{#if room}Back to your game{' · '}{/if}Back to the hall · The rules

How to play

You command Gold or Scarlet, 42 pieces spread across the air, the land and the underworld, and you are after the other King. If you know chess you know most of it already. The rest is learning which pieces can climb and which can dig.

The hall

Write your name and choose your company. Play now against a drake seats you across from the house player and begins at once. Open a table lays a table and hands you a link and a four-letter code to send to a friend. Join one takes a code someone sent you.

Two choices sit above the buttons. You play picks your side, and Gold moves first. The Sylphs picks where the six Sylphs start. As Gygax printed it, Gold's Dragon can take an undefended Sylph on the very first move, which a reader of the Chess Variant Pages took for a misprint. The shifted setup moves the Sylphs one file over, out of reach. Beneath the buttons, your games lists every table this browser holds a seat at and whose move it is.

The table

A table laid, with the room code, the link to send, two seats, and the Begin button

A table seats two. Whoever laid it is the host. The host may seat a drake in the empty chair or send one away, and begins the game when the company is right. Once begun, the seats are closed, and anyone else who opens the link watches from the Peanut Gallery.

The boards

The three boards one above the other in the opening position, the air in blue and white, the land in green and amber, the underworld in red and brown

The three boards stand one above the other, the air at the top, the land in the middle and the underworld at the bottom, in the colours Gygax suggested. Your side is nearest you on every board. Each piece is a disc bearing the initial Gygax gave it, with Dr for the Dragon so it is not mistaken for a Dwarf. The square names along the edges are his too, and you can hide them under preferences.

The panel for Scarlet's Dragon: where it stands and what it can take, what it is, how it moves, why it is in the game, and how to play it

Tap any piece, yours or the other side's, and a panel opens beside the boards, or rises from the foot of the screen on a phone, saying what the piece is, where it stands and what it can reach from there, how it moves, why Gygax put it in the game, and how to play it. Dotted squares show where a piece that is not yours to move could go. Tap the piece again, or the cross, to close it.

The strip above the boards says whose move it is and warns when a King is in check. The chronicle beside the boards tells each move and what came of it, who took what, whose gaze fell on whom, and when a King is in check, with Gygax's notation beside each move. Click a move to see it on the boards, and click again, or make your move, to come back to now.

Making a move

A Gold Dragon selected in the air, with dots on every square it can reach and a ring around the Scarlet Sylph it can take

Tap one of your pieces and every square it can reach lights up, on its own board and on any board it can climb or drop to. A dot marks an empty square and a ring marks a piece it can take. Tap the square and the move is made. Tap the piece again, or anywhere else, to put it down. With a keyboard, the arrows walk a board, Page Up and Page Down change boards, Enter picks up and sets down, and Escape cancels.

A move that would leave your own King in check is never offered. If you would rather be asked before a move goes, turn on confirm a move before it is sent in preferences.

A piece under a Basilisk's gaze is drawn pale with a frost ring around it. It is frozen and can do nothing until the Basilisk moves or is taken.

The Peanut Gallery and table talk

A room's link is an invitation to sit while the table is laid and to watch once the game has begun. Anyone who opens it without a seat takes a place in the Peanut Gallery and sees the whole game, since nothing in Wyrm is hidden. Table talk is for the two players, unless the host lets the gallery talk. Then a watcher gives a name, and their lines are marked as the gallery's. Every line is kept with the game.

A seat can follow you to another device. Transfer seat in the masthead gives four words, good for ten minutes, and the hall on the other device claims them. If your browser loses the seat, the host's Seats makes those words for you. If a player cannot go on, the host can give their seat to a drake there, and the same words bring them back to it. When a game ends, either player may call for a rematch, which opens a new table for the same company and holds the seats until both are back. While a table is laid, you may challenge the keeper of this site to a seat, and the note beside the button gives the hour where they live.

A first game

Play a drake first. It plays a fair game and never minds how long you take. Begin as you would at chess, with Warriors stepping forward and the knights of the land, the Unicorns and Heroes, coming out behind them. Gygax's own advice is to hold the Mage and the Paladin back until the lesser pieces are developed, and to keep your Dragon home. It starts directly above your King for a reason. A Dragon that flies off to raid leaves the King open to the other Dragon, which strikes the land from the air without ever coming down.

Watch the Basilisks. Anything you leave on the land directly above an enemy Basilisk is frozen on the spot, and a frozen piece may as well be off the board. The Cleric is stronger than it looks, since it is the only piece that plays the same on all three boards, and the Dwarves, if you do not hurry them forward, make good guards late in the game.

The full rules, piece by piece, are on the rules page, with Gygax's article beneath them. If a rule here reads wrong to you, or something misbehaves, send word, or use Report in the masthead at the table, which pins what you saw to the move it happened on. The hall's about this game lists the other ways to reach the keeper.