1.2.1 falls silently when running with -daemon
The chesscoin.conf is created automatically and the daemon function is switched off in it...
daemon=0 #(0=off, 1=on) Run in the background as a daemon and accept commands
server=0 #(0=off, 1=on) Accept command line and JSON-RPC commands
Non of other altcoins fall with such args. I ran them a lot.