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Post by Admin Pete on May 6, 2017 18:11:39 GMT -5
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Post by increment on May 6, 2017 19:15:21 GMT -5
<snippy> 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. 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. In fairness, I said I don't know if the concept of hit points is the kind of thing we think should be fundamental or not. I mean, if I couldn't bring my character from Blackmoor to D&D without redoing it, I'd certainly notice, it wouldn't just pass under the radar. And as I hinted, I don't think the differences stop with hit points. But also, by the time you got to Blackmoor, Lake Geneva versions of the rules were already circulating in the Twin Cities - we might say you were one of the people circulating them, actually... I've also spent some time on the "infinite variations" part too, and I understand your frustration about the difficulty of expressing exactly what was so different about games in the tradition of Blackmoor from a set of earlier "transitional" wargames. I've found it really hard to figure out how to draw the line myself. I've been reading Rob's book (which arrived today!) and I think I have a better sense now of the character of the work. As someone who's always trying to figure out what happened at TSR in the 1970s, the autobiographical bits about the end of 1976 are very interesting to me. The primary sources around that which I've seen give me a slightly different view of some of the very narrow details of what happened at the shareholder meeting, but that overall account conforms very well with the best data I've been able to recover. |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 6, 2017 20:12:40 GMT -5
First, I don't think that "individualistic wargamers" excludes judges the way you seem to think it does, I didn't say judges are excluded. I said QUOTE 1 is directed toward encouraging the players to house rule. Keep in mind that not all of the judges are wargamers necessarily-- a so-called "judge" may be a brother, cousin, neighbor, etc... that may not understand the rules completely but is willing to listen to both players and decide which side of the argument sounds the most reasonable. I believe that is what Gygax meant in the line from Tractics in your book (although I don't own a copy of Tractics to read the surrounding text for context): Why "disinterested"? to more fairly resolve the rules dispute... Why "serving as 'judge'"? because the party in question may not actually be a game judge, but someone called to serve as the game judge to solve the dispute. They may be asked to read the section of the rules in question and then asked to side with one of the two interpretations put before them by the players. If we can accept that the game judge may not grasp the rules completely and really is only there to settle disputes, then it is unlikely that QUOTE 1 would expect the judge to create rules on the fly because some judges simply wouldn't be able to do it. the IW "Chainmail Additions" clearly says that the final decision on innovating and improvising situations to "should be left to the judge." Here's the statement from QUOTE 1 you're referring to: Lets look at the first sentence. Would you agree that the two phrases below say the same thing, but the second says it more directly and less awkwardly by eliminating "on the part of"? original: "the rules are purposely vague in areas in order to encourage thinking and initiative on the part of contestants" rewritten: "the rules are purposely vague in areas in order to encourage the contestants to think and take the initiative" What are the contestants thinking about and then taking the initiative to do? Clarifying the "purposely vague" rules by thinking about what the rules don't include or don't cover and then taking the initiative to house rule a solution (and build any miniatures you need). You want to include a ballista in your army but the rules only cover catapults? No problem, take the initiative, build the ballista model and create some house rules to cover it. Now look at the first part of the second sentence. "If a historical precedent can be found, there is seldom any reason for precluding something unusual," Here is Gygax's first caveat to making your own units and rules up- it has to make sense historically. You can't build an A-bomb to vaporize your friend's catapults. Also note that "If a historical precedent can be found" ties the second sentence together with the first sentence. Look how well the first sentence and first half of the second sentence stand alone: The unusual part is speaking to something like house ruling a ballista into the game. Finally, the last part of the second sentence that mentions the judge adds in Gygax's second caveat about making your own units and rules up- if a dispute arises concerning your creation between you and the other player, and the game judge doesn't think its fair and disallows it, respect that decision. He has final say. "When the situation arises" is actually written "When such a situation arises" and is referring to rules disputes. Here's the full quote from the Chainmail rulebook: When there's a rules dispute, settle it and write down the decision in your rulebook so that the next time it happens (so you don't need to call your cousin up to serve as game judge again). You can just look in your rulebook. Rules disputes are in real time, but there's nothing here suggesting that anyone is generating rules in real time. 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. That may be true, but Korns didn't awrite Chainmail. If you want me to look at his work and compare it to Blackmoor separately, I'll have to track it down or maybe you can post a link to the relevant section of his work in this thread. If it really is just one rule, then just type it out here. 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." I think I covered this one above 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. When the automobile was invented, tires, engines, metal frames, springs, pedals, cranks, etc. all existed or were "in the air" as you say. But we still recognize the first guy to pull all the parts together with inventing it. Arneson has gotten, practically speaking, no recognition for his invention. 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. Who is the chef that made this dish? Arneson. 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. All the examples are miniatures or terrain on the table. He didn't give any intangible examples, which demonstrates the much smaller scope of his thinking compared to what Arneson was doing in Blackmoor. Dave built a system to handle just about anything the players wanted to do. There is no evidence at all that Gary did that. To continue to assume otherwise (as seems to have been done for 43 years) would be a gross injustice to Dave, who we have both eyewitness (e.g. his players, Kuntz) and written evidence (e.g. the Loch Gloomen report) did it. Consider also Kuntz's 1977 article in WG#1 in which he says "This idea caught on deeply with Gary" and "Gary immediately created his own castle, Greyhawk..." or the article Kuntz published in this thread the other day from 2008 in which he recollects "Gary was exuberant about that very first adventure." Why did the idea "catch on deeply" with Gygax, why did it motivate him to start work "immediately", and why was he "exuberant" if he already fully possessed what Arneson had just gifted him? 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. Good! sounds like the effort was worth it. 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,... Chainmail is almost fully specified-- it was published. If we can agree on the gray areas (such as the ending note in the IW article), then it is fully specified to you and I. If most people are convinced, then it is, practically speaking, fully specified. Nobody can tell someone else what Chainmail is and have them just accept it, they have to instead agree on what it is. ...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... I assume you mean this text: You mentioned that you pretty much agreed up to the individualistic wargamers part, which I have now addressed above, so I am assuming that you agree that the note at the end of the IW article is talking about house ruling. If you do, this isn't much of a leap. I read it exactly the same way. What he is saying is, "these rules are meant to be guidelines. House rule them according to your own preferences." Same writer. Same audience. Same message. He also adds a few other messages (begin your campaign slowly so you don't get frustrated, the players will do things you don't expect-- you should not get frustrated by it, but welcome it) so it is a little longer than the IW note. Whatever Chainmail is missing doesn't matter. Only what it is matters. If the stuff that's vague is not a fundamental concept of the game (and it probably isn't, since you can still play the game), then it doesn't matter either. For example, if you agree with me that the note at the end of the IW article is talking about house rules, then that is not a fundamental concept of Chainmail because most any game can be house ruled-- where's the point of difference to separate one game from another? You can house rule monopoly. You can house rule Chainmail. You can house rule D&D. Does that tell you anything useful about whether D&D derived from Chainmail? or Monopoly? It doesn't help your analysis at all, so you would discard it. First, we need to agree on a definition for what it means for one game to be derived from another. A first game is derived from a second game if the first game shares at least one fundamental concept in common with the second game. If the first and second games have no fundamental concepts in common with each other, then the first game did not derive from the second game. Here is the magical part: If we can agree that Blackmoor and D&D share the same fundamental concepts, then we don't need to know anything further about Blackmoor to determine whether it is derived from Chainmail. Why? Well think about it: according to our definition above, if Blackmoor derived from Chainmail, the two would have at least one fundamental concept in common. But, if we know Blackmoor and D&D share the same fundamental concepts, we can substitute D&D for Blackmoor in our analysis and compare D&D to Chainmail instead. If D&D is derived from Chainmail, then Blackmoor is derived from Chainmail as well. All other details of the two games and all documents, correspondence, etc... concerning the two games is irrelevant. Note that my definition of one game deriving from another requires that the two games have only one fundamental concept in common. That made my explanation a little easier to understand. Rob Kuntz in his book Dave Arneson's True Genius requires a majority (greater than half) of their fundamental concepts be shared for one game to be derived from another. Also, Kuntz uses various terms such as "qualities" for what I am calling a "fundamental concept," but the idea is the same. What is a fundamental concept? I will list a few examples for Blackmoor and D&D from Kuntz's book: Merger of Open & Closed Systems World Building Conceptual play and story need never end; the "Unending Story" No "right way" to play As you can see, they are the high-level concepts that form the basis of play during the game. What you consider a fundamental concept is subjective and based on your own experiences, but if multiple people list the same fundamental concepts, you start to gain confidence in them. |
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2017 20:56:14 GMT -5
In fairness, I said I don't know if the concept of hit points is the kind of thing we think should be fundamental or not. Agreed, it was just an example that popped into mind. Attach no more importance to it than that. I've also spent some time on the "infinite variations" part too, and I understand your frustration about the difficulty of expressing exactly what was so different about games in the tradition of Blackmoor from a set of earlier "transitional" wargames. I've found it really hard to figure out how to draw the line myself. Glad you understand. I wish devoutly I could say "The difference between what went before was A, B, C, 1, 2, 3, X, Y, Z, you and me." But I'm a much more intuitive than deductive thinker. |
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Post by increment on May 6, 2017 21:20:11 GMT -5
Sorry, I really hate to do this when your post is so lengthy, but after many tries, the fourth, maybe fifth time now, you at least somewhat answered the thing I have repeatedly said is my only real question. So thanks, I want to talk about that! We can get back to the technical argument you want to have in a minute, I promise, but this is the only important thing to me here. It is the question I asked back on page 9: ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/post/14011/thread... which was, who gets to decide what Chainmail is? In my last post, I said, "I want you to like say a name" (or something). You didn't supply a name, but you did say: On this point we're somewhat aligned! Chainmail is so vague and incomplete that it takes an argument as complicated as we've been having to drive agreement on what it is, and from the fact that you just filled half a forum page with responses, we're still working through it. Amateurish game products like Chainmail are not something you can just glance at and say, "oh, it has properties are A, B, and C." I've raised a few points of correlation here with D&D because the vague and incomplete text in Chainmail looks a lot like the vague and incomplete text in D&D - provided you only look at them as texts. But what else can we do, really? Our subjective experiences of playing D&D - and I might argue Chainmail too - can similarly be extremely varied. Sure, Mike has a spidey sense for how to play D&D because he learned from Gary. But other people picked up D&D in the 1970s and had no idea what to do with, and tried to play it as a wargame. One 1974 reviewer picked it up and figured it played like Korns. I can easily imagine someone picking it up, reading that the rules are just guidelines and taking the game to all kinds of places Gary and Jeff never anticipated. So the experiences can be just as diverse as our textual readings, and yes, nobody can just tell someone what Chainmail is, it's a fraught and subjective process. Our apparent agreement there is why I was then so disappointed to read this: Only what "it is" matters? After that rough agreement above? Who is entitled to tell anyone what "it is"? You? Me? Mike? Rob? What if we don't agree? Fundamental? That's the whole point. Is that stuff in the front of Chainmail about building a game that suits you around this primitive sketch of rules fundamental or just a throw-away? Who gets to decide? You? This is the only point I've been trying to get through to you in this for the last like 7 pages. That it is a matter of judgment. That it is not objective. It is not impartial. We all bring our prejudices to it. Just so you don't feel cheated, I will comment on two other points in your sprawling post. First: On this point I think you're pretty much correct; I mean, I try not to allude to my book in this thread, but the text in my introduction compares it to someone arguing that just because there were amino base pairs swirling around in the primordial soup it was thus unremarkable when they happened to combine to form life (if you believe in that kind of thing). Getting the right ingredients in the right proportions is the difference between inventing a successful dish and not. The difficulty, we all appreciate, is that Arneson didn't write down the recipe, even if he invented it, and it is really hard to say if the recipe he would have written down would have been as successful as the one Gygax wrote down. Arneson repeatedly said that Gygax's recipe was bad and should have been different. Now, I do not for one second think Gary would have written down the recipe he did without having experienced what Arneson was doing with Blackmoor. But how much of the stuff that was "in the air" influenced Gary when he wrote it down, say? And there's all these weird contingencies that are kind of hard to weigh. Like that hit point thing I was talking about separately here - sure, I'm not going to say hit points are like the end all be all, but if the hit point system of D&D that Gary wrote down really sucked (not to say Arneson's did!), maybe D&D would never have taken off, and we would not be having this conversation now. Little things can have huge impacts on how a phenomenon unfolds. I agree Arneson's contribution has generally been undervalued. But the only valuations people seem be willing to accept are 0% or 100%. To me, neither of those are realistic or even interesting values. You really think that Chainmail doesn't share even one fundamental concept in common with D&D? You list "No 'right way' to play" as a fundamental concept. Is there any possible way that you could read the text "these rules may be treated as guide lines around which you form a game that suits you" that does not comprise the principle "no 'right way' to play"? |
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2017 21:54:57 GMT -5
I think the fragment in the introduction of CHAINMAIL about "the rules being only guidelines" is being overemphasized here. The cover plainly says "rules for medieval miniautres," and the introduction pretty clearly defines it as a wargame.
"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.
There can be no doubt that you have fulfilled the first requirement, for you have
purchased this set of rules."
Sounds like a wargame to me.
"It is always a good idea to amend the rules to allow for historical precedence or common sense — follow the spirit of the rules rather than the letter."
seems to me on even a cursory reading to be vastly different from
"everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way!"
No, I'm not going to go into an exhaustive linguistic analysis between the two statements, because frankly it seems utterly unimportant. They are so obviously different that arguing otherwise is absurd.
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Post by Admin Pete on May 6, 2017 22:28:48 GMT -5
But other people picked up D&D in the 1970s and had no idea what to do with, and tried to play it as a wargame. One 1974 reviewer picked it up and figured it played like Korns. Most of the people that picked up D&D during the 1970's, outside of the wargaming community (i.e. the original intended audience), were like me in that they had no wargame experience at all. Out of all those people, some had a wide and deep background in fantasy, mythology, fairy tales, etc. and it ranged all the way down to a narrow and shallow background in these things. My group had a relatively wide and deep background in these things and we figured it out and played D&D without any limits or limitations. I would surmise as the spectrum moved from wide and deep to narrow and shallow, it correlates very closely with those just took the game and played it and those that asked a millions questions of TSR. The second group are the one of the things that contributed to the direction that Gygax and TSR took, to the detriment of the hobby. People did not beg TSR to teach us how you do all that imagining, the begged TSR to do the imaging for them and that is what happened. I'm not mad at Gygax, nor do I bear him any ill-will, I never have. What happened is what happened, a multitude of factors figure into it. If I had a chance to play in Gary's game and chat with him it would be a blast and a great time. Gary had feet of clay, so did Arneson and so do everyone of us, and none of us are any worse or any better than anyone else. As the Bible says, for all have sinned. To be really blunt and not worrying about how it sounds or comes across, the truth is that Gygax moved from to the PT Barnum model of and that is the direction things have gone up to the present day. The endless splat books and constant printing of new versions to replace older versions. Instead of the Monopoly model which is to support the original game for ever and keep it available forever (For D&D make it a little more user friendly for the non-wargamer) and then publish flavors like Monopoly comes in a wide variety of flavors but you can always get the original. I can easily imagine someone picking it up, reading that the rules are just guidelines and taking the game to all kinds of places Gary and Jeff never anticipated. So the experiences can be just as diverse as our textual readings, ... The original model was for exactly that to happen, take it to all kinds of places that Dave and Gary never anticipated. That is what was supposed to happen, and did for a time. But those that did that are all getting old, the time is growing short to re-ignite the flame that was originally kindled by Arneson. We need someone to go back to the original concept and do something different and unique with it, discover a new direction and even better if a lot of people did it. Rob in distilling out his list of fundamentals is giving away free the tools to do just that if one is capable enough to use them. Robs book has distilled the part that cannot be copyrighted, the conceptual engine itself. And it is right there for the taking for anyone with enough creativity to see it and use it. I can only wish I were smart enough and wise enough to do that. The goal of this forum has always been to encourage creativity, now the goal is more clear, I want to influence someone(s) to do what I have just suggested can be done. You really think that Chainmail doesn't share even one fundamental concept in common with D&D? You list "No 'right way' to play" as a fundamental concept. Is there any possible way that you could read the text "these rules may be treated as guide lines around which you form a game that suits you" that does not comprise the principle "no 'right way' to play"? At I understood it, he used "one fundamental concept" only for the purposes of simplifying the explanation and not because he objected to Kuntz more stringent comparison of a long list of fundamental concepts as the way to do it. |
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Post by increment on May 6, 2017 23:40:12 GMT -5
I think the fragment in the introduction of CHAINMAIL about "the rules being only guidelines" is being overemphasized here. The cover plainly says "rules for medieval miniautres," and the introduction pretty clearly defines it as a wargame. And what does D&D identify itself as on the cover exactly? Although this became a matter of lively debate by like 1976, most people initially thought it was a wargame. Your pupil MAR Barker is one of the first who went on record in print saying that it wasn't, for him, at least not as a starting character. "It is always a good idea to amend the rules to allow for historical precedence or common sense — follow the spirit of the rules rather than the letter." That is not text that appears in 1st edition Chainmail, FYI, though I am aware it appears in later editions. But seriously, I am not repeatedly invoking that quote at the front of Chainmail to suggest that Chainmail is an RPG. I am emphasizing it in order to prevent the discussion of what Chainmail is, and D&D is, and Blackmoor is, from becoming divorced from what the texts actually said. Sure, D&D says on it's cover that it's a wargame, but we can wink and say it doesn't "mean" it. And when it says that it is guidelines around which you can build a game of simplicity or complexity, we may think it "means" something radically different from what Chainmail means when it says that "these rules may be treated as guide lines around which you form a game that suits you." But I'm not sure this difference in meaning would have been so clear in, like, 1972. I think D&D inherited the open-endedness of its rules from a number of sources, like Totten's "anything can be attempted," but I think Chainmail's own lack of insistence on a "right way" to play was part of that equation. Part, not all. If I don't stress this, I feel like people talk about D&D like it is Amber, and Chainmail like it is Feudal. |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 6, 2017 23:40:24 GMT -5
Our apparent agreement there is why I was then so disappointed to read this: Whatever Chainmail is missing doesn't matter. Only what it is matters. If the stuff that's vague is not a fundamental concept of the game (and it probably isn't, since you can still play the game), then it doesn't matter either. Only what "it is" matters? After that rough agreement above? Who is entitled to tell anyone what "it is"? You? Me? Mike? Rob? What if we don't agree? Relax, I don't think it's as bad as you think. You had said that Chainmail was "incomplete," and I was responding to that comment by saying whatever system(s) (e.g., a really detailed cover and concealment system) Chainmail is lacking doesn't matter- maybe I should have said you compare the game "as is". I wasn't talking about how one interprets the rules, which I still believe requires agreement. Fundamental? That's the whole point. Is that stuff in the front of Chainmail about building a game that suits you around this primitive sketch of rules fundamental or just a throw-away? Who gets to decide? You? This is the only point I've been trying to get through to you in this for the last like 7 pages. That it is a matter of judgment. That it is not objective. It is not impartial. We all bring our prejudices to it. OK I am going to get out the highlighter... What you consider a fundamental concept is subjective and based on your own experiences, but if multiple people list the same fundamental concepts, you start to gain confidence in them. Each person gets to decide what concepts are fundamental to a given game. Hopefully a few of concepts that you think are fundamental for a game will overlap with me and Rob and Gronan and then we can agree to use those to analyze that game against others. The difficulty, we all appreciate, is that Arneson didn't write down the recipe, even if he invented it, and it is really hard to say if the recipe he would have written down would have been as successful as the one Gygax wrote down. Arneson repeatedly said that Gygax's recipe was bad and should have been different. Now, I do not for one second think Gary would have written down the recipe he did without having experienced what Arneson was doing with Blackmoor. But how much of the stuff that was "in the air" influenced Gary when he wrote it down, say? And there's all these weird contingencies that are kind of hard to weigh. Like that hit point thing I was talking about separately here - sure, I'm not going to say hit points are like the end all be all, but if the hit point system of D&D that Gary wrote down really sucked (not to say Arneson's did!), maybe D&D would never have taken off, and we would not be having this conversation now. Little things can have huge impacts on how a phenomenon unfolds. I remember a quote about Arneson getting so busy DM'ing in the original Blackmoor campaign that people were calling him in the middle of the night asking him questions, he was doing it during the week, he was doing it on the weekend, etc. It sounds like Arneson's Blackmoor system was so compelling that someone else could probably have written the rules up besides Gary and it would have still been a hit. I also remember a quote saying that they didn't advertise D&D at all, it was all word of mouth, and it took off like wildfire, so Gary's business skills seemed replaceable as well. People often comment it was the other way around, that Gary was essential and Arneson was replaceable, but that formula had already been tried many times... look at all the collaborations Gary had prior to D&D. None of them were anywhere close to as successful as D&D. Same thing afterwards too, despite all the fame. I agree Arneson's contribution has generally been undervalued. But the only valuations people seem be willing to accept are 0% or 100%. To me, neither of those are realistic or even interesting values. True. Sadly, although I can't recall any quotes where Arneson trashed Gygax beyond something like "the money changed him," even with all the fame and fortune Gygax still trashed Arneson. In a Wired interview in 2008 he said "His contributions were ideas, nothing more, Dave can't design his way out of a paper bag." Note that my definition of one game deriving from another requires that the two games have only one fundamental concept in common. You really think that Chainmail doesn't share even one fundamental concept in common with D&D? It may have a fundamental concept in it, but if some other earlier wargame like something from Tony Bath had the same fundamental concept, then I wouldn't say D&D derived from Chainmail, I'd say it derived from that Tony Bath work instead. Once I learned about the Leonard Patt fantasy rules from your blog I got the sense that there isn't much in Chainmail that is truly fundamental and original, but I haven't studied all the previous wargaming works to say for sure (maybe you can speak to this). You list "No 'right way' to play" as a fundamental concept. Is there any possible way that you could read the text "these rules may be treated as guide lines around which you form a game that suits you" that does not comprise the principle "no 'right way' to play"? That list wasn't from my own personal list, that is from Robert Kuntz's book. I think he means there is no win condition in the game, and thus no optimum set of moves you make in the game that will help you "win" the game faster (I don't think that's the same thing as what you're talking about). |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 6, 2017 23:50:52 GMT -5
...unless Arneson had a copy of those rules and as far as I know that storage shed of his papers does not mention it... (anyone can speak up here) Has there been any progress on mining Arneson's storage unit contents? I heard back in 2015 an investor bought it, but the stuff was just sitting there... |
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 4:00:16 GMT -5
...unless Arneson had a copy of those rules and as far as I know that storage shed of his papers does not mention it... (anyone can speak up here) Has there been any progress on mining Arneson's storage unit contents? I heard back in 2015 an investor bought it, but the stuff was just sitting there... Paul Stormberg has Dave's collection and administers to--under obligation--its content. I shall query him about it as he has long ago inventoried Dave's collection. However, whether Dave had it or not is moot, as it is for Korns and others, as what he did was to add to the various mechanical bases he was developing an overt and embedded conceptual component which is solely powered by the imagination. This had never been done before in the history of adult or tapletop games--there is no game in history which uses such an intertwined and pervasive architecture. So, the origin argument persists to this day as an incomplete, linear, trajectory-check and is thus causing "origin-confusion" (as is still taking place here with Increment, no insult intended). It was a new 1st order game form that had never before existed. Thus it cannot derive from (or be tracked back to) any singular other game form that existed before it, but people have been stumped in relazing that. It's like trying to directly describe the engineering of a skyscraper via the engineering of a hut by not accounting for the architectural evolution that historically occurred in between their two "advent" points. The hole that Arneson created by this evolutionary leap in design is what I have finally filled in by using design and systems thinking-- science. It is only a start, however, as what Arneson revealed goes way beyond a mere game itself. BTW: I have typed the game using systems terminology (I withheld including it in the essays, but it is included in my New Ethos ms now at 170,000 words). EDIT: I have e-mailed Paul about Midgard 1 or 2 and Korns being present in DA's collection. According to our previous discussions Dave saved everything (including his baby shoes). I'll post the yeah or nay for both when I've received his comm and also copy Paul's e-mail to this thread. |
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Post by magremore on May 7, 2017 5:06:23 GMT -5
I never metaphor I didn't like. I seem what you did there. Here's something simile. |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 7, 2017 5:50:54 GMT -5
(anyone can speak up here) Has there been any progress on mining Arneson's storage unit contents? I heard back in 2015 an investor bought it, but the stuff was just sitting there... Paul Stormberg has Dave's collection and administers to--under obligation--its content. I shall query him about it as he has long ago inventoried Dave's collection. However, whether Dave had it or not is moot... Agreed, but I was hoping for more not on those other games (Midgard 1 or 2 and Korns) but info on Blackmoor. If we have more data points demonstrating that Dave's Blackmoor had all the fundamental concepts of D&D by November 1972, his genius would be more widely recognized. Increment originally felt the Loch Gloomen battle report didn't contain anything that couldn't be represented with the chainmail rules, but look how far he has come: I think more evidence of what Blackmoor was will make Daves genius more concrete not only for Increment, but for others looking for hard proof as well. |
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 6:42:23 GMT -5
Paul Stormberg has Dave's collection and administers to--under obligation--its content. I shall query him about it as he has long ago inventoried Dave's collection. However, whether Dave had it or not is moot... Agreed, but I was hoping for more not on those other games (Midgard 1 or 2 and Korns) but info on Blackmoor. If we have more data points demonstrating that Dave's Blackmoor had all the fundamental concepts of D&D by November 1972, his genius would be more widely recognized. Increment originally felt the Loch Gloomen battle report didn't contain anything that couldn't be represented with the chainmail rules, but look how far he has come: I think more evidence of what Blackmoor was will make Daves genius more concrete not only for Increment, but for others looking for hard proof as well. One cannot discount how the game was played in Minneapolis and as was played by us in 1972, and as coming from the two sources on both ends. By framing it in that manner you discount history and selectively say history can be presented from one view alone. But the real crux of the matter lies with the systems architecture. Did it or did it not exist prior to the advent of Blackmoor? NO. Then it is new. Unless one, as I stated up thread, wishes to dispute that Blackmoor did not have mechanics AND an imaginative component, which is of course would be dismissed out of hand as baseless. People have forever concentrated on the parts but not the whole. There are no embedded and overt and persistent CONCEPTUAL component organized in this fashion as the PRIMARY part of the architecture in the the history of games and play. Folks must understand the rudiments of design (form and function) in order to isolate even that general point and then proceed from a systems view to then describe its superior attributes or qualities. Thus design always proceeds from the general to the specific. This takes increasing one's knowledge base in relation to what they are studying; and historical analysis will not achieve that on its own, especially in this case where we have a transcendent game form. It's impossible otherwise, like trying the track something without the primary base knowledge of what you are dealing with that is not even describable in general terms let alone specifics. Logical conclusions will never be derived from the lack of knowledge regarding the subject you are studying, Thus Massimo Vignelli said: "Designers without a sense of history are worth nothing". That is, w/o a knowledge of design history, and design history means understanding design and not superficially describing it. I would like to change his quote to illustrate what is taking place to date: "Historians who study design are worth nothing if they do not know what fundamental design is." People are saying that I've introduced a "new way" of looking at the problem and resolving it. What? This is a game design, a specific knowledge category. I have used the fundaments of game design and systems knowledge (games and play are also systems) to describe it. That is not a "new way", it is what is required given the nature of the subject matter. Would we have a dentist describe brain surgery with any efficacy? I think not. This is the only way to definitively approach such a category study--through the primary principles and information of the subject category's knowledge base. |
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Post by increment on May 7, 2017 6:54:40 GMT -5
Agreed, but I was hoping for more not on those other games (Midgard 1 or 2 and Korns) but info on Blackmoor. It also kind of doesn't matter if Arneson was influenced by Migard, or Korns, if the claim we're examining is whether or not he broke with all previous game design thinking. Then the ideas would have to be both original and unique to him - like if someone else was doing it and Arneson just didn't know about it, that won't help in establishing a claim that he was the first and only. As for whether he knew Korns, he at least said he did, and that it influenced RP in the Twin Cities before they ever did anything with fantasy. Midgard, well, the letter I quoted from 1974 about hit points? He wrote that to the guy who was running one of the other Midgard games - Midgard spawned all these child efforts like Midgard 3, Midgard Ltd., and even spawned a Midgard-D&D fusion called "Fantasia." I also kind of think it matters if we are looking for potential influence on D&D that people in Gygax's circle like Len Lakofka were already talking about Midgard 2 in mid 1972. Agreed that as more evidence comes to light, we'll go where it takes us. I mean, your phrasing not mine, but yeah, I still stand with general idea. I'd also say I don't think that means Dave was the only one who could, or did, play fantasy medieval battles at the time involving actions that could not be represented with miniatures - and that for some of those people, it wouldn't be wrong to say they were playing Chainmail. |
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Post by increment on May 7, 2017 7:20:27 GMT -5
Since people seem interested, I thought I'd post a contemporary 1973 description of the sorts of things that happened in a Midgard game, this one from Midgard 3. Descriptions like this in the fanzines of the day were rare; this one appeared in Supernova, which was originally an IFW zine, though by this time the IFW was defunct. Midgard 3 was one of the more over-the-top ones, though I gather that Midgard Ltd. was the one where the characters were basically gods.  |
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 7:31:38 GMT -5
May 22 1971 is when Arneson starts his imaginative component into gear and the pervasive Fantasy world emerges (village, outdoor,castle) and as influenced by him reading Conan stories as he notes. Has anyone definitively tracked the design history of Midgard?
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Post by increment on May 7, 2017 8:15:44 GMT -5
May 22 1971 is when Arneson starts his imaginative component into gear and the pervasive Fantasy world emerges (village, outdoor,castle) and as influenced by him reading Conan stories as he notes. Has anyone definitively tracked the design history of Midgard? Well, I'm not sure I'd say it's definitive, but in PatW I did what I could with what I had. Mostly I cover Midgard 1 and 2 there. Now I have more about Midgard 2 than I did then, and a great deal more about Midgard Ltd. Midgard 1 came into shape in 1971; Hartley Patterson saw the German game Armageddon that inspired him when he attended the World Science Fiction Convention in 1970 at Heidelberg. But that section of PatW comes right after one where I talk about Tony Bath and his Hyborian campaign. I also put a spotlight on what I call his Southampton games, interesting sessions he held in his home town when he happened to have a ton of players. To take one from 1972, look at Slingshot #44 and the description of the Southampton game there, where Bath gave out assigned characters from fantasy fiction to the players of "16 Heroes, 4 Magicians, 2 Brigand Bands, a Pirate Queen and a fearsome Dragon" as the "principle characters." Bath acted as the umpire, but says "it could hardly be described as a war game," though the ostensible objective was "to seek hidden - and usually well guarded -treasures and to fight among themselves." But people took it where fantasy like this can take you. At the end of the day:  Things could get that wacky because Bath and his circle had umpires who were used to improvising. Actually there's a good 1971 statement of this in Slingshot #37 from Dave Millward about one of his game: “Basically the rules were very informal and relied on consultation ending in interpretation by the umpire. This was necessary, for we’d decided that a set of rules could not possibly cover all the eventualities so what was needed was a flexible set of principles and players and an umpire prepared to weigh up the chances in a particular case and pronounce judgment. This was always open to modification.” Midgard, I'll grant, was pretty obscure. Bath was not. Copies of Slingshot circulated in the Twin Cities. I think Paul even sold one from 1971 from the storage locker collection. I know I bought some from other Twin Cities folks. |
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 8:38:33 GMT -5
Well a mechanic is a mechanic no matter how one organizes it. I am not going to argue against myself here for this is science. So to say that until I can thoroughly study Midgard for its architecture I would possibly ascribe it, to parallel development, but I would have to perform a study to determine the system components and how they compare to Blackmoor/D&D by degree (kind MIGHT not enter into it). Even so, it did not seem to catch on and become widespread, which may mean absolutely nothing due to its isolation, but as you note Bath was not isolated in the sphere at the time and was in fact commanding a prominent position equal to Gygax. One wonders and projects for sure, but without the final examination and other facts I offer only the above, which is to say nothing very much but a curiosity to know more.
Someone find me a copy and I shall analyze it.
EDIT: I received Paul's comm and have bolded his responses:
Howdy Rob,
---- robert Kuntz #### (redacted for my e-mail address)
I hope all things are fine on your end.
Good. Thanks.
A question has arisen on RoM thread, re, does DA's collection that you hold contain:
Midgard 1 or 2 by Drake?
No.
and...
Korns MWiM?
No.
Only Totten.
Futures Bright,
Paul
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Post by robertsconley on May 7, 2017 8:45:45 GMT -5
I've also spent some time on the "infinite variations" part too, and I understand your frustration about the difficulty of expressing exactly what was so different about games in the tradition of Blackmoor from a set of earlier "transitional" wargames. I've found it really hard to figure out how to draw the line myself. For me it about focus not mechanics. Due to the incomplete documentation we have it best illustrated by four games from the mid 80s: Battletech, Mechwarrior, Melee/Wizard, The Fantasy Trip.  Battletech is a game where you pit yourself against one or more opponents piloting giant humanoid robots. It was wildly popular in the mid 80s and natural a lot of folks wanted to run tabletop roleplaying campaigns from it. Many came up with their own homebrew rules that incorporated the rules on Pilot Skills (there were two Piloting and Gunnery) on page 36. Eventually FASA decided to come out with Mechwarrior as a tabletop roleplaying roleplaying. If you look at the chapter of contents you see they talk about more than just trying to blow up other mech and other forms of Battletech based combat. Yet when it came time in the campaign the rules used to resolve the combat between two giant battlemechs was the same Battletech rules used as a wargame. Battletech was our bread and butter gaming event when I was president of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Gaming Club. One thing we had was a Battletech campaign. We carved out a section of the Succession War setting and used that is a backdrop to frame a series of events where players of different factions fought it out. While it was campaign and players got into their roles as pilots and leader of their factions it was a very different feel from the tabletop roleplaying campaigns using Mechwarrior. It can be summed up as focus. For Battletech the end result was opponents sitting down around the playing field and blowing the hell out of each other with using Battlemech. For Mechwarrior the focus shifted to playing a character within the setting of Battletech doing a wide variety of things outside of just killing things with your mech. Like how OD&D was focused on Dungeon and Wilderness adventure, Mechwarrior was centered around the adventure possibilties around the use of Battlemech, their use, upkeep, and acquisition. As tabletop roleplaying games they both OD&D and Mechwarrior took advantage of what Dave Arneson to present something that was infinitely more flexible. Now look at Melee/Wizard versus the Fantasy Trip. The focus of Melee and Wizard was to defeat your opponents in a scenario by using individual characters using weapons or spells. People liked both games and because this well after Dave Arneson invention of tabletop roleplaying, many said to Metagaming, "Hey why not use this as part of a RPG?" Like with Battletech many players didn't wait and just made their own homebrews and incorporated Melee and Wizard. Finally The Fantasy Trip came out using the rules of Melee and Wizard as part of a larger tabletop roleplaying game. In Into the Labyrinth Steve Jackson provided a lot of rules, materials, and advice to expand the possibilities. Again the change was not so much the rules but the focus. The additional material in Into the Labyrinth was to support that shift in focus. And having played both campaign involving Melee/Wizard (Gladiatorial mostly) and The Fantasy Trip, campaign, the two felt very different. In the former I was trying to "win" by managing the biggest and baddest stable of Arena fighters, the other I was concentrating on surviving as my warrior who happened had a small number of useful spells. What about Blackmoor and Dave Arneson? While the documentation is incomplete, the difference that most stand out is that the accounts about Blackmoor are largely about what character/player did this and what player/character did that. While the accounts about the earlier are largely about the battle or the grand view of the campaign. It not black and white because players were making up exploits about the generals, heroes, etc that were part of their armies and in Blackmoor there were stories about how the forces of Blackmoor did against the Egg of Coot. But when you tally all the different reports you can see there is a fundamental shift in focus to the individual player/character. Note I am writing player/character because the idea of acting as a another character with different motivations and personality than your one was not a thing at this point. As I understand the campaign started out one of the conceits was that the characters were the players thrust into the setting of Blackmoor. And even today I had many players in my own campaign who are just playing a variation of themselves with the abilities they rolled up as a OD&D character. And we have things like Gronan playing a Balrog. My point is it doesn't matter that the character were the players themselves or an acting role they created for the campaign. What matter is that the focus shifted to handling the exploits of individuals. That key to understanding Dave Arenson's innovations. The Braustein and the wargames at the time started the focus on individual but it was Dave Arneson who pulled everything together to make a campaign focused on individual players/character work. The system he used is very straightforward 1) Have a group of people sitting around a table make up the details of individual characters. Doesn't need to be elaborate given what we seen what a Blackmoor character card looks like. 2) Describe where they are and whats happening. Ask what they are doing 3) The player either individually or in groups tell Dave what they are doing. 4) Dave tell them the results, or if the outcome not certain have them make some rolls and then tells them the result. Repeat 2 to 4 over and over and over again. Now there were wargame campaigns had a cycle of #2 to #4. There were wargame campaign involving the use of individual characters that had a cycle of #2 to #4 like the Gladiators that Gronan mention. But Dave primarily focused on what the players were doing as their characters within Blackmoor where the other focused on the overall scenario of the game. In my opinion where Blackmoor truly became a tabletop roleplaying campaign is when the Blackmoor Dungeons were being explored followed by the players being kicked out of Blackmoor to Loch Gloomen for ignoring the defense of Castle Blackmoor. Rather than the campaign ending, it continued on there. I can just see Dave's sigh when the players instead of learning their lesson about exploring dungeons too much started poking around Loch Gloomen for more dungeons. Dave being Dave went along with it. I am sure there moments like this earlier in the Blackmoor campaign but this is the one that I read documentation on including what Dave wrote in First Fantasy Campaign. Now before folks attack me for not being scientific or stating opinion. I established an hypothesis. Documented four 80s games to illustrate what I mean by my hypothesis. Then turned to what been documented about the Blackmoor to tie what we see with those four games to what Dave Arneson was doing. Short of writing a paper with citations I have a clear chain of reasoning that supports my conclusion. And unlike what RJK, I accept that there may be evidence out there that tabletop roleplaying required more than a shift in focus and figuring out how to handle that shift effectively. My conclusion that it took nothing more than a shift in focus and figuring how to make it work by doing the four steps I talk about previously. If you think that have to do more than those four steps then by all means challenge my conclusion. Show from what we know either from memory or documented that what Dave had to do was more than those steps. And remember just because those four steps are simple to write down. Doesn't mean there they were simple to come up with. Often in science and technology it is simplest things that are the hardest to develop and often it takes a genius to figure that out. |
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Post by robertsconley on May 7, 2017 8:53:08 GMT -5
I am not going to argue against myself here for this is science. Why you keep doing that like it resolves the question? I know you not ignorant of the history of science and the problems that arise when people attempt to that incorporate into a debate. Just answer the questions being raised. Imagine somebody saying to Einstein "What this about space time being relative! Newton's scientific work settled the question" |
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 8:58:47 GMT -5
I agree that the focus should not be on whether Arneson created it or not, but what it is and whether Dave is given the due to him (which he has not been given) and now in a much expanded sense, That's what DATG was all about and still remains the focus of this thread. The game transcended all existing game models by melding two systems, which I assert created a super-system with qualities that cannot be defined through either of the two individually applied systems that were merged to create it. Not only is this a transcendent game, it is a transcendent way of thinking in design and systems. Arneson's genius is thus two-fold as I note in the book.
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 9:06:26 GMT -5
I am not going to argue against myself here for this is science. Why you keep doing that like it resolves the question? I know you not ignorant of the history of science and the problems that arise when people attempt to that incorporate into a debate. Just answer the questions being raised. Imagine somebody saying to Einstein "What this about space time being relative! Newton's scientific work settled the question" There was no question Mr. C. You have taken the quote out of its contextual point. If you do not wish to contribute to this converse without imposing accusations and negatives, please don't post to the thread. You have been very belligerent and making accusations all throughout while pushing your POV. Fine. Push your POV, I have accepted that as part of the ongoing discourse. But I will not accept your rudeness any longer, instances of which I will go back and repost to clarify what I mean if your memory is lacking. |
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Post by increment on May 7, 2017 9:26:42 GMT -5
Midgard 1 or 2 by Drake?
No.Although I promised myself I wouldn't do this, I don't think there's much harm in posting just a small scan from one of the Midgard zines, showing a mailing list:  A couple interesting names there. Now to be super-, duper-, mega-clear, this scan is from 1974 - so after the "interesting" part of Blackmoor. I'm only showing this to show Drake, Arneson, and Bath name-dropped on the same page, and to give us a good reason to think that somewhere in the world there may be some Midgard zines with Arneson's address label on them, and who knows, maybe some date from before 1974. As it happens, I did ask Dave about Midgard once. At first, he said he'd never heard of it. I didn't press the point. But a few hours later, he said something along the lines of, "you know, that Midgard thing you mentioned, maybe I did hear about it, but I wasn't involved." Whether he had a copy of it or not, he certainly said he knew it.  There is actually a fair amount of evidence that folks in Lake Geneva and the Twin Cities were conversant with Korns. Mike Carr, for example, ran it at Gen Con IV - that is, in 1971. Note that this ad advertising that happens to date from exactly May 1971... which shows that people in the Twin Cities circle knew the rules right then, and one of the key people involved was interested enough to run it themselves at GC.  Well, 1 out of 3 ain't bad. Maybe we'll find another storage locker someday. |
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Post by robertsconley on May 7, 2017 9:32:03 GMT -5
There was no question Mr. C. You have taken the quote out of its contextual point. If you do not wish to contribute to this converse without imposing accusations and negatives, please don't post to the thread. You have been very belligerent and making accusations all throughout while pushing your POV. Fine. Push your POV, I have accepted that as part of the ongoing discourse. But I will not accept your rudeness any longer, instances of which I will go back and repost to clarify what I mean if your memory is lacking. I am being disrespectful in the light of how you answered many of the questions including my won on this thread, my point still stands. But it was personal to you and not on-topic when it comes to the points being raised within this thread. I was wrong to bring it up and will refrain from commenting on how you answer questions and stick to the topic. |
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 9:35:16 GMT -5
Yes. I agree that Dave might have been familiar with it, but I was only answering the previous point regarding whether he possessed it like he did Chainmail. We never played Korns in LG, however, Mike Reece stated that Tractics was influenced by Korns, and I play-tested scenarios for that for a year or so as an LGTSA member.
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 9:42:55 GMT -5
Midgard 1 or 2 by Drake?
No.Although I promised myself I wouldn't do this, I don't think there's much harm in posting just a small scan from one of the Midgard zines, showing a mailing list: A couple interesting names there. Now to be super-, duper-, mega-clear, this scan is from 1974 - so after the "interesting" part of Blackmoor. I'm only showing this to show Drake, Arneson, and Bath name-dropped on the same page, and to give us a good reason to think that somewhere in the world there may be some Midgard zines with Arneson's address label on them, and who knows, maybe some date from before 1974. As it happens, I did ask Dave about Midgard once. At first, he said he'd never heard of it. I didn't press the point. But a few hours later, he said something along the lines of, "you know, that Midgard thing you mentioned, maybe I did hear about it, but I wasn't involved." Whether he had a copy of it or not, he certainly said he knew it. There is actually a fair amount of evidence that folks in Lake Geneva and the Twin Cities were conversant with Korns. Mike Carr, for example, ran it at Gen Con IV - that is, in 1971. Note that this ad advertising that happens to date from exactly May 1971... which shows that people in the Twin Cities circle knew the rules right then, and one of the key people involved was interested enough to run it themselves at GC. Well, 1 out of 3 ain't bad. Maybe we'll find another storage locker someday. Ah. I see Mark Goldberg who was involved in many Dippy games as well. In the first scan, is this a players list and for what? Why the names and addresses, as for in mailing in a PBM styled after Diplomacy? |
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Post by increment on May 7, 2017 9:50:38 GMT -5
Ah. I see Mark Goldberg who was involved in many Dippy games as well. Mark Goldberg was someone who was always right on the edge of being an important guy in this stuff, I think. Yeah, without getting too much into the details (which is why I promised myself I wouldn't post scans like this, it's ongoing research for me that I don't want to talk about until I've written about it), those people were all corresponding with someone who was trying to start a new Midgard variant. Like I said, I was really only posting to show that Arneson probably did receive some Midgard zines at some point. But a lot of people did try to get fantasy games like this to work by mail. Tony Bath did some of his Hyboria by mail. I might say even Blackmoor did too. |
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Post by increment on May 7, 2017 9:57:18 GMT -5
Yes. I agree that Dave might have been familiar with it, but I was only answering the previous point regarding whether he possessed it like he did Chainmail. We never played Korns in LG, however, Mike Reece stated that Tractics was influenced by Korns, and I play-tested scenarios for that for a year or so as an LGTSA member. It was Mike Reese and Leon Tucker in particular I was thinking of in Lake Geneva, yes. They regularly mentioned it in the Tracklinks column in the IW. And since they worked with Gygax on Tractics, I'd find it a bit unlikely that he was unaware of it. Bar trivia factoid: know that book Bio One? The slim hit location pamphlet that TSR put out in 1976? It was originally published in the Twin Cities in 1974, and originally, it was published specifically as a variant of Korns. True story. |
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Post by robkuntz on May 7, 2017 10:20:03 GMT -5
Well, Arneson's correspondence is preserved; Paul and I are tinkering with platforming it with the ERK Archive interface that we co-own due to our senior/junior partnership in TLB games. It's an immense project, however, to make this stuff available to researchers, etc. and I am in France and away from directly interfacing in the project. Lots of scanning involved with mss and letters and the rest. Then there's the Gygax collection for same, and its future is being worked out as I type. This type of thing should have been started long ago, these questions, too. Hell, it took me realizing how much the game had changed to even start investigating why, which lead to my research. A lot of time and people have been lost in the interim, unfortunately, and we all have our points in life to maintain otherwise. Your involvement is not to be slighted at all but to be commended. Mine is, in my view, as a designer and one who was there to sense and see and experience it all. With that comes the ability to finally nail down what this vehicle we call an RPG is, as I maintain due to my research that there is no echo, no pattern, no model (as yet() that I can conclude as a match for it. That's significant when you keep poking around theory and you cannot find a match. Definitely more to come with the next book (or maybe an interim one as well). Thanks for the insights and continued good luck with the historical angle. I'll be searching for a copy of Midgard in between. I have Korns. Now onto my first meal of the day. Nathalie doesn't feel I eat enough.  |
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