursday. What we eat is a reminder of the Passover meal, but we don't actually have roasted lamb, bitter herbs, or wine, and we don't eat standing up.

C-4e

We'll call the phoenix Ph, and the pheasant P, since there are no pawns.

I think I used Ph to describe both, so to make sure I didn't confuse things, my phoenix is on 3g right now and my pheasant is on 2e.

b5

I'm guessing you meant 1f. No, it isn't much of a promotion, but it means that the goose can retreat. I could have made a better move a couple turns ago had I remembered promotions.

Ph-2e

Also, could you outline a typical church service (I'm not sure what you call it, but you know what I mean)? I'm curious to see how it compares to the Catholic Mass. I'm sure it's quite different, but I'd be interested to know.

EDIT: In more detail than given here, if you can:

http://www.mormon.org/faq/church-welcome-visitors

I'm specifically interested in the sacrament meeting. Does it have a specific structure, or is what is given on that webpage about everything that they all have in common?

Catholic Masses have a very specific structure and set readings, liturgical seasons, etc., which I personally enjoy quite a bit. It allows a person to get into the Mass a bit better if they're able to almost memorize it over time.

Do Mormons have any kind of liturgical year like Catholics? What about feast days, etc. besides Christmas and Easter?

That's a shorter way of writing what I wrote.

Hans Zimmer and John Williams are the only ones out of those that I've heard of, and I love both of them (their music is great too).

I like the LOTR and Hobbit soundtracks, as well as that of Inception and of course, the Star Wars Saga (I don't have the AOTC soundtrack though, aside from a version with funny-sounding voices from the movie over top of it).

Actually, I'd rather play black.... :P

I'm forgetting that pieces can promote....

S-2d

Sure, let's play with the NNs as white and the CCs as black. You can play the NNs. If you'd rather play black, then I'll switch them around.

Oops, I forgot to make my move before I went for lunch.

RQ-2f

Yes, I agree. allowing two swallows per column allows a person to do a bit more with them. The negative to this is that it takes longer for the pieces in the back to interact with each other. So far not much has happened this game, other than exchanging swallow for swallow a few times.

Tsk, tsk, watch your typos. It should be:

Qe7+

Kb8

Qb7

The game could have ended in stalemate if things progressed as follows after I moved my king:

Qc8

Pxg2

Kxg2 = stalemate

For some reason I wasn't even thinking that you would just move your queen to e7, but I guess that was the most obvious way to go.

Well, that was fun. What army/armies do you want to play with next?

K-a7

You can checkmate me in two moves now.

f3

RQx1e

darth_ender said:

[snip]

You are correct about its move: it can go to any square that is not covered.  But so many squares are covered by other pieces, and every square is covered by the other emperor.  The only way to stay defended is to always make sure a friendly piece is attacking the square your emperor is on, otherwise the other emperor could capture it.  So as long as you have a friendly piece, your emperor is safe from the other emperor, because you can move your emperor to a square guarded by that piece (unless I suppose the "safe" square is attacked by a different opposing piece).  It would take a lot to whittle down the opposing army, it seems to me.  You might think, "Oh, then I'll create a special rule where emperors cannot capture each other ever," but then you have a problem of every single piece being vulnerable to the opposing emperor at every moment if not constantly defended by another piece.  You move a single piece to an unprotected square, and then the opposing emperor gets it without retaliation from your own emperor.  You see what I mean?  The emperor and drops and pretty mutually exclusive.

What if the emperor wasn't able to capture at all? I think that would help.

[snip]

Well, who is to say that the game we designed together is best?  Perhaps this variant of yours is better.  If not, it still certainly looks like a good game and nothing less than an interesting alternative.  I don't mean to beat up on it.  It looks like it could be really fun.  I wouldn't mind trying it in the future.

I think it's certainly the best so far. It may be possible to tweak one of mine enough to make it better, after play-testing it like we did with Ito Shogi. In their current forms, I would say they are all weaker than Ito Shogi.

I don't think they're all bad, I just think they're inferior to Ito Shogi. Ito Shogi went through a big transformation from what we started with to the end, and I think my variants could work with equal or greater transformation. The mini variant I made might need the least tweaking because it is more heavily based off of the type game of Ito Shogi, and probably has fewer problems as a result.

So those are my brief thoughts, taking just a few minutes to look at each game.  Keep up the good work, and consider what I've said, but remember that they are your games and you may do whatever you want in the end.

 Thank you, I appreciate them all. I will continue to tweak them, and probably rework the powerful piece variant quite a bit. I think it could be made more playable with the addition of some unique rules, maybe restricting drops and modifying the emperor's move, or exchanging it for another piece.

 Keep working on them.  Some look great.  The Taikyoku king moves two squares instead of one.  Maybe you could consider an adaptation of that.

 Sure, I'll take a look at that. I'll do something different with the emperor anyway, whether it's replacing it or restricting it.

What do you think about the fire demon? Is pairing it with such a relatively weak piece a good or bad idea? How about its' ability to completely destroy other pieces? I really like the idea, but if you think it's better off in a 2D variant, than I'd like to know what you think. And do you think I have too many lion-like pieces? What kinds of pieces do you think would be best for a 1D variant with powerful pieces like this?

F-6 what? Both 6b and 6d are available to you. I'm guessing 6b, and if so, S-4d.

You're right. I thought that because you hadn't moved your waffle over to where my king is I would be able to prevent your pawns from reaching the end and avoid checkmate. But I moved one turn too late and can't get to your pawns anymore.

h4

I used to be an extended canon-ite, then an everything-er. Now I'm not anything on that list. I love the OT (Adywan's versions above the originals), enjoy watching the PT sometimes, but think it isn't that great, love much of the EU, hate a lot of the rest, but still enjoy it all to some degree. I like reading Star Wars books for their own sake, regardless of how well they fit into continuity, or how much they contradict other books/comics/video games. I love all the different aliens, planets, space ships, and weapons, to varying degrees of course, but I still love them. That's my favourite part of the EU and the prequels. The story and the universe is the best part of the OT, and that is what my interest in Star Wars is founded on. The rest is icing on the cake. Sometimes it's nice to scrape the icing off and enjoy the cake by itself, but sometimes I like to eat the whole cake, icing and all. Other times, when the icing is good, I eat it by itself and save the cake for later.

It snowed again. :(