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Post by True Black Raven on Jun 19, 2018 21:48:50 GMT -5
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Post by True Black Raven on Jun 19, 2018 21:49:08 GMT -5
chirinebakal , I have read that Phil Barker played with Tony Bath, do you have any stories to tell about that? And about influences that may have gone both ways?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2018 21:59:07 GMT -5
Which Phil Barker? There is the Phil Barker who is the English wargamer, and Phil (M.A.R) Barker, the American professor and wargamer.
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Post by True Black Raven on Jun 20, 2018 20:31:11 GMT -5
Which Phil Barker? There is the Phil Barker who is the English wargamer, and Phil (M.A.R) Barker, the American professor and wargamer. Doh! I did not know there were two Phil Barkers. If I had to guess at this point, I would guess the English wargamer.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2018 22:34:00 GMT -5
Since UKPhil and Tony founded something called "the Society of Ancients", I'd guess that they played one or two games together. And since USPhil had a manuscript copy of Tony's book on how to run a wargames campaign - which he used to run the meta-game in his Tekumel campaign from 1974 to 2006 - as well as being another very early SoA member, I'd suspect that there was some connection. Or so USPhil told me, anyway.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2018 22:36:35 GMT -5
As someone unfamiliar with Bath's works? May I respectfully ask what information is offered in his work that is not available in most referee DIY accounts?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2018 22:51:40 GMT -5
As someone unfamiliar with Bath's works? May I respectfully ask what information is offered in his work that is not available in most referee DIY accounts? If I may suggest: www.amazon.com/Setting-Wargames-Campaign-Tony-Bath/dp/0904417220Back some years ago, it was a common custom amongst miniatures gamers to run what they called 'campaigns', which were set up to generate battles on the table for the various players. Mr. Bath set forth his rules for running one of these, which was called "Hyboria" after the mythical world of Conan. This set of rules was used by quite a few gamers to run their campaigns, and eventually found their way into the infant RPG hobby through people like Dave Arenson and M. A. R. Barker. One could say that they influenced D&D's 'domain game', but I'll leave that for more informed people. Most RPG GMs have never heard of Mr. Bath or his work, which is too bad; they provide a fast, easy way to run campaigns that don't depend on 'dungeon crawls' to keep the players busy. I've been using these rules since Prof. Barker introduced me to them in 1975, both for my RPG campaigns as well as my historical miniatures ones such as the Tangier Campaign. Prof. Barker used them in his Tekumel campaign, to run the over 1,500 NPCs he had created in 1974 as part of the 'play-test' games that led to the publication of "Empire of the Petal Throne" by TSR. He also used them to run his 'Megarra' fantasy miniatures campaign. The rules provide a tested, working, reliable way to manage campaigns and the NPCs who populate them.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2018 22:56:53 GMT -5
Useful information. Thank you, Jeff, for the reply and the link. Ribbit.
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Post by True Black Raven on Jun 20, 2018 23:28:14 GMT -5
Since UKPhil and Tony founded something called "the Society of Ancients", I'd guess that they played one or two games together. And since USPhil had a manuscript copy of Tony's book on how to run a wargames campaign - which he used to run the meta-game in his Tekumel campaign from 1974 to 2006 - as well as being another very early SoA member, I'd suspect that there was some connection. Or so USPhil told me, anyway. I did not know there were two Phils so I was assuming they were talking about the USPhil. But if he was an early member of SoA there is at least some level of connection, so thank you for confirming that. Shame so many of us older weren't part of any of the loops and groups back then.
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Post by True Black Raven on Jun 20, 2018 23:40:57 GMT -5
As someone unfamiliar with Bath's works? May I respectfully ask what information is offered in his work that is not available in most referee DIY accounts? If I may suggest: www.amazon.com/Setting-Wargames-Campaign-Tony-Bath/dp/0904417220Back some years ago, it was a common custom amongst miniatures gamers to run what they called 'campaigns', which were set up to generate battles on the table for the various players. Mr. Bath set forth his rules for running one of these, which was called "Hyboria" after the mythical world of Conan. This set of rules was used by quite a few gamers to run their campaigns, and eventually found their way into the infant RPG hobby through people like Dave Arenson and M. A. R. Barker. One could say that they influenced D&D's 'domain game', but I'll leave that for more informed people. Most RPG GMs have never heard of Mr. Bath or his work, which is too bad; they provide a fast, easy way to run campaigns that don't depend on 'dungeon crawls' to keep the players busy. I've been using these rules since Prof. Barker introduced me to them in 1975, both for my RPG campaigns as well as my historical miniatures ones such as the Tangier Campaign. Prof. Barker used them in his Tekumel campaign, to run the over 1,500 NPCs he had created in 1974 as part of the 'play-test' games that led to the publication of "Empire of the Petal Throne" by TSR. He also used them to run his 'Megarra' fantasy miniatures campaign. The rules provide a tested, working, reliable way to manage campaigns and the NPCs who populate them. Over 1500 NPCs and that was in 1974, wow! BTW @chirinebakal, do you know anything about the Migard rules in the UK or the Migard that was brought to the US. This is another thread on here ( "Dave Arneson's True Genius": April 13th at 6:00AM EDT) that talks about Midgard and Midgard II as part of that thread starting with this post ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/post/13786/thread. (The name Tom Drake came up in reference to Midgard II) Also Michael F. Korns "Modern Warfare in Miniature". Can you shed any light on Tom Drake and Midgard/Midgard II? And can you speak about Michael F Korns?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2018 11:28:45 GMT -5
After the weekend I can talk about Korns. Back in the 1973-76 period we played a BOATLOAD.
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 21, 2018 12:31:30 GMT -5
After the weekend I can talk about Korns. Back in the 1973-76 period we played a BOATLOAD. That would be cool!
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Post by ripx187 on Jun 21, 2018 15:54:40 GMT -5
This thread is exciting! Tony Bath's book can be purchased for Kindle so that you can read it on a budget. It is really too bad that it hasn't been reprinted, it is an amazing book! D&D borrowed his ideas very liberally, it is a great system that fits our needs like a glove! The guy was a genius! I especially enjoyed his thoughts on movement rates. . . cause I'm a geek.
I do have a question though, if anybody knows. Parts of his descriptions sound like he had the players wargaming with each other, but other parts sound like it was a mail game where he and Don Featherstone would play them and then send the results back to the generals. It was a big game! Perhaps they had to do both?
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 21, 2018 16:03:01 GMT -5
This thread is exciting! Tony Bath's book can be purchased for Kindle so that you can read it on a budget. It is really too bad that it hasn't been reprinted, it is an amazing book! D&D borrowed his ideas very liberally, it is a great system that fits our needs like a glove! The guy was a genius! I especially enjoyed his thoughts on movement rates. . . cause I'm a geek. I do have a question though, if anybody knows. Parts of his descriptions sound like he had the players wargaming with each other, but other parts sound like it was a mail game where he and Don Featherstone would play them and then send the results back to the generals. It was a big game! Perhaps they had to do both? I am interested in these things too!
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Post by Q Man on Jun 24, 2018 14:17:16 GMT -5
After the weekend I can talk about Korns. Back in the 1973-76 period we played a BOATLOAD. Hope to hear about this, this coming week.
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Post by Q Man on Jun 24, 2018 14:21:24 GMT -5
Back some years ago, it was a common custom amongst miniatures gamers to run what they called 'campaigns', which were set up to generate battles on the table for the various players. Mr. Bath set forth his rules for running one of these, which was called "Hyboria" after the mythical world of Conan. This set of rules was used by quite a few gamers to run their campaigns, and eventually found their way into the infant RPG hobby through people like Dave Arenson and M. A. R. Barker. One could say that they influenced D&D's 'domain game', but I'll leave that for more informed people. A question for @chirinebakal or anyone that knows. The "campaigns" that Tony Bath ran with Hyboria, were those one shots each time or did he run something that spread across multiple days, weeks, months or even years as an ongoing "campaign"?
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Post by simrion on Jun 24, 2018 14:28:55 GMT -5
I seem to recall some interviews on YouTube? I may be misremembering however
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Post by Q Man on Jun 24, 2018 16:08:56 GMT -5
I seem to recall some interviews on YouTube? I may be misremembering however By @chirinebakal or someone else?
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Post by ripx187 on Jun 25, 2018 16:23:30 GMT -5
Back some years ago, it was a common custom amongst miniatures gamers to run what they called 'campaigns', which were set up to generate battles on the table for the various players. Mr. Bath set forth his rules for running one of these, which was called "Hyboria" after the mythical world of Conan. This set of rules was used by quite a few gamers to run their campaigns, and eventually found their way into the infant RPG hobby through people like Dave Arenson and M. A. R. Barker. One could say that they influenced D&D's 'domain game', but I'll leave that for more informed people. A question for @chirinebakal or anyone that knows. The "campaigns" that Tony Bath ran with Hyboria, were those one shots each time or did he run something that spread across multiple days, weeks, months or even years as an ongoing "campaign"? Tony Bath had a vision of fighting over Hyboria until there was one winner, he discovered that he could not be a player in this game and had to be an administrator (GM). The game took years to play itself out, it was an amazing and important piece of work, which, in the process, he developed many elements which would later be translated into the basics of D&D. He even had a Hyboria newspaper, which catalogued the game so that we can read it. It is included in the Kindle version of the book.
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 26, 2018 12:50:19 GMT -5
A question for @chirinebakal or anyone that knows. The "campaigns" that Tony Bath ran with Hyboria, were those one shots each time or did he run something that spread across multiple days, weeks, months or even years as an ongoing "campaign"? Tony Bath had a vision of fighting over Hyboria until there was one winner, he discovered that he could not be a player in this game and had to be an administrator (GM). The game took years to play itself out, it was an amazing and important piece of work, which, in the process, he developed many elements which would later be translated into the basics of D&D. He even had a Hyboria newspaper, which catalogued the game so that we can read it. It is included in the Kindle version of the book. Would love to see more details about this.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2018 16:22:43 GMT -5
I don't think D&D necessarily borrowed from Bath, I think it's more a matter of "this is how you do a campaign". Tony just wrote a lot of it down.
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 26, 2018 16:30:19 GMT -5
I don't think D&D necessarily borrowed from Bath, I think it's more a matter of "this is how you do a campaign". Tony just wrote a lot of it down. I would agree with this, often these days it is a matter of finding who wrote things down. I would still like to get my hands on the Midgard/Midgard II documents. There are so many things that either no longer exist or lie unnoticed and unknown or are deliberately being hoarded and hidden for future gain after we are all dead. These days budgets are tight, but I keep adding when I can. Right now I am trying to keep Rob's up coming books in my budget.
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Post by ripx187 on Jun 26, 2018 17:11:22 GMT -5
You are probably right @gronanofsimmerya , I am not fully aware of what came before Mr Bath's work. Reading it, you can see that it is very inspiring. The document definitely influenced Mr Gygax, as it will anyone who reads it. I remember studying the original AD&D DMG (an important book to me) and wondering how on earth Gygax came up with all of this stuff. I know that Gary enjoyed writing and tinkering around with rules, do you think that the DMG was, in part, his changes and fine-tuning of Bath's work? I ask because AD&D references something, but it never really names it. It gives you hints about wargames, but the basics were never included. Tony Bath's book makes the perfect companion for AD&D.
I may be mistaken, but Chainmail leans on this book as well, doesn't it? Chainmail added something to it that was not there before, that Fantasy element that Bath purposely ignored because he didn't want to go there. I want to say that Wargames focused on relatively modern combat, but it was Bath who wanted to go further back. I apologize for speculation on my part, maybe I am just seeing a connection where there isn't one. I know that Gary was very well read and no one source can claim credit for his processes, but man. This comes close.
I think that it would be amazing to have this wargame going on in the background of a setting. One would be tempted, however, to run a simulation, but I think that, like D&D, that human aspect is what made this game function. It wasn't cold, it required the personalities and thoughts of the individuals who were playing it. There was a lot of Diplomacy at play as well here, the Conan character did not win by luck, but through skill. Much of the combat was predictable and one-sided, what wasn't one-sided was the strategies and the reactions of the players themselves and I don't think that a computer can simulate that.
It is such a fascinating book!
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Post by El Borak on Jun 26, 2018 18:16:16 GMT -5
I think it is easy to read too much into things, just as easy as it is to discount things. We have to remember that Arneson created the game, showed it to Gygax who wrote it down and swapped out a lot of Arneson's mechanics for his own.
So we really have multiple questions here and
one is did Bath's Hyboria campaign and his writings influence Chainmail, since Bath's rules and publication substantially pre-dated Chainmail, there is very likely a connection, but not directly to the fantasy section of Chainmail? Chainmail was published in March 1971 and Arneson had already transitioned from Braunstein to Blackmoor so then there are
two additional questions
one is how much of Bath came through from Chainmail during the temporary use by Arneson of Chainmail and
two since Arneson also played wargames was there a direct influence from Bath and if so how much on the Blackmoor campaign which leads to another question
if Bath is an influence on D&D how much of that came thorough Arneson and how much came through Gygax?
*********************************************************************************************************************************
Side issues to this discussion are these.
There is the issue that since in the transition from Blackmoor to Greyhawk and the playtests to published D&D, Gygax created mechanics that owe something to Chainmail in lieu of the mechanics that Arneson used and this was for several reasons, one is that Arneson never wrote all of his mechanics down and what he did write down where more mnemonics notes than anything else, so when Gygax started writing it down while he did exchange letters with Arneson (slow) and did have phone calls with Arneson (expensive) a lot of the time he had to take his best memory of what happened and translate that into a rule that he could write down and test and
two that Arneson was fond of percentages and Gygax was not, so a lot of Arneson's mechanics were changed in form from percentages to various numbers of d6's being rolled. Access to the d20's numbered 0-9 twice could also have been a factor in this.
The issue of how much did the switching of mechanics by Gygax change the game from Blackmoor to Greyhawk, leaving aside the fact that the underlying conceptual game was itself unchanged is a separate question and one that is mostly unanswerable. The original notes that Arneson gave Gygax seem to be gone, as are the Arneson notes that were given to Kask to complete the Blackmoor supplement (a task that IMO Kask screwed up, due to his well documented hatred for Arneson, the hatred that Kask himself documented for all to see)(over in the Kask Q&A at DF).
There apparently a lot of letters between Arneson and Gygax that would shed (we hope) light on these matters, but those letters at this time reside in the hands of collector/hoarder/"historians", so all that we may slowly see are little bits and pieces released here and there over a period of years. A lot of us are going to die before these "historians" release the information.
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Post by ripx187 on Jun 26, 2018 20:42:12 GMT -5
I would say that Bath had a large impact on Greyhawk D&D, but I don't mean to overstate that into any grey area that would even suggest plagiarism. An influence is just that.
That said, I really enjoy Bath's method of setting creation. As far as books dedicated to this topic, which I've read my fair share, this system is written the best. My dumb opinion only.
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Post by Q Man on Jun 26, 2018 22:36:29 GMT -5
A question for @chirinebakal or anyone that knows. The "campaigns" that Tony Bath ran with Hyboria, were those one shots each time or did he run something that spread across multiple days, weeks, months or even years as an ongoing "campaign"? Tony Bath had a vision of fighting over Hyboria until there was one winner, he discovered that he could not be a player in this game and had to be an administrator (GM). The game took years to play itself out, it was an amazing and important piece of work, which, in the process, he developed many elements which would later be translated into the basics of D&D. He even had a Hyboria newspaper, which catalogued the game so that we can read it. It is included in the Kindle version of the book. Thanks for the extra info and I will have to get it and check out that newspaper.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2018 23:36:00 GMT -5
So, even after somebody who was THERE saying that Bath did not influence D&D, you morons are persisting in saying Bath influenced D&D?
Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack. I'm done.
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Post by bravewolf on Jun 27, 2018 0:19:05 GMT -5
So, even after somebody who was THERE saying that Bath did not influence D&D, you morons are persisting in saying Bath influenced D&D? Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack. I'm done. Is that somebody you, @gronanofsimmerya ? Cos if so, you did qualify the lack of evidence for a direct Bathian influence on D&D rather heavily in an earlier post in this thread. Not to insult anybody's feet around here, but let's hear about Korns... Did he also provide mechanisms for grand campaigns a la Bath?Well, I just read through Korns' Modern Warfare in Miniature and found no treatment of the larger campaign - which wasn't the point of this book of his. Plus, being a World War II ruleset, it would've had limited applicability to the medieval fantasy campaign. I will have to see whether he wrote any other, more applicable Wargames.
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Post by ripx187 on Jun 27, 2018 1:07:24 GMT -5
I don't know. I've never thought of myself as a moron. Morons are usually in charge of stuff. I think that I'm more of a twitt, really.
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Post by Admin Pete on Jun 27, 2018 5:37:59 GMT -5
I would say that Bath had a large impact on Greyhawk D&D, but I don't mean to overstate that into any grey area that would even suggest plagiarism. An influence is just that. That said, I really enjoy Bath's method of setting creation. As far as books dedicated to this topic, which I've read my fair share, this system is written the best. My dumb opinion only. Can you explain why you think that is so? Are you referring to the Supplement or to Gary's Greyhawk campaign. robkuntz probably knows if it influenced either and whether or not it influenced Chainmail and hopefully he will speak to that. I don't have any idea to what degree if any Bath influenced anything, but it is likely that it did, particularly Chainmail. Bath, Featherstone, Korns and others were likely all influences on Chainmail, but as was noted probably not on the fantasy section of Chainmail.
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