I believe that chess is unquestionably a themed game.

What I'm really trying to get at is an answer to this question: Is there such a thing as an inherent theme--a theme that's a fundamental quality of the game?

It's pretty clear to me that some games can be completely abstract. I can't stretch my imagination far enough to make real-world associations with tic-tac-toe, nine men's morris, reversi, renju, or checkers, for example. As far as I can see, those games are themeless or abstract.

It's also clear to me that theme is something that can be tacked onto an abstract game, the way an outfit is put onto a Barbie doll. The game Merchant of Venus, for instance, started out as a game about the Renaissance-era spice trade, then morphed into a humorous sci-fi game. In the case of Amazons, it's pretty obvious that the use of chess queens inspired the image of woman warriors, leading up to an extremely thin theme which probably serves as just an incidental mnemonic device.

Thirdly, it's clear that one can stretch his imagination and discover or invent a theme for a game that doesn't necessarily have one. For instance, backgammon has been called a race game and associated with Roman chariot races. The mancala games have been said to have the theme of a hunt. I don ‘t think these themes are obvious, but an imaginative person could no doubt build a convincing case for each theme--just as music critics tell us that Beethoven's sixth symphony is "pastoral" and ought to elicit images of farms, cottages, and sheep, even though most of us would never discover that just from the music.

Finally, I think it's clear that individual players will differ in how much a game's theme means to them. An imaginative player can take a game like Amazons and wholly immerse himself in role-playing a woman-warrior scenario. On the other hand, a matter-of-fact player can play a heavily themed game like AD&D without doing any role-playing at all, but just playing it the way he'd play poker or any other game.

But what I'm not sure about is whether theme is always something "tacked on," "invented," or "role-played," or whether it's possible for the theme to be a fundamental, inherent quality of a game.

That's why I mention chess in particular. Evidently it was designed as a stylized representation of land battle, and people have been seeing it that way ever since--for centuries. In Western chess, some of the pieces have acquired non-military names and images, and still the game is perceived as a representation of battle. In Chinese chess (xiang-qi), other military features are added--a river and cannon. In Japanese chess (shogi), there are prisoners (and paratroopers, if one wants to think of them that way). So, is the battle theme inherent to what chess is? Or is it just a time-honored, multi-cultural aesthetic convention? Either way, it seems to me the battle theme is so deeply ingrained that chess is virtually synonymous with "stylized tabletop battle" or even "war game."

That's unusual, isn't it? What other game has a theme so deeply ingrained that it seems an inherent part of what the game is?

Modern heavily-themed games like AD&D and ASL strike me as "theme first" games--games which seem designed mainly to facilitate players' immersion in the theme. Such games have so much elaborate detail that it'd be a monumental task to convincingly change the game's theme (e.g., to make ASL a fantasy-fiction game, or AD&D a WWII game). Yet with painstaking effort, it could be done (start by making an AD&D behemoth into a Tiger tank, or an ASL infantry squad into a party of heroic halfling adventurers). And the fact that it can be done tells me that this sort of thematic detail is superficial--"tacked on," as it were.

Chess, in contrast, seems different. How would you go about turning chess into a finance game? A railroad game? An art auction game? I don't think chess can be convincingly turned into anything, because it's inherently a battle game. You can dress it up as a medieval battle, space battle, or a battle between cats and dogs--or you can shrug off the details and let it be a generic, abstract or symbolic battle--but it's always a battle. By design, it has the general look and feel of a battle. Some might say it's the archetypal image of a battle (and that actual real-world battles pale in comparison).

Is that an inherent theme, or what? Individual players will always vary in how much a game's theme means to them. But the fact remains, that chess "bears some vague association with war.", i.e., it has a military theme. Wouldn't you agree that nine men's morris is more abstract than chess, since chess at least has that "vague association with war," whereas you can't tell if NMM ever had any theme in particular?

The abstract vs. themed axis is a sort of two-part continuum: (1) to what degree do the game's components (including rules, package, etc.) suggest a theme? and (2) to what degree does a given player take that suggestion of theme into his imagination and play with it? ASL has a ton of "suggestion of theme," but there's at least one ASL player who couldn't care less about that and plays ASL matter-of-factly, just as he'd play checkers or any other game. Amazons has only the thinnest suggestion of theme, yet an imaginative player might vividly picture armor-clad female warriors galloping about firing arrows that interdict movement.

Chess makes a pretty obvious attempt to represent a land battle between two opposing armies. In ancient and medieval battles, spearmen or other infantry were often arrayed like chess pawns across from a similar line of enemy infantry. Other tactical elements of the army--elephants, chariots, knights, cavalry, and so forth--were mixed in with the infantry, positioned on the flanks or in the rear as a reserve. Chariots and cavalry would likely be near the flanks, just as knights and rooks (formerly chariots) are at the end of the back rank in chess. The king himself (e.g., Alexander and Darius) might accompany his army, often positioned somewhat to the rear. And each commander would carefully watch his opponent's moves, countering each so as to gain the initiative. In battles like Gaugamela, the defeat of the enemy king might decide the battle--just as it does in chess.

All very stylized, yes--and rather abstract. But to say chess "makes no attempt to reflect any real-world activity" is an overstatement IMO. In fact, chess was apparently designed as a war game, and it's commonly perceived as a war game even today, centuries later.

If we were to set up just two pigeonholes for all games and label one"abstract" and the other "themed," I might also be forced--reluctantly--to squeeze chess into the "abstract" pigeonhole. I don't know. If I did, I'd have to consider chess the most themed game in the "abstract" category. Otherwise, if I put it in the other pigeonhole, I'd consider it one of the most abstract games in the "themed" category.

But my intention here was not to insist on those two pigeonholes. I'm just inquiring into what theme really is and whether there's such a thing as "inherent theme"--theme so deeply ingrained as to be a fundamental part of what the game is. If there is any such thing, chess may be a prime example of it.