How Tony Bath almost invented D&D

[tetramorph]

After now having read a few of Bath's works and especially his "Setting up a Wargames Campaign," I think I know why Bath's campaign never quite achieved what Gygax and Arneson did with Dungeons and Dragons.

It is really only one complex of things. Tony Bath never took role-play action to the one-to-one scale allowing role-play itself to determine the "character" of a character.

He did, like Gygax and Arneson, invest in what he called "characterization," and that down to the level of the local garrison leader. He used this characterization to determine outcomes of players orders in outposts and the like. But players always played the generals or leaders of their nation, never lower level than that.

He also engaged in fairly abstract combat resolution at various levels of scale -- he did not always pull out the miniatures.

Almost all the elements of D&D are there. He just never role-played a low-level character working his way up to greater power. This happened, but the players never role-played this. It was determined over the course of the campaign by the referees.

One-to-one scale and the "invention" of the underworld as the place where heroes are made seems to be what Gygax and Arneson did that gave us what we have now.

Nevertheless, Bath's "rules" for characterization are both different and genius. I think they could be modified to be used for generating truly fascinating NPCs in a D&D campaign.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

This sounds fascinating. I have to admit that I never heard of Tony Bath before this. Is there a comprehensive guide somewhere on his stuff?

[tetramorph]

Jan 25, 2015 21:46:08 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

This sounds fascinating. I have to admit that I never heard of Tony Bath before this. Is there a comprehensive guide somewhere on his stuff?

I learned about him through Jon Peterson's "Playing at the World," which is awesome.

Then I got the book "Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming" for Christmas.

It is a compilation of a few of Bath's work, including, most importantly for us D&D players, his "Setting Up a Wargames Campaign."

Just awesome. And not expensive.

Enjoy!

[Admin Pete]

Interesting analysis and I have have to put that book on my wish list! I only know a little and I would love to know more!

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

Jan 26, 2015 18:58:38 GMT -5 tetramorph said:

Jan 25, 2015 21:46:08 GMT -5 The Semi-Retired Gamer said:

This sounds fascinating. I have to admit that I never heard of Tony Bath before this. Is there a comprehensive guide somewhere on his stuff?

I learned about him through Jon Peterson's "Playing at the World," which is awesome.

Then I got the book "Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming" for Christmas.

It is a compilation of a few of Bath's work, including, most importantly for us D&D players, his "Setting Up a Wargames Campaign."

Just awesome. And not expensive.

Enjoy!

Added to my wish list!

[Deleted]

Hmm; may I offer a comment? Prof. Barker did take this road, in his Tekumel campaigns. He used Tony's rules for campaigns to run his 'meta-game'; he had created 1,500 NPCs on 3" x 5" index cards in 1974 or so, and rolled every month for the promotions, demotions, marraiges, divorces, births, deaths, and everything else that happened in his campaign. We'd go in to a city, and ask for somebody we knew - they'd gotten a prmotion, and would have moved to a new city; Phil would move the index card from the one city file in his card indexes to the new one, and so we'd go and meet the person there.

Tony sent the professor a manuscript copy of his book, and Phil later bought a copy of the printed version. When I started gaming with Phil, he suggested this book and I got a copy; I still have it, and I still use it. I'll be using it in my forthcoming campaign - it's held up very well over the years, and still works just fine.

The theory that Dave and Gary had was that the 'domain game' would use these rules, but they were very surprised when very few players expressed any interest in running a fief; Phil had the same problem, with his two early fiefholders (In Ferenara and Tu'umnra) causing all sorts of problems. It wasn't until I became Governor of Hekellu that we really played this kind of thing with him.

[tetramorph]

Feb 15, 2015 12:53:58 GMT -5 @chirinebakal said:

Hmm; may I offer a comment? Prof. Barker did take this road, in his Tekumel campaigns. He used Tony's rules for campaigns to run his 'meta-game'; he had created 1,500 NPCs on 3" x 5" index cards in 1974 or so, and rolled every month for the promotions, demotions, marraiges, divorces, births, deaths, and everything else that happened in his campaign. We'd go in to a city, and ask for somebody we knew - they'd gotten a prmotion, and would have moved to a new city; Phil would move the index card from the one city file in his card indexes to the new one, and so we'd go and meet the person there.

Tony sent the professor a manuscript copy of his book, and Phil later bought a copy of the printed version. When I started gaming with Phil, he suggested this book and I got a copy; I still have it, and I still use it. I'll be using it in my forthcoming campaign - it's held up very well over the years, and still works just fine.

The theory that Dave and Gary had was that the 'domain game' would use these rules, but they were very surprised when very few players expressed any interest in running a fief; Phil had the same problem, with his two early fiefholders (In Ferenara and Tu'umnra) causing all sorts of problems. It wasn't until I became Governor of Hekellu that we really played this kind of thing with him.

Man, thanks so much. That is really great perspective! I am learning a lot!

[Admin Pete]

Feb 15, 2015 12:53:58 GMT -5 @chirinebakal said:

Hmm; may I offer a comment? Prof. Barker did take this road, in his Tekumel campaigns. He used Tony's rules for campaigns to run his 'meta-game'; he had created 1,500 NPCs on 3" x 5" index cards in 1974 or so, and rolled every month for the promotions, demotions, marraiges, divorces, births, deaths, and everything else that happened in his campaign. We'd go in to a city, and ask for somebody we knew - they'd gotten a prmotion, and would have moved to a new city; Phil would move the index card from the one city file in his card indexes to the new one, and so we'd go and meet the person there.

Tony sent the professor a manuscript copy of his book, and Phil later bought a copy of the printed version. When I started gaming with Phil, he suggested this book and I got a copy; I still have it, and I still use it. I'll be using it in my forthcoming campaign - it's held up very well over the years, and still works just fine.

The theory that Dave and Gary had was that the 'domain game' would use these rules, but they were very surprised when very few players expressed any interest in running a fief; Phil had the same problem, with his two early fiefholders (In Ferenara and Tu'umnra) causing all sorts of problems. It wasn't until I became Governor of Hekellu that we really played this kind of thing with him.

That is all new info for me. Thank you!  I want to hear more!  Have an exalt!

[Deleted]

I've always dreamt of running an RPG campaign that developed into a fully fledged diplomacy wargame when one or more characters reached that level of power, but there's never been the perfect combination of interest, availability and longevity.

It occurs to me that throughout the history of RPGs, it's generally assumed that the more political aspects of a game only become accessible to players after their PCs have acquired that power, as an 'end game'. You start at level 1 and go on adventures, and when you're level 10+ you can either continue to go on bigger adventures, or try building a little kingdom of your own; since the adventure is what brought the player to the table in the first place, most will choose to stick to that and ignore the king-making aspect.

But the origins of the role-playing game went in the opposite direction: war gamers wanted to put some real context into the battles they fought, and so historical orders of battle were followed and historical combat doctrines were role-played. Then, they developed rules for handling campaigns and what happens in between battles, because they wanted to put some real consequence into the battles. Inevitably players would want to put more role-playing into their roles as leaders, handling diplomacy and sending secret messages in character, sending their leader out to personally lead the troops in battle.

Then, in some battle to assault a outpost base, one of the attacking player's units would manage to break through into the fort, which showed an obvious need to come up with man-to-man rules. That opened a can of worms: in the battle, say, the defending player might describe how he wanted to throw a table in front of the door; the attacker might want to respond by setting the roof on fire; and after the battle is won, the attacker might tell the referee that his men are searching the compound for documents that might provide military information about opponent. The tumbling effect from playing Imagi-Nation miniature war games in the 1950s into role-playing dungeon crawls in the 1970s is both natural and obvious, but we rarely if ever think to play that way anymore.

It makes me wonder if players would be more interested in maintaining the high-level management aspect of the campaign if they were stuck right into it from Level 1. There's really no reason you can't be a first level Fighting-Man and a lord of Hyboria.

[Deleted]

I've taken what Tony did in his Hyborea campaign and have brought it down to the 1:1/D&D scale - that's my current ongoing Dark Ages campaign. I can do things at the 1x1 level using D&D, then go up to team/company level combat using Delta's Book of War rules (10:1 scale, 1 figure to 10 figures per side and perhaps higher if I have enough minis). I can go higher using more abstract rules, like Chaos Wars, HOTT or even the very abstract "One Hour Wargames" by Neil Thomas, and I might look at his Ancient/Medieval rules as well. 

I'm using Roll20 to host my hex maps so I can create/move "chits" (Roll20 tokens) and track things at the strategic level. And do some of the abstract battles and interactions.

I have a set of campaign rules that derives from Bath's "Wargame Campaign" book as well as "Solo Wargaming Guide" by William Silvester. 

I haven't worked out logistics and economics yet. That's almost at a level that my brain quits. I need to do it, I'm just waiting for a time when I am REALLY bored... 


So it can be done.

[Deleted]

Tony didn't go for "D&D" because that's not what the game is about.

For that matter, as Chirine said above about Tekumel, there is absolutely no reason that you simply couldn't use the two of them together. If I ever restart my campaign that's exactly what I'll do, using Tony's methods to run the things above the immediate reach of the adventurers. A PC who gets his castle and retainers is essentially a Knight Banneret and fits into a feudal heirarchy neatly. OR they can be a thegn if you prefer, or a jarl, or a boyar, et cetera.

[jmccann]

I don't know how I missed this thread earlier. The post by @chirinebaikal is especially interesting, I did not realize Tekumel used Bath's system. I'd like to hear more of how

Tony did not invent D&D because in the end the characters were just used to generate events. Although there seem to be elements of role play described in the book, these never became a primary focus for the players the way they did in Arneson's campaign.