I’ve been thinking about this. I would love to try a game of …
- Battle Royale Go
- with fractionally coloured stones,
- players are eliminated when both their colours are eliminated
- simultaneous moves, collisions are handled via an ordered list of alternative moves
- all discussion in one thread
Who else is interested? 
some thoughts
First I considered fractional collision rule, but I believe that would be brutal, as a combined stone is both more vulnerable and would eliminate multiple players when captured.
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Sounds interesting! What does this rule specifically mean?
Does capturing a single red/blue stone eliminate the red/blue player?
Then, if a green/yellow stone is captured, does that eliminate the green/yellow player as well as the green/blue, green/red, yellow/blue, and yellow/red players (if those exist)?
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Yes that was my intention. One way to describe it is that, whenever one stone (or multiple stones) get captured, all of the stones colours are eliminated. Then when all colours of a player are eliminated, the player is eliminated. Basically another way of the rule proposed before
If stones can get combined due to collision, this is one way to formulate the elimination rule, as in this case it is not clear who these resulting stones “belong to”.
Would you like to try playing a game with these rules? 
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When I was a child we played a game called “Hen Fox Viper”. There are three teams. Players in the Fox team can capture the Hen players; Vipers can capture Foxes; Hens can capture Vipers. If all players of a team are captured, the team that captured them wins.
This could work for a 3-player atari-go too. Three colours; each colour has another colour as “target”. When a stone is captured, the game ends immediately and the winner is the player whose target was the captured colour. For instance, Blue, Orange, Green; Orange targets Blue who targets Green who targets Orange. If Blue is captured, then Orange wins (no matter who made the capturing move).
Thus, a winning strategy requires trying to capture one’s target, as well as help defending one’s non-target.
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Yeah, I would interested in playing it at some point. However, maybe not until I’ve wrapped up some other ongoing games, since I don’t want to have too much on my plate.
It seems like there could be a lot of ties for first place, depending on how colors are assigned. If every colored is shared by at least two players, then I think it be impossible to have an outright winner (unless there is some priority in how eliminations are determined).
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This is a great idea that reminds me of the game risk (additionally the targets could be secret information)
That is a fair point. Off the top of my head, I believe it could be fixed by a tie-breaker, for example if for two players the time when their last colour is eliminated is the same, then we compare the time when the second-last eliminated colour was eliminated, etc. But it seems like an over-complicated rule, and if we play without fractional collision handling, then we might as well stick to the normal elimination rule for simplicity.
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Waow. That’s - Waow. Hadn’t think of that. Now I want to try it.
I think I’m going to come up with a list of objectives. Then I’ll happily be gamemaster for such a game. I think what could be fair would be to have a public list of all possible objectives, but what actual objectives are used is a secret, each player knowing only their own objective. Or do you think I should keep the whole list secret?
Also, should it be capture go, or normal go? I think normal go would fit this format better. (Well, by “normal” I just mean “a player is not eliminated when a stone is captured”.)
EDIT: Actually, I have a hard time coming up with meaningful objectives other than capturing stones. I’d want to have things related to territory and shape, but the problem is that territory in go only really makes sense at the end of the game - as opposed to risk where “controlling a space” makes sense during the game.
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Sure you can keep it secret for the first game, but the list won’t be secret anymore for future games, especially if we play it in a public environment like this forum 
I think that depends on the objectives. For example if the objectives include “eliminate the player with colour X”, then there has to be some elimination rule in place.
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Crazy idea: How about combining Go with Werewolf?
Players have a secret role; Some villagers, some werewolves (and possibly special roles)
During each day phase players submit moves which are played and revealed by the arbiter.
During the night phase werewolves submit one “wolf move”, placing a stone that cannot be captured.
Players are eliminated when a certain condition is met, for example when one of their stones gets captured, or when they have no stones remaining etc.
This is just a very rough sketch
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I had some similar ideas above:
I would not go as far to make the wolf stones uncapturable. I think that capturing should offer the opportunity for both the wolves to eliminate villages, and for the villagers to “vote out” wolves.
Instead of investigative roles, maybe just revealing the faction of each eliminated player is enough.
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I saw that post but for some stupid reason I thought it was a joke, and then forgot about it … Sorry, my bad!
I’m thinking that the wolves also place stones as a villager. These stones can be captured, and that is how to eliminate a wolf player.
The “wolf stones” would be clearly indicated as played by the wolves, and thus it would be easy for the villagers to protect themselves by collectively capturing them. At least that is why I thought it might make sense to have the wolf stones be immortal.
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Oh I see, the wolf stones are a separate color altogether.
My original mention was kind of a half joke, since I do think the concept is an interesting possibility, but needs a lot more design consideration than what I had wrote.
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While we’re discussing new variants, I’m a bit curious about the implications of allowing “unbreakable” promises. At any point a player can make a promise such as
I will never play A1.
or
As long as Red doesn’t play A2, I will not play A1.
Promises are separate from usual discussion and should be clearly marked in some fashion.
One could restrict the promises to some specific type of statements, but I think it would be a lot of fun to allow any statement that can objectively and quickly be evaluated (so “I will not make any agressive moves towards Red” wouldn’t qualify because it’s not well-defined, and similarly you shouldn’t make promises pertaining to unsolved mathematical problems etc.).
It would be a bit problematic to entirely disallow a player from breaking a promise, since they may be stuck in a position where all their legal moves are breaking some promise. Therefore I think it makes sense to always allow a player to make any move they like, but if the move breaks an earlier promise, they are immediately eliminated (before eventual captures are resolved).
If there is no limit on promises, it may be hard to keep track, so perhaps it should be up to the other players to call out breaks of promises when it is in their interest to do so?
Well, some details to iron out, but I hope I got the general idea across. There would be lots of cool ways to use such promises (most obviously, it would allow creating stronger alliances).
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While I find the idea interesting from a theoretical standpoint, I believe that the possibility of betrayal and breaking of promisses adds a lot to the enjoyment of diplomatic games.
Building alliances is very strong when it works, so I’d say it should come with a risk. If players can make promises that are enforced by the rule, then the risk in trusting each other vanishes.
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Totally agreed, this was by no means intended as an improvement to the rules, but as a very different kind of game. It would break some fun parts of diplomacy and instead open up new possibilities of rules lawyering
Also, it seems like it could somewhat limit the risk of real feelings getting hurt, something which I generally find a bit scary about these games.
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What happens in this situation?
Player A: I promise that, during all turns where there is a promise that prevents Player B from playing A1, I will not play A1.
… and Player B makes an analogous promise with respect to Player A.
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If I’ve read that correctly, I think those two are consistent and prevent both players from playing A1.
It becomes more interesting when the promises are self or circularly referential in a manner that produces a paradox.
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We could say that promises may not refer to other promises, or the promises may be ordered chronologically and a promise may only refer to earlier promises.
But more generally, I think rather than worrying about patching out all problems beforehand, it would be nicer to have some mechanic for “accepting” promises built into the rules. For instance, have an unbiased game master who decides which promises are clear enough to be valid, and also helps enforcing them.
I think the problem @martin3141 was going for is that it is also consistent to claim that neither player is prevented from playing A1 by their promises
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Alice: if a promise forces Bob to play A1 on his next turn, I will not play A1, otherwise I will play A1 on my next turn.
Bob: if a promise forces Alice to play A1 on her next turn, I will play A1, otherwise I will not play A1 on my next turn.
