As part of writing some draft chapters for my story revolving around the polycule in Cyllian (for my own sanity, hopefully the only polycule that you can romance as a player), I had to generate a new variant of chess: 6-player team chess. First, the board layout (easier to simply post a picture than explain) Checkmate is not possible, as to get a player out from the game, you must capture their king. Kings may move into check, and are not required to move out of check. It is still required to announce check, however. Play proceeds from the central player on each team, alternating between teams. So in the image above, orange moves first, followed by indigo, red, blue, yellow, purple, then cycles back around to orange. Should a player be eliminated, their remaining pieces will remain, but said player may not move. Should an enemy player of that player wish to pass said pieces, they must capture; they may not simply ignore the existence of the piece. Pieces move as follows: pawns must advance towards a enemy back row. Unless they can enter a neighbor space to a starting space of an enemy team's piece, the directions they may move are fixed from the start, along the two column directions from its start square. Anything else would be "backwards" from its own perspective. When it enters a space that is immediately in front of where an enemy pawn started, it may choose at any point to shift its perspective to see that enemy's first row as its back row. Pawns capture as they move; however you may elect to instead have them capture diagonally (explained when bishop is explained) knights retain their ability to jump, and are the only piece to be able to do so. They move two spaces along a row or column, followed by one along a column (this column must not be the same column it started moving on). This has the effect of it moving "foward" a single space and then diagonally away from its starting space by one diagonal space bishops retain diagonal moves, traveling through edges of non-white spaces. This means that all bishops will only ever be on white spaces, with exception to promoted pawns, being able to move indefinitely along any single diagonal. Two pieces being on the immediate either side of a single line which a bishop must travel in order to get to the next space will form a wall, preventing it from moving along the line (yes, this means Aaron cheated in the female PoV chess game that's currently in draft) rooks may move indefinitely along any of the six columns or rows which it has access to, presuming that it is not bordering the edge of the board or blocked by a piece being in the way queens have combination of bishop and rook movement kings move like queens, but only ever one space at a time Pawns cannot move two spaces on first move. Whether or not they capture diagonally is your prerogative, but should you choose to implement diagonal captures, they lose the previously mentioned ability to capture. Castling does not exist, as this was based on medieval chess; but as we live in the 20th century you may choose to have castling, using the same convention as modern times. The only challenge now is finding five other players to play with.
You might find this interesting: (I think your rules already match the ones in the video exactly, but it might still be fun!)
Close but not quite; but yes, I did base piece movement for everything except pawns on hexagonal chess; in particular I needed to draw several rules for piece movement from Echexs, on its side-9 size board; however, because pieces are arranged on edges rather than the corners, I had to go with a side-10 size board, with the corners cut off (the corners between sides started off cut off, but then as I was toying around with it, I realized that all six need to be cut off)
