"Dave Arneson's True Genius": April 13th at 6:00AM EDT

[increment]

May 5, 2017 16:51:54 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

Right.  And as I stated, and is corroborated by Gary's quote that you snipped, prototype is a prototype to Gary even though he and Dave have different rules. Thanks for helping us corroborate that!  Now.  If the rules differed from his campaign to Greyhawk, why would Gary say, "Dave had as much to do with this mess as I did"? 

I'm glad we've vanquished whomever it was that was suggesting that Blackmoor was not a prototype to D&D! That guy is obviously crazy.

I do understand why that triumph overshadows how I was providing a counterexample, an actual piece of data from the era, to show that Blackmoor was not identical to D&D, and that anyone who is asserting that the game of D&D was indistinguishable from what people were already doing in Blackmoor would have had to, say, redo their characters to move from one to the other because the way hit points worked was totally different.

Your argument falls to pieces here, Jon, as the only answer for prototype is the architecture, this supremely wondrous architecture that had never been imagined before.  

So I really was joking in that post back there - are you seriously suggesting that by process of elimination, if Gary designed 50% of the system, the other 50% that came from Arneson necessarily must be what you mean by the "architecture"? Not that Gary meant dungeons, or experience, or anything like that, which seems like a good half of the credit to me, but instead that he anticipated what you would propose after eight years of studying systems theory 45 years later? Gary was obviously more prescient than I thought.

I rest my case and good night to all as it is about midnight here in Corsica.

It is a rest well deserved.

[Admin Pete]

May 3, 2017 19:43:11 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

This extract is from the preface to my unpublished Castle El Raja Key and describes events between Gary and myself very early the very next day after our adventure into Blackmoor Castle NOV 1972. Note that Gary was so excited by the new concept that he thought to use it as a way of creating stories. The two maps that I drew while judging him (that's right, I was ostensibly the first "DM" before Greyhawk Castle was ever rendered and drew the first RPG maps in LG) were auctioned years ago but scans of them were included on the ERK Archive. I don't know how to post them here. PD has my permission to do so along with the accompanying text on the DVD, but they should include the watermark "Copyright Robert J. Kuntz/TLS 1972-2017" across each when and if posted. Text copyright Robert J. Kuntz 2008.

Text copyright Robert J. Kuntz 2008
The Unnameable Tower

This is Rob's pre-Dungeons & Dragons and Pre-Greyhawk adventure map from 1972! This adventure was run the day after Gary, Ernie, Terry, and Rob played with Dave Arneson and David Megarry in a Blackmoor game. The map was created during an adventure run by Rob, as the game master, and Gary Gygax as the player prior to either Dungeons & Dragons or the Original Greyhawk Campaign.

Rob drew out this map as the adventure was being played. The map depicts outdoor travel from the Forest of Dun, through mountains and hills, to the Unnamable Tower! Could those have become the Gnarley Forest and the Original Greyhawk Castle later on? The idea behind the map was to create fiction based on the action from previously played games.

That such a relic of the creation of the Dungeons & Dragons game could survive all of this time! Certainly one of the oldest relics of the Dungeons & Dragons game.
Text copyright Robert J. Kuntz 2008

the unnameable tower.pdf (818.13 KB)


You should be able to view the attachment by opening the pdf and viewing it. I password protected the file and disabled printing.

[increment]

May 5, 2017 17:28:43 GMT -5 Cedgewick said:

Again, being identical is not what "prototype" means. It means having all of the essential features of the final product.  Something along the lines of what you are talking about would be to say that an essential feature of D&D is having a graduated damage system (versus 1 hit 1 kill). Did D&D and Blackmoor both have a graduated damage system? Yes. Were they the same graduated damage system? No.

Um, since people have been reaching for dictionaries in this thread:

prototype: a first, typical or preliminary model of something, especially a machine, from which other forms are developed or copied.

or

A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.

or

prototype: the original or model on which something is based or formed.

or

prototype: an original model on which something is patterned

or

A prototype is the original model, a sample on which to base future designs. A company designing a new toaster will first design and build a prototype and then test it out and see if it's any good.

or

prototype: the original model of something from which later forms are developed

or

prototype: A first or preliminary version of a device or vehicle from which other forms are developed.

There's Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam Webster, Google, Vocabulary.com, etc. In my rapid search, I did see one secondary definition (I think in Merriam Webster) that mentioned "essential features," as you suggested. Now if only we had agreement on which features were essential, but that comes back to a question you don't seem to want to answer, which is, who gets to decide what games like Chainmail "really" are?

And as for "identical," someone else in this thread has been saying that the way Blackmoor was played was indistinguishable to D&D, not me. That is a separate question from the definition of prototyping, but it was certainly what I was addressing when I provided evidence that Blackmoor and D&D were not identical.

 Did Chainmail have a graduated damage system? As far as I am aware, no.

I'd say it did, yes, it had a a system where things take multiple hits to kill: Heroes take four simultaneous hits to kill and Super-heroes take eight hits to kill, which is why they became level 4 and 8 respectively in D&D, as "hits" in Chainmail were transposed to hit dice/levels in D&D. A giant in Chainmail takes twelve hits to kill, as in, "Giants must take cumulative hits equal to a number sufficient to destroy 12 Armored Footmen before melee or missiles will kill them."

[robertsconley]

May 5, 2017 16:51:54 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

]Right.  And as I stated, and is corroborated by Gary's quote that you snipped, prototype is a prototype to Gary even though he and Dave have different rules. Thanks for helping us corroborate that!  Now.  If the rules differed from his campaign to Greyhawk, why would Gary say, "Dave had as much to do with this mess as I did"?  Your argument falls to pieces here, Jon, as the only answer for prototype is the architecture, this supremely wondrous architecture that had never been imagined before.  

When I develop a new driver for a metal cutting machine (prototype or not) there a point where I need to deal the actual machine not what people tell me what it is. Gary Gygax says that the system for Blackmarsh was a prototype for D&D. Fine let's accept that. still doesn't change the need to see what we actually have documented for the system that was used for Blackmoor. That the point Increment keeps stressing and that you and Cedgewick keep dancing around.

I am thinking that it would be a good idea to have a wiki of all the known sources. Obviously we can't post much in the way of scans and text as most is still under copyright but it can serve a comprehensive reference to where the various pieces of information can be found. Normally this probably overkill but given the level of interest in the origins of tabletop roleplaying and its importance to our culture it would be well-received. And it help resolve (or clarify) debates over who said what, when, and where by summarizing the primary sources so people can ask to look at what actually written instead solely relying on what something says. It would also highlight gaps in the records and may get somebody to say"Hey you know I got this in my attic."

[Cedgewick]

May 5, 2017 21:08:26 GMT -5 robertsconley said:

When I develop a new driver for a metal cutting machine (prototype or not) there a point where I need to deal the actual machine not what people tell me what it is. Gary Gygax says that the system for Blackmarsh was a prototype for D&D. Fine let's accept that. still doesn't change the need to see what we actually have documented for the system that was used for Blackmoor.

Increments book Playing at the World is a great reference for this. He touches on almost all of them with citations. Unfortunately getting a copy of some of them can be difficult, but if you ask, someone might give you a scan. Also increments blog has some nice scans of the older stuff.

[Cedgewick]

May 3, 2017 20:30:23 GMT -5 increment said:

May 3, 2017 18:24:50 GMT -5 Cedgewick said:

You're getting hung up on calling them the same thing. They are two different sets of rules:

1)Chainmail 1st edition from March 1971, and

2)Chainmail 1st edition from March 1971 incorporating the additional rules found in the IW "Chainmail Additions" article from January 1972.

Either one of them can be compared separately to OD&D using Kuntz's method.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be needlessly pedantic here. I think this matters because option 2 contains text that looks a whole lot like the open-ended text of OD&D, and option 1 doesn't. If you're deciding the inputs to an algorithm that will tell you whether or not "Chainmail", whatever that is, is a key precursor to OD&D, then suddenly it's really important which of those two options Chainmail "really" is. My question was, who gets to decide that?

This question is the easiest to answer so I will do this one first.  Recall what we are trying to figure out: Does D&D inherit fundamental concepts from Chainmail?  Since both option 1 and 2 above predate D&D, we should pick the one more likely to have those fundamental concepts that get passed down to D&D.  Since option 1 is a subset of option 2 (meaning option 2 contains everything in option 1, and more) we should therefore compare D&D against option 2 (Chainmail + the IW Chainmail Additions).  If we find that D&D does not inherit fundamental concepts from option 2, then we know that D&D does not inherit fundamental concepts from option 1.  Nobody is deciding, really.  We are choosing the worst case scenario because we are trying to establish D&D did not descend from Chainmail at all.

May 5, 2017 8:43:17 GMT -5 increment said:

...To any argument showing how Arneson's architecture would achieve various results in comparison with Chainmail, my objections would mostly be about why you think Arneson's architecture is what you argue it is, and why you think it's Arneson's in particular as opposed to an idea that was just going around...when talking about what you can do with Chainmail's architecture, for any result you say Chainmail would produce, I'm likely to object, "sure, but these are guidelines around which I can build a game that suits me, so my results could be different than yours." This is at the heart of the question I kept putting to Cedgewick about who gets to decide what Chainmail "really" is...

which is basically the same question as...

May 4, 2017 22:39:25 GMT -5 increment said:

...the "Chainmail Additions" text I cited long ago from the International Wargamer does indeed suggest that players can innovate in Chainmail, proposing to attempt things not in the rules, and leaving it to the discretion of the referee to determine exactly how they are adjudicated...How could that mechanic work if the player is not telling the referee what unusual thing they want to do...

which is basically the same question as...

May 3, 2017 20:30:23 GMT -5 increment said:

I do think the tactical wargames in Blackmoor (again, in the "interesting" era) were governed by largely Chainmail rules, with some hacks...If the rules of Chainmail incorporate the idea that, if a player says "I want my horse to kick the dragon!" it is then up to the referee to improvise on the spot how to resolve this - the option 2 way [see below QUOTE 1] - then in what sense do you think Chainmail doesn't provide for this?...Gary did not come down from a tete-a-tete with the burning bush in the mountains to deliver the text that appeared in his "Chainmail Additions" about rules just being guidelines, this idea was commonplace in the miniature wargames community at the time. The contention that this is somehow unique or original to Blackmoor, in my view of the evidence, contradicts a number of clear historical precedents.

Here is QUOTE 1 that Increment keeps referring to, which appears at the end of an article entitled "Chainmail Additions" from IW in January of 1972:

General note: Many unusual circumstances are not covered in these rules, as they are meant primarily as guidelines. This does not mean that the rules preclude their use. On the contrary, the rules are purposely vague in areas in order to encourage thinking and initiative on the part of contestants. If an historical precedent can be found, there is seldom any reason for precluding something unusual, although the final ruling should be left to the game judge, For example; signal fires, raft construction, digging traps, burning woods or constructions, and so on.

By saying the rules are meant to be guidelines, Gygax is not saying you should have a "referee to improvise on the spot how to resolve [player actions like, "I want my horse to kick the dragon!"]"

What he is saying is, "these rules are meant to be guidelines. House rule them according to your own preferences."

What are house rules? Lets define them. House rules are unofficial rules that modify or supplement the official rules of a game, agreed upon by the players playing the game. Groups and clubs often have their own house rules. Simplistic house rules ("we'll arm wrestle to see who goes first!") may not be written down. House rules that involve modifications to the printed rules of the game may consist of crossing out text or numerical values in the rulebook and appending the desired text or value in their place. In a complicated game like Chainmail, house rules are usually written down. In any case, house rules are almost always agreed upon prior to the start of the game.

QUOTE 1 is quite vague.  However, in the beginning of the same article, Gygax states (and we will call this QUOTE 2):

Not very many days after the CHAINMAIL RULES FOR MEDIEVAL MINIATURES were produced, preparations for a second, revised, edition were begun. Strange as this must sound, the necessity for it is made obvious by the additions contained in the August, 1971, issue of the IW, for example. Additionally, continued play and players comments brought out some areas of omission. While the rules were purposely sketchy in many parts-- better to let individualistic wargamers create rules to suit their own ideas and circumstances than to try to bind everyone with hard and fast laws--there are a few parts where we didn't give sufficient information to serve as guidelines. Rather than have Intl.W. readers who own a copy of CHAINMAIL wait for the next edition a year or more away, I thought that an article or two outlining the changes would prove useful. Each new or revised part will be taken in order, and your rule booklet can be annotated accordingly.

Here, Gygax is encouraging the reader to create house rules and to use the Chainmail rules (and the additional rules in the article) as guidelines for how to do it.

Notice how "the rules are purposely vague" from the QUOTE 1 mirrors "the rules were purposely sketchy" from QUOTE 2. He is talking about the same subject, in the same manner.

In QUOTE 1, he didn't clarify what he means, but he did clarify what he meant in QUOTE 2: "the rules were purposely sketchy in many parts-- better to let individualistic wargamers create rules to suit their own ideas and circumstances." 

If the wargamers themselves are creating the rules, they are house rules-- not rules being created on-the-fly by the game judge during the game.

Things to note here:

1) Gygax said "better to let individualistic wargamers create rules", not "better to let the game judge create rules..." He is talking about the players creating the rules, not a game judge.

2) Gygax uses the term "individualistic wargamers"-- he is acknowledging that wargamers like to customize their games-- via house rules.

Gygax often encouraged house rules prior to AD&D. Here's another suggestion under the Fantasy Supplement part stating:

Various Chimeriea, Basiliks, Cockatrices, giant insects, and so forth can be included in play. Simply utilize extension rules or whatever parts thereof of the current rules that you desire.

I take "extension rules" to mean what we typically call "house rules."

QUOTE 1 is not about doing things like, "I want my horse to kick the dragon!" First, the note is talking about house rules that are almost always agreed upon prior to the game, not rules generated on-the-fly to address something the players want to do during their turn. Second, "something unusual" is incredibly constrained by "If an historical precedent can be found,"

QUOTE 1 is clearly aimed at the standard historical wargamer crowd per the clause "If an historical precedent can be found,"

You may say that the mentioning of a "game judge" in QUOTE 1 suggests players should have a "referee to improvise on the spot how to resolve [player actions]." However, that was not the function of a "game judge" in a miniatures war games of the time. Instead, the "game judge" was used to solve an occasional rules dispute between two players. This includes resolving disputes over house rules, which obviously are more likely to cause disputes because they weren't tested for months like the base rules were. Gygax is saying, feel free to house rule, but during disputes over the house rules listen to the judge.

You may say "but how do we know for sure that the game judge in QUOTE 1 was of the type that adjudicated rules disputes between players and not of the type resolving actions on-the-fly (like if a player wants a horse to kick a dragon)?" We know this is the type of "game judge" QUOTE 1 is referring to (and not the DM-type making rules up on-the-fly) because:

1) it says "the final ruling should be left to the game judge."  A "final ruling" settles, once and for all, a rules dispute.

2) Because John Bobek describes the function of a miniatures wargaming game judge in his book, "The Games of War: A Treasury of Rules for Battles with Toy Soldiers, Ships and Planes":

THE JUDGE: Wargames with miniatures need a judge as much as a courtroom does. Forget the law degree. In wargaming, a judge acts much the same way as an umpire does in a baseball game. He or she interprets the rules and settles disputes as to what has happened.

John should know, as according to his biography on Amazon, he started with miniatures in 1968 and was the editor of the International Wargamer from 1971 until 1974. "Mr. Bobek ran many miniature games at UIC and various games conventions including Lake Geneva, Madison, Kenosha, Notre Dame, and all over NE Illinois."  Which means John was rubbing shoulders with Gygax and Arneson.

Finally, consider the examples given in QUOTE 1: "signal fires, raft construction, digging traps, burning woods or constructions, and so on."

Signal fires (creating objects)

raft construction (creating an object)

digging traps (creating objects)

burning woods (destroying objects)

burning constructions (destroying objects)

The examples given in QUOTE 1 all involve creating and removing objects. Why? Because the scope of Gygax's concept of house rules to deal with "unusual circumstances [that] are not covered in these rules" was limited by a basic premise of miniatures wargaming: the need to represent the current state of the battle using miniatures. When referencing the game in the IW article, Gygax refers to it as the CHAINMAIL RULES FOR MEDIEVAL MINIATURES. The first page of Chainmail shows two pictures of a sandtable with miniatures arrayed across it. The first chapter of Chainmail is entitled "wargaming with miniatures," and states:

In order to play a wargame it is necessary to have rules, miniature figures and accompanying equipment, a playing area, and terrain to place upon it.

It then goes into the subject of building miniatures and tables.

All of the examples given in QUOTE 1 involve putting down or picking up one or more miniatures from the table.

He didn't say "start a fire," he said "signal fires"-- a noun because signal fires are objects with miniatures that are placed on the table.

Now compare the list to the Loch Gloomen incidents I suggested that Chainmail had no rules for:

gaining, losing, and regaining favor (action involving an intangible item)

avoiding taxes (action involving an intangible item)

carrying off a character (action)

kick a dragon (action)

The Loch Gloomen incidents in Dave's Blackmoor game involve actions and intangible objects that cannot be represented with miniatures. These incidents can occur in Dave's game because his system has moved beyond the wargamer's table, into the imagination, where literally anything can happen.

Want another example of how "something unusual" is severely constrained by the very premise of a miniatures wargame and is not referring to on-the-fly rules generation?   Consider the basilisk eyes trap Gygax mentions in Wargamer's Newsletter #127:

Perhaps the best part of fantasy wargaming is being able to allow your imagination full reign. Whatever the players desire can be used or done in games. For example, for one match I built a chest of jewels as the object to be obtained to win. However, I did not mention to either team that I had added a pair of "basilisk eyes" (large pin heads dotted appropriately) which immediately turned the first ogre who opened it to stone. The possibilities are boundless.

Note a few things here:
1) the basilisk eyes trap was used "as THE object to be obtained to win." The "obtain some object on the table" scenario was and still is a commonly-played scenario in miniatures games.  Gygax doesn't need to expound further on this because his readers a familiar with what he is referring to when he says that the chest of jewels was "the object to be obtained to win"

2) In keeping with the basic premise of a miniatures wargame, the basilisk eyes trap is a miniature. Gygax says he "built" it and it had "large pin heads dotted appropriately."

3) obviously this basilisk eyes trap was prepared ahead of time-- again, no on-the-fly rules generation here.  Gygax obviously had the rules figured out ahead of time too, as he planned to add the "basilisk eyes" to match the planned effect of turning the first character to open it to stone.  So this

4) he says "perhaps the best part of fantasy wargaming is being able to allow your imagination full reign."

He is not saying the "best part of wargaming" is on-the-fly rules generation and adjudication. This quote is specifically about the advantage of fantasy wargaming compared to standard historical wargaming. Remember, fantasy wargaming is a new thing in 1971.  He is trying to sell the idea of Fantasy wargaming to historical wargamers.  He points out that in fantasy wargaming, you aren't constrained by having to be historically accurate. Recall in QUOTE 1 he mentioned " If an historical precedent can be found, there is seldom any reason for precluding something unusual..."

5) he says "Whatever the players desire can be used or done in games" What does he mean by done? Something along the lines of the example he gives- giving a simple effect to a custom miniature. What does he mean by "used"? He is saying since its a fantasy game, you have more latitude for creating your miniature. Objects can be used for your miniature that would never pass muster in a typical wargame. A pipecleaner might pass as a giant caterpillar in a fantasy game, for example. Building and detailing the miniatures was, and still is, a big part of the hobby.

6) "The possibilities are boundless" pretty clearly means "The possibilities are boundless [relative to standard historical wargaming- why don't you give Fantasy a try?]"

I hope all this is convincing evidence that the rules of Chainmail don't incorporate "the idea that, if a player says "I want my horse to kick the dragon!" it is then up to the referee to improvise on the spot how to resolve this."  The "Chainmail Additions" note is referring to house rules, not on-the-fly rules, and the focus was on standard historical wargaming, not fantasy wargaming.  The game judge is there to settle disputes, not DM.  The scope of Gygax's thinking was limited by the basic premise of a miniatures wargame.  The incidents reported in Dave Arneson's Loch Gloomen battle report cannot be resolved using the Chainmail rules, even with the IW note, indicating Blackmoor had already transcended its individual systems- per Kuntz's book.

[robkuntz]

May 5, 2017 17:28:43 GMT -5 Cedgewick said:

May 5, 2017 16:27:46 GMT -5 increment said:

I am not disagreeing that it was a prototype, just that it was identical.

being identical to the final product is not what "prototype" means. It means having all of the essential features of the final product.

May 5, 2017 16:27:46 GMT -5 increment said:

So let's try to be more concrete. Let's say that the concept of hit points is fundamental - I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. In D&D you roll your hit points as a starting character, and as you go up in level you gain more.

Dave in 1974 wrote a letter saying that's not how Blackmoor worked. Here's what he said he gave to starting characters: "I gave them all twice the number of hits (one dice roll for the number of dice you roll for the number of damage points that they take) 1st throw is a three meaning you cast three dice 3,4,2 meaning that you take nine hits (but you could take as many as 36).” Got that? If not I think I can explain what he means. Now, what about when you level up? "Another point of mixup was that players were not intended to become harder to hit and take more damage as they progress. Instead they were to take the same amount of hits all the time (with the exceptions of spells, magic, etc.) while becoming more talented in inflicting hits and avoiding the same. This has a great equalizing influence.”

So, I'd say the Blackmoor system for hit points was not identical to D&D, not by a long shot actually.

Again, being identical is not what "prototype" means. It means having all of the essential features of the final product.  Something along the lines of what you are talking about would be to say that an essential feature of D&D is having a graduated damage system (versus 1 hit 1 kill). Did D&D and Blackmoor both have a graduated damage system? Yes. Were they the same graduated damage system? No.  Did Chainmail have a graduated damage system? As far as I am aware, no.

Which is why, even with the subsystems/mechanical apparatus being different Gary still referred to it as a prototype as all of the essential architecture was in place and all he did was to change the mechanical subsystems/features.  

My last point is for all posting here but flows off the general idea of essential.  What is esseential to play both D&D and Blackmoor?  This defines the architecture which is always be the base in which the promoted or demoted features operate, that is, their latter inclusion only defines a raised level or lack thereof of complexity within the base architecture (re, Gygax's quote regarding the same in D&D's Introduction regarding "simplicity" or "ultimate complexity"). So the essential architecture of both games is 1) Conceptual Interface (the imagining/creative component); and 2) a mechanical apparatus composed of various subsystems expediting play within that context alone.  So the architecture is always general in design and its adjunct parts are what denote its complexity range (or sometimes "complicated" level as in 3rd edition D&D, but which still uses the same base architecture that Dave created, I might add, as is still a RPG as it has been typed).  As we can note, the real leap in combining these two essential pieces of architecture is the conceptual/creative component of the architecture (re,the creative component, Gary's quote to "change Laws where needed to create different and unique circumstance, paraphrased from the Introduction to D&D).This indicates no change in the base architecture, btw, as D&D no matter how you alter the subsystems will function due to that base being in place, so as Gary did with Arneson's rules, so everybody could do for themselves (as is done to this day, which is why I find RC;s commentary contrary or uninformed about negatives impacts to the base architecture as the iterative qualities of how many OSR clones? proves that the base architecture, extending all the way back to Arneson, remains unchanged). 

So, would anyone argue that this base architecture was not being used by Arneson in Blackmoor? Or to argue that Gary did not utilize it while thanking Arneson for it in print and further credited him as one game designer to the next for it being essential as the prototype?  Nope.  One would have to argue with the ghost of Gygax himself (which has been attempted here, btw). No one here (or otherwise) can do that. So essentially they are the same base game (just as D&D to 5E is the same base game because it utilizes the same architecture with sliding degrees and kinds of features or mechanical ss); and as you read the book you will note that most of the system qualities deriving from Arneson's architecture generate from its primary component, the conceptual/creative component which is the defining component in OD&D.

I am really finished here regarding the subject of D&D's design and systems organization.  One may argue but does one care to learn? I am highly suspect of the latter at this point as I have seen a lot of specious reasoning and opinion that does not fall within the realm of science, design and systems included, let alone that belongs in scholarly discourse of only the historical kind.

[increment]

May 6, 2017 3:14:51 GMT -5 Cedgewick said:

In QUOTE 1, he didn't clarify what he means, but he did clarify what he meant in QUOTE 2: "the rules were purposely sketchy in many parts-- better to let individualistic wargamers create rules to suit their own ideas and circumstances." 

If the wargamers themselves are creating the rules, they are house rules-- not rules being created on-the-fly by the game judge during the game.

I was pretty much with you up to right here, but here I'm not. First, I don't think that "individualistic wargamers" excludes judges the way you seem to think it does, the IW "Chainmail Additions" clearly says that the final decision on innovating and improvising situations to "should be left to the judge." And second, I don't think the text supports a reading that either baseline Chainamil or the Additions here exclude doing it in on the fly. "When such a situation arises settle it among yourselves, record the decision in the rules book, and abide by it from then on" - when do we think "such a situation arises," during play or while watching TV? Okay, I don't really mean to exclude it happening while reflecting on the rules outside of play, but I think it's hard to construe that text as solely being about rules developed during downtime. In the Chainmail Additions it is more clear, I think, because you want to "encourage thinking and initiative among contestants," which mean on the fly as they are doing it.

You may say that the mentioning of a "game judge" in QUOTE 1 suggests players should have a "referee to improvise on the spot how to resolve [player actions]." However, that was not the function of a "game judge" in a miniatures war games of the time. Instead, the "game judge" was used to solve an occasional rules dispute between two players. This includes resolving disputes over house rules, which obviously are more likely to cause disputes because they weren't tested for months like the base rules were. Gygax is saying, feel free to house rule, but during disputes over the house rules listen to the judge.

Mr. Korns would disagree, with his one rule in 1966. His judges do not just solve occasional rules disputes between players.

I think that quote 1 explicitly says that a ruling about how to handle proposals to do things outside the rules lies with the game judge: "there is seldom any reason for precluding something unusual, although the final ruling should be left to the game judge."

Gygax is saying, feel free to house rule, but during disputes over the house rules listen to the judge.

I'm not entirely convinced by that interpretation. But more broadly, to the definition of judges, referees, and umpires, one point where we may be more aligned here is that I do think the concept of the referee as it appeared in Totten, along with the system that "anything can be attempted," is the most direct ancestor of the referee in D&D, and I agree that that peculiar way of considering the duties of the referee entered D&D from the Twin Cities side. But... as I've said, Arneson was eager to share the gospel of Strategos with Gygax, and had in fact been doing so since 1970, so I think that idea was in the milieu by the time people were doing things with Chainmail.

So yeah, definitely don't get me wrong about that, I think the referee of D&D is Totten's referee, and that this stuff we're talking about in Chainmail is only a pale shadow of that. Oh, well, and we can't neglect Korns too. But it was all stuff that was in the air. I do think the combination of Chainmail with Totten's referee, some Braunstein-like expectations about shenanigans, a burst of inspiration about dungeons, some campaign and experience structures cloned from a previous Napoleonic Simulation Campaign... and you've got yourself the main ingredients for a Blackmoor there. Hex maps of wilderness are condiments you can add.

All of the examples given in QUOTE 1 involve putting down or picking up one or more miniatures from the table.

He didn't say "start a fire," he said "signal fires"-- a noun because signal fires are objects with miniatures that are placed on the table.

I hadn't noticed that before, and I think that's a reasonable point to make. But the list does have "for example" at the start of that, and I'd hesitate to read into it that Gygax meant to exclude anything that would not be visible on the tabletop. Especially in light of the quote at the beginning of Chainmail about anything in the rules that "ambiguous, unanswered, or unsatisfactory" being hackable.

The Loch Gloomen incidents in Dave's Blackmoor game involve actions and intangible objects that cannot be represented with miniatures. These incidents can occur in Dave's game because his system has moved beyond the wargamer's table, into the imagination, where literally anything can happen.

I'm pretty much in agreement with your last sentence here. Again, don't mistake me for arguing that there is nothing in D&D that didn't come from Chainmail, or that I think Chainmail was an RPG, or what have you.

You're making a very detailed technical argument here, on historical points that really interest me so I don't mind, but still not answering the question I was poking out - who gets to decide what Chainmail is, at the end of the day? I am like asking you to say the name of a person. We could probably endlessly argue what Chainmail is here, but that's kind of my point. My point is that it has to be argued, and that before you can build any model of Chainmail someone has to then make decisions about how powerful a judge is in Chainmail, whether or not the text that says Chainamil is just "guide lines around which you form a game that suits you" should be read as strongly as the strikingly similar text in D&D, or what have you, because those points are inputs to your analysis of how similar to D&D Chainmail really is. And Chainmail is vague and incomplete, just like D&D is. This is all a matter of judgment, and where there is judgment, there is bias.

And if it's hard to do this for Chainmail, where we have books, documents, etc., I'd argue it is much harder for Blackmoor, maybe prohbitively difficult to build a model in an impartial way. That is, way back in the thread, how we got started down this path.

All of which is perhaps a long-winded way of saying that I am not overly optimistic about creating models for these systems that are going to have a lot of explanatory power.

Want another example of how "something unusual" is severely constrained by the very premise of a miniatures wargame and is not referring to on-the-fly rules generation?   Consider the basilisk eyes trap Gygax mentions in Wargamer's Newsletter #127:

[edit] When I read this the first time, I was confusing the WGN #127 for the WGN #116 article in my response, which is my bad, so I'll just snip that, sorry. I agree the basilisk eyes in WGN #127 are not "on the fly", anyway. I think Gygax wrote that article because many people were complaining at the time that fantasy wargaming was immature or silly, and he was writing this as an explicit defense of fantasy as a gaming setting. I don't think this article really has much to teach us one way or another about whether or not you could change Chainmail rules on the fly.

[Admin Pete]

May 6, 2017 3:14:51 GMT -5 Cedgewick said:

SNIP

I hope all this is convincing evidence that the rules of Chainmail don't incorporate "the idea that, if a player says "I want my horse to kick the dragon!" it is then up to the referee to improvise on the spot how to resolve this."  The "Chainmail Additions" note is referring to house rules, not on-the-fly rules, and the focus was on standard historical wargaming, not fantasy wargaming.  The game judge is there to settle disputes, not DM.  The scope of Gygax's thinking was limited by the basic premise of a miniatures wargame.  The incidents reported in Dave Arneson's Loch Gloomen battle report cannot be resolved using the Chainmail rules, even with the IW note, indicating Blackmoor had already transcended its individual systems- per Kuntz's book.

Snipped due to post length. I like this! IMO  I think that you have thoroughly established the power and scope of a Judge in Chainmail and other wargames, and that it is clearly different from the power and scope of the Referee as envisioned by Arneson and implemented in OD&D.

[increment]

May 6, 2017 7:11:16 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

May 6, 2017 3:14:51 GMT -5 Cedgewick said:

SNIP

I hope all this is convincing evidence that the rules of Chainmail don't incorporate "the idea that, if a player says "I want my horse to kick the dragon!" it is then up to the referee to improvise on the spot how to resolve this."  The "Chainmail Additions" note is referring to house rules, not on-the-fly rules, and the focus was on standard historical wargaming, not fantasy wargaming.  The game judge is there to settle disputes, not DM.  The scope of Gygax's thinking was limited by the basic premise of a miniatures wargame.  The incidents reported in Dave Arneson's Loch Gloomen battle report cannot be resolved using the Chainmail rules, even with the IW note, indicating Blackmoor had already transcended its individual systems- per Kuntz's book.

Snipped due to post length. I like this! IMO  I think that you have thoroughly established the power and scope of a Judge in Chainmail and other wargames, and that it is clearly different from the power and scope of the Referee as envisioned by Arneson and implemented in OD&D.

Again, the referee of OD&D is Totten's referee, not Chainmail's judge. No argument there. Well, I guess most people consider Totten a wargame, so "Chainmail and other wargames" is perhaps something to argue.

[Crimhthan The Great]

Bitd I and my group, got our hands on just the fantasy section of Chainmail copied and sent to me by a friend and used it to play a game with. We did some of the things that Arneson likely did and devised a way to grow your character from just an individual fighter up to SuperHero. And we did other things as well and what we played would not have been mistaken for a Chainmail game, neither did it have the scope and scale of Blackmoor. (Although we did get the full booklet later we were not into the miniatures themselves). When D&D came out we switched what we were doing over to it and it was an immediate sea change from the fantasy section of Chainmail. As a ref, player and user, it is IMO laughable to not see D&D as something unique. Is there a lot of Chainmail stuff in D&D, yes of course, D&D is the Gygax version of Blackmoor so of course he used mechanics and revised mechanics from Chainmail to replace some of the mechanics that Arneson use, after all he was familiar with them. But as has been pointed out on forums for years, Gygax did not use Chainmail, he used the "Alternate combat system" in D&D. IMO the only reasons that Chainmail is mentioned by name in OD&D is primarily to sell copies of it and secondarily as a reference. Outdoor survival was mentioned simply because they found so much utility with the board as a ready made wilderness to get you started the same way it got them started (i.e. maps make great game aids and maps should be produced and sold or given out gratis by publishers as candy).

IMO there is a lot of straining out gnats and swallowing camels going on here and elsewhere. IMO robkuntz has it right and Cedgewick gets it as does derv in some of his posts over on our brother forum. But what do I know, I've only been playing with this since that fantasy section of Chainmail was sent to me back in 1971. Now if I could actually get a copy of Midgard from the early 70's pre D&D I would play it and decide for myself if it were the full blown D&D equal as some seen to claim. I would posit that it could not have been due to the scant reach it seems to have had and that no one seems to have been excited enough about it to go all in and publish it as far as I know.

Bitd day when we were kids we played Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, and we also played Monsters and Heroes (obvious from kids raised on fairy tales and mythology). We also played a game we just called Tarzan. D&D took us back to those games, back to our childhood. Now when we were 10 (as proposed in another thread on another forum) could we have picked up D&D and unaided have ran with it, no we did not have enough background at that age, (but I have helped many of my family and friend young ones at that age and younger play), but in my 30's no sweat.

[increment]

May 6, 2017 8:30:26 GMT -5 Crimhthan The Great said:

IMO there is a lot of straining out gnats and swallowing camels going on here and elsewhere.

It's hard, and I can tell confusing to have two discussions simultaneously about what method we use to approach history and what the historical facts were. No one, especially not me, is suggesting that D&D wasn't unique, that Arneson didn't make a huge, transformative contribution to gaming, and so on. I mean, if I don't think D&D was a huge thing, I've kinda been making a strange use of my time for the last decade or so. All the straining out gnats in this thread is just about exactly how we can try to identify what Arneson's contribution was, and how we decide where it was unique and original to Arneson and where it was not.

[Crimhthan The Great]

First of all, is Tom Drake still alive? Second, if so, can he or his heirs be convinced to release hard copy or pdf of the Midgard II rules pre-D&D if they still exist(in pdf you could include every still existing version) and a hard copy or pdf of the post D&D rules. I am sure there would be quite a few buyers of even a non-OCR scanned pdf file.

Third, perhaps then we could find out what the "basic tenets of the game" were and compare the whole thing directly to OD&D.

Fourth, is there any evidence that Dave Arneson ever saw those rules or was he just influenced by the advertising blurb you posted (which I think we have to assume that he saw).

Fifth, what information do you have about the original British Midgard and about the German Armageddon?

Sixth, as an aside, I find it interesting that in 1972 Tom Drake was concerned about munckins/"super-characters".

[Crimhthan The Great]

May 6, 2017 9:10:41 GMT -5 increment said:

May 6, 2017 8:30:26 GMT -5 Crimhthan The Great said:

IMO there is a lot of straining out gnats and swallowing camels going on here and elsewhere.

It's hard, and I can tell confusing to have two discussions simultaneously about what method we use to approach history and what the historical facts were. No one, especially not me, is suggesting that D&D wasn't unique, that Arneson didn't make a huge, transformative contribution to gaming, and so on. I mean, if I don't think D&D was a huge thing, I've kinda been making a strange use of my time for the last decade or so. All the straining out gnats in this thread is just about exactly how we can try to identify what Arneson's contribution was, and how we decide where it was unique and original to Arneson and where it was not.

IMO it is pretty clear, that OD&D consists entirely of the ideas created(synthesized, collected, combined and extrapolated) by Arneson into one coherent whole which he showed to Gygax and others and some or most of his mechanics replaced with Gygax preferences. It is IMO crystal clear that Arneson combined everything he had access to from any source and created his architecture. The fact that at some level Midgard/Migard II(Armageddon) may have been very close is irrelevant unless Arneson had a copy of those rules and as far as I know that storage shed of his papers does not mention it.

IMO it is highly unlikely that Tom Drake got all the way there since it essentially went almost no where.

[increment]

May 6, 2017 9:43:02 GMT -5 Crimhthan The Great said:

 perhaps then we could find out what the "basic tenets of the game" were and compare the whole thing directly to OD&D.

Well, a couple things: Midgards were campaigns, and like the Blackmoor campaigns, their rules shifted over time. In my blog post I included a blurb from the Midgard zine showing how people changed the rules while the campaign was in progress. So trying to release "the rules" is complicated, because the rules were in flux. But the general principle that you could innovate, and that the rules were just guidelines, that doesn't seem to change.

I do know a bit about the UK Midgard, and about German Armageddon - the German Armageddon really was kind of a big board game, but the earliest blurbs from the UK Midgard talk about having flexible rules. The first flyer that Patterson circulated for the UK Midgard, in Jan 1971, says "the rules will not be permanent and will be changed by the gamesmaster and the players as the game progresses."

I guess my meta-point here is that D&D itself, if we're trying to "model" it, isn't exactly brimming over with text like that about the openness of its rules. Really that text is largely confined in the 3LBBs to a handful of sentences on page 4. I mean, there are passages where the rules express self-awareness of their vagueness, places like where it suggests that if you want to play a Balrog it's up the referee to decide how to do that, or where the referee can kind of improvise around NPC loyalty and a few topics like that. Well, and I suppose the stuff asking "why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" at the end. But for the most part, that stuff at the start of the introduction about how "As with any other set of miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign" and what follows in that paragraph is what we have to go by when it comes to the rules telling you to change the rules.

I did not bring up Midgard to argue that Arneson knew Midgard, or that he was influenced by it. I brought it up to show that D&D's ideas about the openness of rules were just out there in the world ("as with any other set of miniatures rules") in the early 1970s, and that superficially it is hard to tell what about them was unique. Even the handful of sentences at the beginning of Chainmail seems to carry some of this flavor. So does Korns's one rule from 1966. So does Totten's Strategos which we generally say Wesely brought into Braunstein (though of course Arneson made his Strategos variants as well). So do things going in with Tony Bath's Society of Ancients that we haven't talked about yet. It is a cluster that was developing simultaneously in multiple places. When we look at the text in D&D about openness, I think we need to see it in this broader context. And:

May 6, 2017 9:53:20 GMT -5 Crimhthan The Great said:

 It is IMO crystal clear that Arneson combined everything he had access to from any source and created his architecture.

Yes, Blackmoor was a process of synthesis with some independent innovation, as virtually everything is. Again, who would argue the contrary?

[Deleted]

May 5, 2017 16:27:46 GMT -5 increment said:

May 5, 2017 16:24:15 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

I am sorry, but you have no evidence to the contrary that it wasn't a prototype that Gary sated it was.

I am not disagreeing that it was a prototype, just that it was identical.

So let's try to be more concrete. Let's say that the concept of hit points is fundamental - I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. In D&D you roll your hit points as a starting character, and as you go up in level you gain more.

Dave in 1974 wrote a letter saying that's not how Blackmoor worked. Here's what he said he gave to starting characters: "I gave them all twice the number of hits (one dice roll for the number of dice you roll for the number of damage points that they take) 1st throw is a three meaning you cast three dice 3,4,2 meaning that you take nine hits (but you could take as many as 36).” Got that? If not I think I can explain what he means. Now, what about when you level up? "Another point of mixup was that players were not intended to become harder to hit and take more damage as they progress. Instead they were to take the same amount of hits all the time (with the exceptions of spells, magic, etc.) while becoming more talented in inflicting hits and avoiding the same. This has a great equalizing influence.”

So, I'd say the Blackmoor system for hit points was not identical to D&D, not by a long shot actually. And in Blackmoor, when you dealt hits of damage, you only dealt one, you didn't do 1d6, say. There are kind of a lot of things like this.

The fact that hit points are different is almost entirely irrelevant, other than to prove that Blackmoor played differently from Greyhawk.  Systems architecture allows for changing subsystems while the system remains whole.  Most of my systems experience is with computers, so that is the analogy that comes to mind.  You can take a computer system and remove a printer and replace it with something else and it's still the same system.  I see hit points as being that sort of thing; the difference it makes to the concept of the ur-game is minimal, and well within both Gary and Dave's concept of "the game" being of an infinite number of variations.

[Deleted]

May 6, 2017 7:21:16 GMT -5 increment said:

May 6, 2017 7:11:16 GMT -5 Admin Pete said:

Snipped due to post length. I like this! IMO  I think that you have thoroughly established the power and scope of a Judge in Chainmail and other wargames, and that it is clearly different from the power and scope of the Referee as envisioned by Arneson and implemented in OD&D.

Again, the referee of OD&D is Totten's referee, not Chainmail's judge. No argument there. Well, I guess most people consider Totten a wargame, so "Chainmail and other wargames" is perhaps something to argue.

Totten WAS a wargame.

At some point in the discussion, the major difference becomes "What is the game ABOUT?"

I've played Chainmail.  I've played Korns.  I've played a hell of a lot of other wargames.

I've also played Greyhawk and Blackmoor.  They are VASTLY different from any of those other games.

I may not be able to precisely elucidate the difference, to the anguish of historians, but by Crom's hairy nutsack they were not even CLOSE to the same.  Even at age 16 after my first night of playing in Greyhawk, I knew that I had experienced something totally new.

[robkuntz]

May 6, 2017 14:14:37 GMT -5 @gronanofsimmerya said:

May 6, 2017 7:21:16 GMT -5 increment said:

Again, the referee of OD&D is Totten's referee, not Chainmail's judge. No argument there. Well, I guess most people consider Totten a wargame, so "Chainmail and other wargames" is perhaps something to argue.

Totten WAS a wargame.

At some point in the discussion, the major difference becomes "What is the game ABOUT?"

I've played Chainmail.  I've played Korns.  I've played a hell of a lot of other wargames.

I've also played Greyhawk and Blackmoor.  They are VASTLY different from any of those other games.

I may not be able to precisely elucidate the difference, to the anguish of historians, but by Crom's hairy nutsack they were not even CLOSE to the same.  Even at age 16 after my first night of playing in Greyhawk, I knew that I had experienced something totally new.

It is a melding of the conceptual/imaginative and mechanical which brought childhood play forward into the realm of adult influenced knowledge bases and procedures.

[captaincrumbcake]

Okay, so I'm going to weigh in on this, with how I perceive the whole affair.


Dave showed us it's okay to pick our teeth after a meal. Until then, we didn't. He said, look, you can take an object and get that gunk out from between your teeth. He gave us the idea that it was okay. His means of doing so--his architecture--suggested we could use a pen knife, tweezers, manufactured toothpicks, or toothpicks made at home, a pencil, or whatever we wanted. And so some tried it, and found it much to their liking. We are the lucky recipients of those pioneers that first stabbed their gums, chipped their teeth, and suffered, because we can now choose which architecture is the best to use when picking our teeth. 

Am I being too metaphorical?

[robkuntz]

May 6, 2017 14:28:50 GMT -5 captaincrumbcake said:

Am I being too metaphorical?

Only for those who do not prefer metaphors.

[mormonyoyoman]

I never metaphor I didn't like.

[robkuntz]

May 6, 2017 14:59:36 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

I never metaphor I didn't like.

Can the same be said in reverse?  Well... Rohpatem.  Yes!

[mormonyoyoman]

May 6, 2017 15:13:49 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

May 6, 2017 14:59:36 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

I never metaphor I didn't like.

Can the same be said in reverse?  Well... Rohpatem.  Yes!

Ha! Now you're banished to the 5th dimension for 90 days!

[robkuntz]

May 6, 2017 15:26:19 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

May 6, 2017 15:13:49 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

Can the same be said in reverse?  Well... Rohpatem.  Yes!

Ha! Now you're banished to the 5th dimension for 90 days!

I've been banished to worse bands.  At least I'll have "No more eggs to fry."

[mormonyoyoman]

May 6, 2017 15:28:48 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

May 6, 2017 15:26:19 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

Ha! Now you're banished to the 5th dimension for 90 days!

I've been banished to worse bands.  At least I'll have "No more eggs to fry."

Not until August.

[robkuntz]

May 6, 2017 15:29:35 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

May 6, 2017 15:28:48 GMT -5 robkuntz said:

I've been banished to worse bands.  At least I'll have "No more eggs to fry."

Not until August.

I might stay overnight, who knows?

[mormonyoyoman]

Bring your earplugs; the neighbors are noisy. Last night I couldn't get to sleep at all.

[robkuntz]

May 6, 2017 17:01:42 GMT -5 mormonyoyoman said:

Bring your earplugs; the neighbors are noisy. Last night I couldn't get to sleep at all.

Ar least, after 44 years, you have no wedding bell blues.

[Deleted]

After this many years I'm afraid my tummy looks rather like a beautiful balloon. Well, a balloon, at least.

But I've opened the blinds to let the sun shine in.

[robkuntz]

May 6, 2017 17:20:12 GMT -5 @gronanofsimmerya said:

After this many years I'm afraid my tummy looks rather like a beautiful balloon. Well, a balloon, at least.

But I've opened the blinds to let the sun shine in.

Use that balloon and sail away into the age of aquarius.