After rambling on about chess variant pieces I should also start talking more about variants in general. The internet has not only made chess more widespread, but it also gave a new avenue for variants that were only known in small circles mostly through the Chess Variant Pages. Recently, Chess.com and Lichess included variants in the games you can play in real time online, thus there's now more opportunities to play and analyze these hitherto rarely played games.

So, chess variants. Why? Games don't really just pop up out of nowhere (we're not going to get into the whole intellectual property thing) and most of them simply develop over time, where changes come and go until something sticks and we're stuck with it in an official level. The earliest roots of the chess as we know it came from India and its direct ancestor from Persia. Those games also count as variants, and so do the other descendants as they appear in places like China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

In terms of game design no one is really trying to make Chess 2. The classic game as we know it does have its share of problems that designers just can't help but want to tweak, but save for Fischer Random none of the proposals have gotten that much traction. A chess variant is expected to be "chess-like," whatever that means: usually "has king to mate" and "is still abstract strategy" is enough but even those two get done away with when needed.

Variants are also made for experimentation. Ralph Betza has done a lot of work on piece values and has created various games based on a single concept used to its full extent such as variants where pieces move differently depending on some condition it is in. As for compositions, variants come up to make some clever theme a reality, with some variants only working on a problem but not practical play (we'll gloss over retro for sanity's sake). The fun in fairy chess problems is in the use of ideas not possible in orthodox problems, may it be a theme or a geometric trick (some stipulations not in practical play are considered orthodox options in problem circles anyway)

For designers there is a certain paradigm in how a variant should work, while problemists are more interested in conjuring cool lines, whether or not the variant works in practical play. Grasshoppers are a favorite in compositions yet never featured in a dedicated game, but while game designers can't help but love the Xiangqi cannon, they rarely appear in compositions.

More importantly, though, the game has to be fun, or something worth playing in addition to chess. Variants appeal to those who already know chess, and the way they are presented includes allusions to the game everyone knows. There is no sense in trying to pass off a game that feels like chess as some new thing so the best it can do is be a nice extra game for the chess enthusiasts or be another game in the collection for the more general board game folk.

The Chess Variant Pages has already answered the question why play these variants, so I won't add to it any more, but let me conclude this mess this way: Amid the kinds of popular designer board games floating around in the scene, chess variant fans are happy enough to get something new.