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Post by Mighty Darci on May 1, 2017 11:38:11 GMT -5
I have never heard of Midgard or Korns. Perhaps you could start a different thread and tell us a bit more about each. Are either still available? I could not find anything on Google about Korns and precious little about Midgard.
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 11:48:49 GMT -5
I have never heard of Midgard or Korns. Perhaps you could start a different thread and tell us a bit more about each. Are either still available? I could not find anything on Google about Korns and precious little about Midgard. Try a search, Michael F. Korns "Modern Warfare in Miniature". As for Drake's Midgard, I'll let Jon handle that as I am sure he has a copy (like everything else)  |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 1, 2017 13:25:31 GMT -5
None of that says anything about the Blackmoor concept deriving from Chainmail. Stormcrow, I think I didn't focus enough. Let me try again. You wrote: I don't think I typically hear that Blackmoor derived from Chainmail. To which I responded with a quote from pg. 57 of Jon Peterson's book:Wouldn't you agree that the boldfaced text implies, from a purely English language standpoint, the following statement: "Dave Arneson's Black Moor was an ongoing Chainmail campaign" ? |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 13:42:12 GMT -5
"...and if it doesn't violate the basic tenets of the game,..." One would have to be aware of what is meant by Drake's inferred constraint embodied in this quote which would then allow an understanding of his system's initial condition; and then by a comparison of his and Arneson's system state qualities, in total, derive correspondences or not. As generally stated I cannot deduce a similarity or not between their holistic system states. I think I follow you. I had been under the impression that what you meant by Arneson's "transcendent" innovation was something beyond the initial state of the mechanics or the place where the system gets hacked to during play, but instead the framework that enabled that hacking to happen, so I supposed the mechanics involved weren't salient to that. If your concern is that Drake's "basic tenets" makes it sound like not all mechanics are hackable in Midgard II, then maybe a more illustrative example then would be something like Korns, an 80-some page rulebook that contains literally only one rule: that the referee should use whatever mechanics would give the best and most accurate depiction of events. Sure, there are pages of charts, but none of them are charts with die roll tallies next to them, they are real-world charts about how weapons and soldiers and so on behave in the field. Those charts are included to help referees understand how to be accurate, but Korns tells you to throw them out if you have something better. The initial state of Korns's system is well, nothing. Every aspect of the designed system other than Korns's one rule is a hack implemented by the referee. Again, this one seems hard for me to distinguish from the kind of "openness" in system that we saw in Blackmoor - if anything, it seems even more radical. Can you shed any light on the distinction from that? Well, having PLAYED Korns, I can shed some light on how it "felt different." Korns, for all its detail and openness, was still a World War 2 wargame; it was about finding and killing enemy soldiers, but on a very detailed level. But finding a rocket ship and blasting off to Uranus (hurr hurr hurr) would have been a definite tonal mismatch in Korns, but totally "normal" in Blackmoor. Unfortunately, at least for me, at some point the distinction becomes much like the distinction between artistically valid eroticism and hard core pornography: "I know it when I see it." Which I confess is devilishly hard for historians, but people are imprecise creatures by their very nature. |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 1, 2017 14:12:17 GMT -5
When I wrote PatW (like, back in 2010, say), I did have some surviving documents showing ways that Blackmoor relied on Chainmail that perhaps go beyond the sorts of superficial details you concede here. And to be clear, now I have a lot more. I have about 90 letters back and forth between Gary and Dave from the early to mid 1970s, say. I have a 1972 letter where Gary asks Dave about his Chainmail modifications, and I have the response from Dave. Jon, by stating "Blackmoor relied on Chainmail that perhaps go beyond the sorts of superficial details," you seem to be agreeing with the statement "Blackmoor derived at least one fundamental concept from Chainmail." If so, could you succinctly state what you believe that/those fundamental concept(s) is/are? |
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 14:22:06 GMT -5
"...and if it doesn't violate the basic tenets of the game,..." One would have to be aware of what is meant by Drake's inferred constraint embodied in this quote which would then allow an understanding of his system's initial condition; and then by a comparison of his and Arneson's system state qualities, in total, derive correspondences or not. As generally stated I cannot deduce a similarity or not between their holistic system states. I think I follow you. I had been under the impression that what you meant by Arneson's "transcendent" innovation was something beyond the initial state of the mechanics or the place where the system gets hacked to during play, but instead the framework that enabled that hacking to happen, so I supposed the mechanics involved weren't salient to that. If your concern is that Drake's "basic tenets" makes it sound like not all mechanics are hackable in Midgard II, then maybe a more illustrative example then would be something like Korns, an 80-some page rulebook that contains literally only one rule: that the referee should use whatever mechanics would give the best and most accurate depiction of events. Sure, there are pages of charts, but none of them are charts with die roll tallies next to them, they are real-world charts about how weapons and soldiers and so on behave in the field. Those charts are included to help referees understand how to be accurate, but Korns tells you to throw them out if you have something better. The initial state of Korns's system is well, nothing. Every aspect of the designed system other than Korns's one rule is a hack implemented by the referee. Again, this one seems hard for me to distinguish from the kind of "openness" in system that we saw in Blackmoor - if anything, it seems even more radical. Can you shed any light on the distinction from that? "If your concern is that Drake's "basic tenets" makes it sound like not all mechanics are hackable in Midgard II," Well, in part, and not so much a concern as a question to derive more information. We were discussing open systems and not just systems which have some openness to their sub-systems or instances of open variability like in Diplomacy, et al. Actually Gary's OD&D quotes (all referenced in DATG) that laws and can be changed to arrive at new and different situations that range from "simplicity" to "ultimate complexity" indeed point to a truly open system, not only on the conceptual level but on the mechanical sub-system level as well. The difference between Korns and D&D is obvious: D&D has an overt and ever present conceptual component that continues to inform the mechanical sub-system of what it is doing, thus effectuating immediate and real-time change, in situ. This point is key to understanding its range and degree factor which should not be underestimated (but to date, unfortunately, has been). The why of this is also apparent--we are describing a world and not a closed scenario and in which the totality of information contingently available at any given time is unpredictable (we can never be the sum of a world's knowledge, whether real or imagined). That of itself transcends Korns since in Arneson's conception known rules can change as well as having the ability to add new rules. In essence, D&D is a self-referencing open system with the ability to recreate itself in real time play, and that includes, of all things, the ability to insert another game within the game, or parts thereof, thus hierarchically building upon the system by adding systems within systems (thus my 2nd essay on Arneson's SoS thinking). All games, wargames included, were always dependent upon standardized rules and formats. Korns thought that all instances that might arise in a scenario could not be covered through rules, so what we have in this case is a scenario-based game that may or may not be codified up front and that could contingently allow for some open variability. Is it more radical than D&D? Not if you understand that D&D is an initial condition only and that thousands of interpretations of its use followed, and that even Gary, Arneson and myself did not play it the same way, and that Arneson was still iterating his current Blackmoor state at the time he unveiled the concept to Gary and myself, this about a year and a half after he had begun creating the systems architecture! Now that's an open system, an engine that can be recreated time and again, and that Gary proved out of the gate to be true by producing his own iteration months later. |
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Post by Stormcrow on May 1, 2017 14:30:39 GMT -5
None of that says anything about the Blackmoor concept deriving from Chainmail. Stormcrow, I think I didn't focus enough. Let me try again. You wrote: I don't think I typically hear that Blackmoor derived from Chainmail. To which I responded with a quote from pg. 57 of Jon Peterson's book:Wouldn't you agree that the boldfaced text implies, from a purely English language standpoint, the following statement: "Dave Arneson's Black Moor was an ongoing Chainmail campaign" ? As I stated already, Arneson would be very likely to CALL his campaign a Chainmail campaign if he used lots of rules from Chainmail. What ELSE would he call it? He could call it "Black Moor," but that doesn't tell the reader what it is. The term "role-playing game" didn't yet connote what we use it for today. It was something new, for which there was no obvious name. This isn't a declaration that the Blackmoor CONCEPT derives straight out of Chainmail. It just means that Arneson made use of Chainmail in creating Blackmoor. I agree with Rob's basic point, that the special spark that made Blackmoor something other than just another wargame with unusual rules, did not come from Chainmail. My objection has been all along simply that I never hear anyone actually make the claim that it did. They say that *D&D* derives from Chainmail, and some say—incorrectly—that it comes almost entirely from Chainmail, but they never try to link the RPG spark to Chainmail.So no, the boldfaced text does not imply that Arneson's Blackmoor was ONLY an ongoing Chainmail campaign, which is what your own statement is trying to imply. That "only" is vital. Blackmoor was a Chainmail campaign inasmuch as it was a campaign that used rules from Chainmail. But it was also something more, and no one back then had a word for what it was, or even necessarily recognized that it was something new. So it was called a " Chainmail campaign." |
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 14:42:58 GMT -5
Stormcrow, I think I didn't focus enough. Let me try again. You wrote:To which I responded with a quote from pg. 57 of Jon Peterson's book:Wouldn't you agree that the boldfaced text implies, from a purely English language standpoint, the following statement: "Dave Arneson's Black Moor was an ongoing Chainmail campaign" ? As I stated already, Arneson would be very likely to CALL his campaign a Chainmail campaign if he used lots of rules from Chainmail. What ELSE would he call it? He could call it "Black Moor," but that doesn't tell the reader what it is. The term "role-playing game" didn't yet connote what we use it for today. It was something new, for which there was no obvious name. This isn't a declaration that the Blackmoor CONCEPT derives straight out of Chainmail. It just means that Arneson made use of Chainmail in creating Blackmoor. I agree with Rob's basic point, that the special spark that made Blackmoor something other than just another wargame with unusual rules, did not come from Chainmail. My objection has been all along simply that I never hear anyone actually make the claim that it did. They say that *D&D* derives from Chainmail, and some say—incorrectly—that it comes almost entirely from Chainmail, but they never try to link the RPG spark to Chainmail.So no, the boldfaced text does not imply that Arneson's Blackmoor was ONLY an ongoing Chainmail campaign, which is what your own statement is trying to imply. That "only" is vital. Blackmoor was a Chainmail campaign inasmuch as it was a campaign that used rules from Chainmail. But it was also something more, and no one back then had a word for what it was, or even necessarily recognized that it was something new. So it was called a " Chainmail campaign." Both of you are correct. No one knew what to call it so we have a "place-holder" for it. However, people today are quite literal-minded. So the sentence could or would convey the implication of the Chainmail derivation. Those who know, know. Those who don't know are left with what appears to be. |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 15:15:01 GMT -5
See, Rob is much more polite than I am. He says "people today are quite literal minded." I say, "Most people are booger-eating morons who are lucky to be able to sh*t unassisted."
But the main point -- that we didn't have a vocabulary so we borrowed terms that were already existent -- is right on the money.
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Post by increment on May 1, 2017 16:12:34 GMT -5
Jon, by stating "Blackmoor relied on Chainmail that perhaps go beyond the sorts of superficial details," you seem to be agreeing with the statement "Blackmoor derived at least one fundamental concept from Chainmail." If so, could you succinctly state what you believe that/those fundamental concept(s) is/are? Before we get to what I believe, let's cover a few things Arneson mentioned that he believed Blackmoor owed to Chainmail when he wrote the FFC (so, in 1977). He wrote that "the dungeon of Blackmoor. It began with only the basic monsters in Chainmail." Or see FFC page 44, on how he designed dungeon rooms: "Having gone over all my records the surest indication is that the point values given in 1st edition Chainmail formed the basis for my system. Exceptions occurred were due to the addition of new creatures beyond those given in Chainmail and thus necessitating changes." The concept of "creature points" in Blackmoor had a huge influence on both dungeon design and the experience system, and it was based on the point value system of Chainmail. Or how did magic swords work in Blackmoor? "The nature and powers the spells and swords were taken right from the available copies of Chainmail, which served as the basis for all our combat" (pg 64). That is actually pretty obvious if you look at the powers of the early magic swords in the FFC and compare them to the monster powers in Chainmail. But don't miss how he snuck in at the end there that Chainmail was "the basis for all our combat." Now personally, my opinions about this tend to be informed by the pieces of documentary evidence that survive. Maybe the most useful single thing I can point to is the Loch Gloomen battle report that appeared in COTT late in 1972. I know the "Secrets of Blackmoor" folks recently put up a scan of this, and I put one up as well a few years ago (I can furnish a link if it's hard to find). If you want to read about the kinds of things that were going on in the Blackmoor campaign at this stage, it's a pretty rich source of data. It is describing an attack on the town of Loch Gloomen involving hundreds of orcs and soldiers, and it contains a number of references to the characters involved. The terms "Hero" and "Super-hero" are used to designate the types of those characters in a way that has an obvious debt to Chainmail. In fact, I think Blackmoor at that time still had a concept of class and level that was closer to Chainmail than what we see in OD&D. But moreover, reading that description, you might be hard pressed to explain how what you are reading is not a description of a Chainmail game. Is there anything you see happening here that does not seem resolvable with the baseline Chainmail rules? Whatever else may have been going on as people participated in Blackmoor, there was also a certain amount of, well, just wargaming. Lots of surviving maps amply substantiate this. No attempt to explain Blackmoor that ignores this dimension of the campaign is viable, I think. |
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Post by increment on May 1, 2017 16:14:53 GMT -5
Well, having PLAYED Korns, I can shed some light on how it "felt different." Korns, for all its detail and openness, was still a World War 2 wargame; it was about finding and killing enemy soldiers, but on a very detailed level. But finding a rocket ship and blasting off to Uranus (hurr hurr hurr) would have been a definite tonal mismatch in Korns, but totally "normal" in Blackmoor. Unfortunately, at least for me, at some point the distinction becomes much like the distinction between artistically valid eroticism and hard core pornography: "I know it when I see it." Which I confess is devilishly hard for historians, but people are imprecise creatures by their very nature. I don't see why a game would have to have a madcap, multiversal setting in order for the rules to be "open" in the sense that matters. I can imagine a game with a King Arthur setting, or a Wild West setting, where a rocketship also really wouldn't make any sense, that I wouldn't want to disqualify those from having the property that the rules are guidelines that exist to be interpreted and hacked. Is there some more fundamental reason you think setting is essential to this? As an aside, to be clear, I am not suggesting that Korns is an RPG. I think it is a wargame that contains some very stark role playing elements, ones that seem to have played a crucial role in developing the magic formula that led to the RPG tradition. But don't take it from me, take it from the guy who said in 1979, "Well I guess the point I am trying to make with all this rambling is that here in the Twin Cities, Role Playing has always been popular," and then literally the first example he gives, before he even gets to Braunstein, is "a 1-for-1 WW II Battle using Korns." He goes on to say, "applying a fantasy setting to RPG was merely another outgrowth of an already established tradition (albeit one without any real rules) in various non-fantasy settings." And that man was... |
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Post by increment on May 1, 2017 16:21:35 GMT -5
"If your concern is that Drake's "basic tenets" makes it sound like not all mechanics are hackable in Midgard II," Well, in part, and not so much a concern as a question to derive more information. We were discussing open systems and not just systems which have some openness to their sub-systems or instances of open variability like in Diplomacy, et al. Actually Gary's OD&D quotes (all referenced in DATG) that laws and can be changed to arrive at new and different situations that range from "simplicity" to "ultimate complexity" indeed point to a truly open system, not only on the conceptual level but on the mechanical sub-system level as well. The difference between Korns and D&D is obvious: D&D has an overt and ever present conceptual component that continues to inform the mechanical sub-system of what it is doing, thus effectuating immediate and real-time change, in situ. This point is key to understanding its range and degree factor which should not be underestimated (but to date, unfortunately, has been). The why of this is also apparent--we are describing a world and not a closed scenario and in which the totality of information contingently available at any given time is unpredictable (we can never be the sum of a world's knowledge, whether real or imagined). That of itself transcends Korns since in Arneson's conception known rules can change as well as having the ability to add new rules. In essence, D&D is a self-referencing open system with the ability to recreate itself in real time play, and that includes, of all things, the ability to insert another game within the game, or parts thereof, thus hierarchically building upon the system by adding systems within systems (thus my 2nd essay on Arneson's SoS thinking). All games, wargames included, were always dependent upon standardized rules and formats. Korns thought that all instances that might arise in a scenario could not be covered through rules, so what we have in this case is a scenario-based game that may or may not be codified up front and that could contingently allow for some open variability. Is it more radical than D&D? Not if you understand that D&D is an initial condition only and that thousands of interpretations of its use followed, and that even Gary, Arneson and myself did not play it the same way, and that Arneson was still iterating his current Blackmoor state at the time he unveiled the concept to Gary and myself, this about a year and a half after he had begun creating the systems architecture! Now that's an open system, an engine that can be recreated time and again, and that Gary proved out of the gate to be true by producing his own iteration months later. Again, I think I follow you. If it's important to your model that there be an initial condition that is acknowledged from the start to only be a launch pad for continuing development through play, and that those known rules can change, then something like Midgard is probably a better corollary than Korns. Midgard had some initial rules, again expressed in that "guidelines" sort of way, and the ability to alter those rules if people wanted to do things the rules didn't cover - and also if people didn't like the way the existing rules were working. I'm not sure I agree that Korns is less radical for lacking that launch pad, though. Also, I am still a bit unclear exactly what is unique about the way Arneson iterated on and developed the Blackmoor system, even in stuffing "systems within systems." Take the development of Chainmail. I gather there were some initial rules by Jeff Perren for medieval warfare (a bit influenced by Tony Bath), which Gygax expanded and modified in a couple iterations. Surely play informed those changes. But then he kind of attached some other components to the original LGTSA rules, like jousting, which kind of became a mini-game bundled with the LGTSA rules - I might be tempted to say a system within a system. And then he added a fantasy supplement as well that contained a completely distinct combat system from either the LGTSA rules or the jousting rules. What made the kind of iteration that Arneson was doing on Blackmoor fundamental different from this kind of regular iterative development? I might have naively thought that anyone could always iterate on miniature wargame rules, and that a tradition of many decades had been doing so by the 1970s, so how is Gygax's iteration of Arneson's rules an indication of a unique openness in Blackmoor? |
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Post by increment on May 1, 2017 16:31:05 GMT -5
I have never heard of Midgard or Korns. Perhaps you could start a different thread and tell us a bit more about each. Are either still available? I could not find anything on Google about Korns and precious little about Midgard. If you want to read a little about Midgard, hopefully it won't be untoward of me to direct you to a blog post of mine, which has the full two pages of Drake's Midgard II advertisement in it (the grey scans in the middle). playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2014/05/midgard-ii-1972-other-fantastic.htmlAlthough Midgard may seem obscure to us now, part of the reason I wrote that post a few years ago was to show that it was not unknown in the circles that developed D&D, as Len Lakofka wrote about it in July of 1972, in a zine where Gary also hung out. It also warranted a mention in the very first Strategic Review. And the second. |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 1, 2017 17:33:05 GMT -5
Before we get to what I believe, let's cover a few things Arneson mentioned that he believed Blackmoor owed to Chainmail when he wrote the FFC (so, in 1977). He wrote that "the dungeon of Blackmoor. It began with only the basic monsters in Chainmail." Or see FFC page 44, on how he designed dungeon rooms: "Having gone over all my records the surest indication is that the point values given in 1st edition Chainmail formed the basis for my system. Exceptions occurred were due to the addition of new creatures beyond those given in Chainmail and thus necessitating changes." The concept of "creature points" in Blackmoor had a huge influence on both dungeon design and the experience system, and it was based on the point value system of Chainmail. Or how did magic swords work in Blackmoor? "The nature and powers the spells and swords were taken right from the available copies of Chainmail, which served as the basis for all our combat" (pg 64). That is actually pretty obvious if you look at the powers of the early magic swords in the FFC and compare them to the monster powers in Chainmail. But don't miss how he snuck in at the end there that Chainmail was "the basis for all our combat." Now personally, my opinions about this tend to be informed by the pieces of documentary evidence that survive. Maybe the most useful single thing I can point to is the Loch Gloomen battle report that appeared in COTT late in 1972. I know the "Secrets of Blackmoor" folks recently put up a scan of this, and I put one up as well a few years ago (I can furnish a link if it's hard to find). If you want to read about the kinds of things that were going on in the Blackmoor campaign at this stage, it's a pretty rich source of data. It is describing an attack on the town of Loch Gloomen involving hundreds of orcs and soldiers, and it contains a number of references to the characters involved. The terms "Hero" and "Super-hero" are used to designate the types of those characters in a way that has an obvious debt to Chainmail. In fact, I think Blackmoor at that time still had a concept of class and level that was closer to Chainmail than what we see in OD&D. But moreover, reading that description, you might be hard pressed to explain how what you are reading is not a description of a Chainmail game. Is there anything you see happening here that does not seem resolvable with the baseline Chainmail rules? Whatever else may have been going on as people participated in Blackmoor, there was also a certain amount of, well, just wargaming. Lots of surviving maps amply substantiate this. No attempt to explain Blackmoor that ignores this dimension of the campaign is viable, I think. Jon, does this list properly represent all of the concepts you mentioned? Are there any others that you would like to add? 1) The names of the monsters in Blackmoor match the names of the monsters in Chainmail 2) The relative power levels of the monsters in Blackmoor corresponds to their power levels in Chainmail (as given by their “Point Value” stat) 3) The concept of monsters becoming progressively more powerful the deeper you go in the Blackmoor dungeons is derived from the concept of monsters having points in Chainmail 4) The concept of characters having discrete power levels in Blackmoor is derived from the concept of monsters/characters having points in Chainmail 5) The concept of characters being able to advance in power levels is derived from the concept of monsters/characters having points in Chainmail 6) The names of the spells and their function in Blackmoor corresponds to those in Chainmail 7) The powers of the early magic swords in Blackmoor corresponds to monster powers in Chainmail 8) The to-hit rolls using 2d6 to determine if a monster/character takes damage in Blackmoor corresponds to the rolling of 2d6 to determine if a monster/character dies in Chainmail 9) The types of armor available for a character to purchase in Blackmoor matches the types of armor listed in Chainmail 10) The AC of armor in Blackmoor follows the same order as armor in Chainmail (e.g., plate armor is better than leather armor) 11) Some of the names of character classes (e.g., Hero, Super-Hero, Wizard) in Blackmoor match the names of units in Chainmail 12) The Loch Gloomen battle that occurred in Blackmoor, as described, can be resolved using Chainmail 13) The maps from Blackmoor look like the wargame maps of Chainmail |
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 17:52:46 GMT -5
"If your concern is that Drake's "basic tenets" makes it sound like not all mechanics are hackable in Midgard II," Well, in part, and not so much a concern as a question to derive more information. We were discussing open systems and not just systems which have some openness to their sub-systems or instances of open variability like in Diplomacy, et al. Actually Gary's OD&D quotes (all referenced in DATG) that laws and can be changed to arrive at new and different situations that range from "simplicity" to "ultimate complexity" indeed point to a truly open system, not only on the conceptual level but on the mechanical sub-system level as well. The difference between Korns and D&D is obvious: D&D has an overt and ever present conceptual component that continues to inform the mechanical sub-system of what it is doing, thus effectuating immediate and real-time change, in situ. This point is key to understanding its range and degree factor which should not be underestimated (but to date, unfortunately, has been). The why of this is also apparent--we are describing a world and not a closed scenario and in which the totality of information contingently available at any given time is unpredictable (we can never be the sum of a world's knowledge, whether real or imagined). That of itself transcends Korns since in Arneson's conception known rules can change as well as having the ability to add new rules. In essence, D&D is a self-referencing open system with the ability to recreate itself in real time play, and that includes, of all things, the ability to insert another game within the game, or parts thereof, thus hierarchically building upon the system by adding systems within systems (thus my 2nd essay on Arneson's SoS thinking). All games, wargames included, were always dependent upon standardized rules and formats. Korns thought that all instances that might arise in a scenario could not be covered through rules, so what we have in this case is a scenario-based game that may or may not be codified up front and that could contingently allow for some open variability. Is it more radical than D&D? Not if you understand that D&D is an initial condition only and that thousands of interpretations of its use followed, and that even Gary, Arneson and myself did not play it the same way, and that Arneson was still iterating his current Blackmoor state at the time he unveiled the concept to Gary and myself, this about a year and a half after he had begun creating the systems architecture! Now that's an open system, an engine that can be recreated time and again, and that Gary proved out of the gate to be true by producing his own iteration months later. Again, I think I follow you. If it's important to your model that there be an initial condition that is acknowledged from the start to only be a launch pad for continuing development through play, and that those known rules can change, then something like Midgard is probably a better corollary than Korns. Midgard had some initial rules, again expressed in that "guidelines" sort of way, and the ability to alter those rules if people wanted to do things the rules didn't cover - and also if people didn't like the way the existing rules were working. I'm not sure I agree that Korns is less radical for lacking that launch pad, though. Also, I am still a bit unclear exactly what is unique about the way Arneson iterated on and developed the Blackmoor system, even in stuffing "systems within systems." Take the development of Chainmail. I gather there were some initial rules by Jeff Perren for medieval warfare (a bit influenced by Tony Bath), which Gygax expanded and modified in a couple iterations. Surely play informed those changes. But then he kind of attached some other components to the original LGTSA rules, like jousting, which kind of became a mini-game bundled with the LGTSA rules - I might be tempted to say a system within a system. And then he added a fantasy supplement as well that contained a completely distinct combat system from either the LGTSA rules or the jousting rules. What made the kind of iteration that Arneson was doing on Blackmoor fundamental different from this kind of regular iterative development? I might have naively thought that anyone could always iterate on miniature wargame rules, and that a tradition of many decades had been doing so by the 1970s, so how is Gygax's iteration of Arneson's rules an indication of a unique openness in Blackmoor?
It seems that people have forgotten that this FRP is the first complex adult CONCEPTUAL game to be created and that it was likewise set in a Fantasy clime with endless possibilities for design by way of a platform that allows you to promote, demote, extend, close down, alter, replace, stabilize, combine, and all of it in REAL TIME. The closest match to this in history (and there are no others that I can find) is the open play systems of children and then directed play (i.e., the Chicago Playground Movement, circa early 1900's) which of course predates any of the games you have listed. The latter utilized what is now referred to as the "Old Games" wherein a teacher or aide was present to guide and adjudicate but not obstruct the play. A modern day extension of this type of conceptual interface is present 1919-forward in applied play theory (and as first instituted by Neva Boyd who used play theory for social/educational purposes and as carried forward by her prize student, Viola Spolin). Spolin became the mother of improvisational Theater and wrote many papers and books on play and the promotion of play theory as influenced through Boyd, such as Theater Games for the Classroom (1966). I cover all of this in my forthcoming book (see sig below) that I have about 170,000 words written for.
The intent of DATG was to describe Dave's systems architecture, design thinking and a new systems theory that it perforce spawned. No where is this at all prevalent in any other game, though parts crop up he or there, they never match even 50% of the system qualities Arneson achieved. I believe that several good readings of the book would put us on a broader front in addressing the whole issue if we continue on such a discourse; and I sincerely look forward to your thoughts regarding it, Jon. |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 18:10:20 GMT -5
I feel like we need to establish an agreed upon lexicon before we can even begin to discuss this; it's reading a bit like people are, with the best will in the world, having similar but not quite the same conversations. Again nothing I can give specific examples of, just a feeling.
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Post by increment on May 1, 2017 18:11:04 GMT -5
Jon, does this list properly represent all of the concepts you mentioned? Are there any others that you would like to add? [snip] I think I've already taken up enough oxygen in this thread, which should really be about Rob's book. But in short, I think those characterizations of the concepts are sometimes a bit different that what I intended, at least, and my list was not meant to be exhaustive either, just exemplary. The key takeaway (the thing that summoned me to this thread anyway) is just that Chainmail wargame rules were used in various capacities during the "interesting" phase of the campaign (1971-2), but that does not mean that it was by any means the only system that they borrowed from for rules, and neither myself nor some book I wrote a while ago is arguing for some exclusive derivation of Blackmoor from Chainmail. |
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 18:11:33 GMT -5
Again, I think I follow you. If it's important to your model that there be an initial condition that is acknowledged from the start to only be a launch pad for continuing development through play, and that those known rules can change, then something like Midgard is probably a better corollary than Korns. Midgard had some initial rules, again expressed in that "guidelines" sort of way, and the ability to alter those rules if people wanted to do things the rules didn't cover - and also if people didn't like the way the existing rules were working. I'm not sure I agree that Korns is less radical for lacking that launch pad, though. Also, I am still a bit unclear exactly what is unique about the way Arneson iterated on and developed the Blackmoor system, even in stuffing "systems within systems." Take the development of Chainmail. I gather there were some initial rules by Jeff Perren for medieval warfare (a bit influenced by Tony Bath), which Gygax expanded and modified in a couple iterations. Surely play informed those changes. But then he kind of attached some other components to the original LGTSA rules, like jousting, which kind of became a mini-game bundled with the LGTSA rules - I might be tempted to say a system within a system. And then he added a fantasy supplement as well that contained a completely distinct combat system from either the LGTSA rules or the jousting rules. What made the kind of iteration that Arneson was doing on Blackmoor fundamental different from this kind of regular iterative development? I might have naively thought that anyone could always iterate on miniature wargame rules, and that a tradition of many decades had been doing so by the 1970s, so how is Gygax's iteration of Arneson's rules an indication of a unique openness in Blackmoor?
It seems that people have forgotten that this FRP is the first complex adult CONCEPTUAL game to be created and that it was likewise set in a Fantasy clime with endless possibilities for design by way of a platform that allows you to promote, demote, extend, close down, alter, replace, stabilize, combine, and all of it in REAL TIME. The closest match to this in history (and there are no others that I can find) is the open play systems of children and then directed play (i.e., the Chicago Playground Movement, circa early 1900's) which of course predates any of the games you have listed. The latter utilized what is now referred to as the "Old Games" wherein a teacher or aide was present to guide and adjudicate but not obstruct the play. A modern day extension of this type of conceptual interface is present 1919-forward in applied play theory (and as first instituted by Neva Boyd who used play theory for social/educational purposes and as carried forward by her prize student, Viola Spolin). Spolin became the mother of improvisational Theater and wrote many papers and books on play and the promotion of play theory as influenced through Boyd, such as Theater Games for the Classroom (1966). I cover all of this in my forthcoming book (see sig below) that I have about 170,000 words written for.
The intent of DATG was to describe Dave's systems architecture, design thinking and a new systems theory that it perforce spawned. No where is this at all prevalent in any other game, though parts crop up he or there, they never match even 50% of the system qualities Arneson achieved. I believe that several good readings of the book would put us on a broader front in addressing the whole issue if we continue on such a discourse; and I sincerely look forward to your thoughts regarding it, Jon. According to many the CM combat matrix was nixed by Arneson 2 play sessions in because it was getting unwieldy with the additional monsters they were adding and that the players were getting attached to their characters and did not want to lose them with a single hit. The latter, or course, is not the typical reaction from a Chainmail game (model figures are abstracted playing pieces in a simulation), but one where you are investing in your character, a conceptual game (not a simulation). So it is rather moot whatever mechanical system was being used as the conceptual component was what was driving the design and systems architecture that derived from it. |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 18:14:12 GMT -5
I'm not sure that this will help or not, and the thought is quite inchoate... but one thing I remember about the early days of D&D is how much important stuff was NOT in the rules. Much like Diplomacy, only very vague guildelines are given for interaction between players or between players and "non players," but yet this was a crucial part of the game. I'm not sure where this thought leads, it just popped into my head.
It's frustrating for me, because I PLAYED CHAINMAIL, and KORNS, and DIPLOMACY, and a LOT of other games, and I can say "Yeah, D&D was WAY DIFFERENT." After my first ever Greyhawk session I remember thinking "I don't know what game we were playing, but it was sure neat."
Again, like pornography, "I know it when I see it." But I'm a lot more interested in D&D than I am in pornography.
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Post by Mighty Darci on May 1, 2017 18:14:32 GMT -5
I have never heard of Midgard or Korns. Perhaps you could start a different thread and tell us a bit more about each. Are either still available? I could not find anything on Google about Korns and precious little about Midgard. Try a search, Michael F. Korns "Modern Warfare in Miniature". As for Drake's Midgard, I'll let Jon handle that as I am sure he has a copy (like everything else) Thank you! The modern war in miniature: A statistical analysis of the period 1939 to 1945 by Michael F Korns. 83 pages 1966. |
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Post by Mighty Darci on May 1, 2017 18:15:42 GMT -5
I have never heard of Midgard or Korns. Perhaps you could start a different thread and tell us a bit more about each. Are either still available? I could not find anything on Google about Korns and precious little about Midgard. If you want to read a little about Midgard, hopefully it won't be untoward of me to direct you to a blog post of mine, which has the full two pages of Drake's Midgard II advertisement in it (the grey scans in the middle). playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2014/05/midgard-ii-1972-other-fantastic.htmlAlthough Midgard may seem obscure to us now, part of the reason I wrote that post a few years ago was to show that it was not unknown in the circles that developed D&D, as Len Lakofka wrote about it in July of 1972, in a zine where Gary also hung out. It also warranted a mention in the very first Strategic Review. And the second. Thank you! |
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 18:17:51 GMT -5
Korns plays better than it reads.
"I'm gonna run over here and dive behind that bit of rubble."
"Okay, you do that. No shots, you see nothing."
"I'm going to wait ten seconds, and then slowly lift my head and look across the street at the upper window in the red building."
"You lift your head. Your turn is over, send in the next player."
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 18:18:47 GMT -5
just that Chainmail wargame rules were used in various capacities during the "interesting" phase of the campaign (1971-2), but that does not mean that it was by any means the only system that they borrowed from for rules, and neither myself nor some book I wrote a while ago is arguing for some exclusive derivation of Blackmoor from Chainmail. Ding! Winner. |
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Post by Admin Pete on May 1, 2017 18:23:44 GMT -5
Jon, does this list properly represent all of the concepts you mentioned? Are there any others that you would like to add? [snip] I think I've already taken up enough oxygen in this thread, which should really be about Rob's book. But in short, I think those characterizations of the concepts are sometimes a bit different that what I intended, at least, and my list was not meant to be exhaustive either, just exemplary. The key takeaway (the thing that summoned me to this thread anyway) is just that Chainmail wargame rules were used in various capacities during the "interesting" phase of the campaign (1971-2), but that does not mean that it was by any means the only system that they borrowed from for rules, and neither myself nor some book I wrote a while ago is arguing for some exclusive derivation of Blackmoor from Chainmail. Jon, feel free to start another thread.  |
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 18:26:26 GMT -5
I feel like we need to establish an agreed upon lexicon before we can even begin to discuss this; it's reading a bit like people are, with the best will in the world, having similar but not quite the same conversations. Again nothing I can give specific examples of, just a feeling. I am all for that language to manifest as I noted upthread many posts ago. However, that may require some learning lanes in design theory and systems theory to be driven. The alternative is to track conjecture to its lair, trap it, and try to coax it out of its cave while it remains inside, warmed by the science books heaped upon its bonfire. I feel I have taken an important step and it was my wish for more to come of this and not necessarily by or through myself. So I am pleased that Jon participated here and I look forward to his reactions to my book. Thanks Jon! |
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Post by increment on May 1, 2017 18:35:44 GMT -5
I believe that several good readings of the book would put us on a broader front in addressing the whole issue if we continue on such a discourse; and I sincerely look forward to your thoughts regarding it, Jon. I'm sure that's true, I'll definitely check out your book (and everyone else reading this should too!). I do appreciate it when the people who were there make the time to write down how they saw things and what they make of it all. One last thing on my way out the door: Chainmail is bounded by it being a closed system dependent on initial rules that cannot be altered in real time. Who says it was closed and couldn't be altered in real time? Gygax at the end of 1971 wrote an article on "Chainmail Additions" for the International Wargamer that contains the following passage: I read this to say that in fact the Chainmail rules are not closed, at least as I understand what we're talking about here when we say something is closed. A referee could decide, if a player shows some initiative and wants to do something "unusual" outside the rules, to figure out a way to make it work in real time. But to be clear, I'm not arguing this means that the idea of open rules was Gary's own personal innovation, or something - I think though that a lot of text like this was going around at the time. |
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 18:41:39 GMT -5
Heh. The difference between closed systems having some open variability and a truly open system. I covered this somewhere upthread, but perhaps at a future time we can take it up again down the line.
Cheers!
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Post by Admin Pete on May 1, 2017 18:56:12 GMT -5
Just to note if any of our readers wonder, it is about 2am right now over in France where Rob resides.
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Post by robkuntz on May 1, 2017 19:12:36 GMT -5
Just to note if any of our readers wonder, it is about 2am right now over in France where Rob resides. Yes, but I got ample sleep today. Nice of you to to think of me! I am about to turn in here anyway. Any Qs can be caught up with when I awake and have my first cup. Good night to everyone and thanks for the stimulating discourse! Is does keep the light gray matter between my ears from darkening... :0 |
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Post by Cedgewick on May 2, 2017 1:46:58 GMT -5
Wow, this is unfortunate! Increment jumped into this thread when I quoted a few lines from his book, and now he is departing just when I was about to analyze his concept list using Kuntz's new book. I guess we can continue the analysis without him. However, I will need to clarify something: neither myself nor some book I wrote a while ago is arguing for some exclusive derivation of Blackmoor from Chainmail. He implies here that I said he is arguing that Blackmoor derives exclusively from Chainmail. That is not at all what I said. Here is what I said: Jon, by stating "Blackmoor relied on Chainmail that perhaps go beyond the sorts of superficial details," you seem to be agreeing with the statement "Blackmoor derived at least one fundamental concept from Chainmail. If so, could you succinctly state what you believe that/those fundamental concept(s) is/are? Who is saying that he is arguing that Blackmoor derives exclusively from Chainmail? Certainly not me. The point that he is arguing against is a point that I never made. Now, in response to my question to him, he did provide two paragraphs of concepts in Blackmoor that are similar to Chainmail. Furthermore, he states in the second sentence of the third paragraph of the introduction to his book: So it seems safe to assume now that Increment does indeed believe that Blackmoor derived at least one fundamental concept from Chainmail. Still, I'll give him at least a half a day to dispute this before I go into analyzing his concept list with Kuntz's new book. |
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