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Post by Admin Pete on Oct 4, 2019 22:29:18 GMT -5
>>>Fallert known as Blue Petal is listed as an original Blackmoor major player in FFC and I have seen Blue Petal mentioned in numerous places. That is incorrect. As I said, Bluepetal had no particular connection to Blackmoor. You may perhaps be confusing Lois Fallert with William Heaton. Heaton's character carried the sword "Blue" and he became known as "The Blue rider" after acquiring a set of blue mechanized armor. Please site sources if you think otherwise. Sorry, I seem to have gotten that confused.
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Post by Admin Pete on Oct 4, 2019 22:59:37 GMT -5
OH! That is an interesting question. I doubt that I am smart enough for this conversation, but why let that get in the way now? The best way to learn war games is to play war games. This could very well be a verbal tradition, but most clubs were in colleges. It only takes one guy who can get access to the rules. With the exception of Featherstone, wargame rules were published in pamphlet forms and further discussed in newsletters. Most hobbyists were playing by mail and had to agree on rules. I'm fairly certain that if an old-school wargamer from the 60's were to look at my game that he would see Strategos. The got it from the university library. These days you can download the book online. I have not had much luck finding it online as a download and I understand there are at least two volumes. You can read the first volume at Google, but trying to read it inside that frame is really difficult and very slow. I have yet to locate the second volume in any form and neither as a download. I also understand that there are the following variants. Strategos N Strategos RT Strategos C Strategos A It would really be nice for those to be put out on pdf. Wesely could put on Strategos N on pdf someday, I am not sure if the other three still exist outside of a collection where they will stay buried.
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Post by aldarron on Oct 8, 2019 14:38:58 GMT -5
Strategos was a single volume book - at least the original print is only one volume.
The Strategos varients you cite are more like appendixes. I haven't seen all of them, but they usually consist of 5 or 6 pages of troop rules and tables specific to the era. The general rules remain the same. There are two published versions of these"Strategos family" rules - Don't give up the Ship and Valley Forge. DgutS of course is only very stripped down Strategos, but Valley Forge is the real thing at it's core.
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 16, 2019 19:58:05 GMT -5
To the speculation here that I was a college kid at the time I wrote up my D&D variant in 1974, that was still some years away. I was 14 years old and had been playing the game for several months (maybe as long as a year). It first made its way to Minneapolis by way of a science fiction fan/gamester who went by the name of Blue Petal (since deceased), who came to one of our regular Saturday meetings of the Minnesota Science Fiction Society with news of a game he had played in Wisconsin. He made and ran the first dungeon, based on his somewhat incomplete recollection of the rules, but several of us took over from there and made the game our obsession. Being somewhat precociously devoted to orderliness, I took it on myself to write up the rules in a formal way. It would be a few more years before I even heard of D&D, which I played a few times with Michael Mornard and others when I was still not yet a college kid (but had at least become a kid who hung around college). In those days of fanzines and nightlong gaming it never would have occurred to me that I might sell the game. It was just an adolescent lark. It has now been more than 40 years since I last played Dungeon, but I still make simulations a major part of my work. I teach professionals to be negotiators and litigators in the field of trade policy, and often do so through elaborate games. That has meant trading in dice for Excel, and dragons for tariffs, but I no longer hesitate to ask that I be paid for my work.
Craig VanGrasstek
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 17, 2019 2:55:04 GMT -5
To the speculation here that I was a college kid at the time I wrote up my D&D variant in 1974, that was still some years away. I was 14 years old and had been playing the game for several months (maybe as long as a year). It first made its way to Minneapolis by way of a science fiction fan/gamester who went by the name of Blue Petal (since deceased), who came to one of our regular Saturday meetings of the Minnesota Science Fiction Society with news of a game he had played in Wisconsin. He made and ran the first dungeon, based on his somewhat incomplete recollection of the rules, but several of us took over from there and made the game our obsession. Being somewhat precociously devoted to orderliness, I took it on myself to write up the rules in a formal way. It would be a few more years before I even heard of D&D, which I played a few times with Michael Mornard and others when I was still not yet a college kid (but had at least become a kid who hung around college). In those days of fanzines and nightlong gaming it never would have occurred to me that I might sell the game. It was just an adolescent lark. It has now been more than 40 years since I last played Dungeon, but I still make simulations a major part of my work. I teach professionals to be negotiators and litigators in the field of trade policy, and often do so through elaborate games. That has meant trading in dice for Excel, and dragons for tariffs, but I no longer hesitate to ask that I be paid for my work. Craig VanGrasstek Hi Craig, thank you for the information on this, great to know more details on it. Only 14, that is way cool. Do you still have you original copy? It looks like your gaming interests led to your career.
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 17, 2019 7:44:57 GMT -5
I don't recall if I still have the original rules, but do remember that a few years ago I dug out some materials for Jon Peterson. I did two quite amateurish Dungeon-themed covers for Minneapa aound 1974 or 1975, and also wrote up a detailed account of a game; I scanned and sent them to Jon. It would be an exaggeration to say that gaming led to my career. A more correct summary would be that after I spent a few decades working in this field of trade and began teaching others I drew upon what I remembered about game design from my youth. This has led to games that variously teach the foundations of comparative advantage, or how to negotiate a tariff agreement, or litigate a trade dispute, or negotiate a ministerial declaration, etc. But now I have been at it for close to twenty years, which is about ten times longer than I ever spent at Dungeon.
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Post by mao on Nov 17, 2019 9:23:47 GMT -5
I don't recall if I still have the original rules, but do remember that a few years ago I dug out some materials for Jon Peterson. I did two quite amateurish Dungeon-themed covers for Minneapa aound 1974 or 1975, and also wrote up a detailed account of a game; I scanned and sent them to Jon. It would be an exaggeration to say that gaming led to my career. A more correct summary would be that after I spent a few decades working in this field of trade and began teaching others I drew upon what I remembered about game design from my youth. This has led to games that variously teach the foundations of comparative advantage, or how to negotiate a tariff agreement, or litigate a trade dispute, or negotiate a ministerial declaration, etc. But now I have been at it for close to twenty years, which is about ten times longer than I ever spent at Dungeon. I look forward to hearing you reminiscences about the Good Old Days. (oh and welcome!)
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 17, 2019 21:12:00 GMT -5
I don't recall if I still have the original rules, but do remember that a few years ago I dug out some materials for Jon Peterson. I did two quite amateurish Dungeon-themed covers for Minneapa aound 1974 or 1975, and also wrote up a detailed account of a game; I scanned and sent them to Jon. It would be an exaggeration to say that gaming led to my career. A more correct summary would be that after I spent a few decades working in this field of trade and began teaching others I drew upon what I remembered about game design from my youth. This has led to games that variously teach the foundations of comparative advantage, or how to negotiate a tariff agreement, or litigate a trade dispute, or negotiate a ministerial declaration, etc. But now I have been at it for close to twenty years, which is about ten times longer than I ever spent at Dungeon. Do you work for the UN or the WTO or something of that nature?
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 17, 2019 22:09:44 GMT -5
Both.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 0:27:50 GMT -5
Anything you can share that would probably surprise us?
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 18, 2019 1:06:19 GMT -5
About ... ?
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 14:23:13 GMT -5
Sorry, I meant about your job(s).
I also Googled you, you are quite distinguished in your field, with a several books in print. In fact, I am a bit surprised that you do not have a wikipedia page. Do you have a complete bibliography you can post?
Trade and American Leadership: The Paradoxes of Power and Wealth from Alexander Hamilton to Donald Trump looks liike one that I wouldl like to read, I will have to check the library for it.
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 18, 2019 18:36:01 GMT -5
I don't think wikipedia ought to dilute its brand by putting up a page for anyone who writes a book or two. I enjoy my work and like to believe that I've found a pretty good point of equilibrium in that whole work/life balance, but it's nothing that merits a lot of attention.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 19:46:36 GMT -5
I don't think wikipedia ought to dilute its brand by putting up a page for anyone who writes a book or two. I enjoy my work and like to believe that I've found a pretty good point of equilibrium in that whole work/life balance, but it's nothing that merits a lot of attention. I cannot argue with that. Although you and a lot of others are probably more deserving of a spot there compared to all of the "celebrities" who really are diluting the brand. But they are chasing their 15 minutes and others like yourself do not need that to validate your life. Which is really much cooler. BTW cvangrasstek, I am curious how did you find us?
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 19:49:49 GMT -5
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 18, 2019 20:33:13 GMT -5
Actually I have spent the last ten days writing up a quite elaborate role-playing game that is designed to teach officials in another country how to negotiate trade agreements, and when I first proposed this didactic game to the client I pitched it as "sort of Dungeons and Dragons for trade nerds." (In case anyone asks, let me stress that this is a client-confidential product that I cannot post or otherwise share.) Which reminded me of my correspondence with Jon Peterson a few years ago. Which inspired me to do some googling. And I was rather surprised to see all the places where Jon's account of my rules got referenced, including at least one stating that someone recently tried playing a game with them. That's about as close to a time machine as I think I'll ever get. But when I saw someone speculating that I must have been "some college kid" when I wrote the rules I thought that as a bona fide historian I had to correct the record.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 22:31:30 GMT -5
Actually I have spent the last ten days writing up a quite elaborate role-playing game that is designed to teach officials in another country how to negotiate trade agreements, and when I first proposed this didactic game to the client I pitched it as "sort of Dungeons and Dragons for trade nerds." (In case anyone asks, let me stress that this is a client-confidential product that I cannot post or otherwise share.) That is wild, someday down the road years from now, you and the client should sell that to universities around the world or even to high schools. Which reminded me of my correspondence with Jon Peterson a few years ago. Which inspired me to do some googling. And I was rather surprised to see all the places where Jon's account of my rules got referenced, including at least one stating that someone recently tried playing a game with them. That's about as close to a time machine as I think I'll ever get. But when I saw someone speculating that I must have been "some college kid" when I wrote the rules I thought that as a bona fide historian I had to correct the record. We are glad you did, it is much cooler knowing that you were "some high school kid" instead. Depending on the timing and when your birthday is you could have been what 8th or 9th grade when you started playing and then when you wrote it up. Given when you started it is fitting that you are writing games for professional adults to directly improve their job skills. I think the educational benefits of role-playing games is really an untapped market.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 18, 2019 22:45:17 GMT -5
Do you have any stories of your days in "Blue Petals" "Castle Keep" game to share? Or stories from your own game of Dungeon? Do you remember the name of any of the other local games that were spawned from the "Blue Petals" "Castle Keep" game?
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 19, 2019 12:08:57 GMT -5
Just now I am working on a deadline, but after I get past it I suppose it would be good for the record for me to summarize what I recall about who played what and when. Are you folks familiar, for example, with M.A.R. Barker?
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Post by ripx187 on Nov 19, 2019 13:10:03 GMT -5
I can't thank you enough, Mr. VanGrasstek. It is very cool of you to create an account and visit with us. The game comes with this incredible desire to create, and you inspired many a hobbyist with your work. It is an amazing story!
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 19, 2019 15:13:07 GMT -5
Just now I am working on a deadline, but after I get past it I suppose it would be good for the record for me to summarize what I recall about who played what and when. Are you folks familiar, for example, with M.A.R. Barker? Yes, I am and several here are. He of Tékumel (The Empire of the Petal Throne) fame. The last few months I was in college one of the guys a year younger than me got a copy and we played a couple of times before I graduated.
Are you familiar with Chirine ba Kal (Jeff Berry)?
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 19, 2019 18:18:33 GMT -5
Can't say as I am. I will aim to write up my recollection maybe the end of this week.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 19, 2019 19:51:03 GMT -5
Can't say as I am. I will aim to write up my recollection maybe the end of this week. He has I understand the largest collection of EPT stuff and much of M.A.R. Barkers files were entrusted to him. I will look forward to your recollections anytime you are able to post them.
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 21, 2019 20:15:09 GMT -5
I had promised some recollections of how I came to write my rules. Here you go. Back in 2014, when I ran across a mention of my old “Rules to the Game of Dungeon” on Jon Peterson’s blog, I wrote him a note providing my recollections of how I came to write them. I have used that 2014 text as the basis for my note below, but have reorganized it and added a fair amount of additional details. Let me start by explaining how at that time there were several overlapping circles of people who had distinct but related interests, all of which had some association with this game. The one with which I then had the longest association — about two years as of 1974 — was the Minnesota Science Fiction Association (MNStF). That group still exists (see mnstf.org/index.php), although I have not had any contact with its members since about 1977. Another was the Minnesota chapter (http://nordskogen.org/) of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), in whose founding I was a marginal participant around 1975 or 1976. Yet another group was the war-gamers who then hung out at a shop called the Little Tin Soldier (http://www.bladeandcrown.com/blog/2013/01/16/rpg-history-the-little-tin-soldier/) but was previously (and confusingly) called La Belle Alliance. Nearly everyone I knew in those days (outside of school) was a member of at least one of those groups, and many were in two of them. I don’t remember anyone else being in all three, but that might just be poor memory on my part. The first and indirect exposure I had to D&D, even though I did not then hear the name, came at a MNStF meeting that (according to Jon Peterson’s research) would have been in February, 1974. For some odd reason I quite precisely recall that this meeting was (as was often the case then) held at the Minneapolis home of Denny Lien. A MNStF regular named Louis Fallert, but known to us as Blue Petal, told a few of us about this great game he had played elsewhere (I was vague on where and when), and we began to play a version of it based on his recollection of the rules. He called it Dungeon. I don’t remember anything about that first game, but was quickly hooked and soon began playing — and then dungeon-mastering — our own versions of it. In addition to Blue Petal and Dick Tatge, other frequent players in those early games included Martin Schafer, Larry Brommer, and Al Kuhfeld (who later became Ellen Kuhfeld, but that's another story altogether). These games quickly became a regular feature of MNStF meetings. Those were only every other Saturday, however, and some of us felt the need for a weekly game. Martin, Larry and I often got together to play marathon sessions, usually at Larry’s place in Saint Paul. I remember that it was not unusual for us to start sometime mid-evening and to go on until sunrise or beyond. Those early games were all graph-paper-pencil-and-dice affairs, and had a fair amount of improvisation to them. Something about that last point offended the more orderly parts of my 14 year old mind, so I thought that the game would benefit from a more regular set of rules. I also had some interest then in art and layout, and remember spending more time working on the illustrations for the rulebook than I did on the rules themselves. (I am now unsure whether I should be more appalled by the amateurishness of that art or the many errors in spelling and grammar that then committed.) I vaguely recall that the approach of the 32nd World Science Fiction Convention, which was to be held August 29-September 2, 1974, in Washington, D.C., was a big motivator for me. I wanted to get the rules done in time to distribute them there, having no idea that I would move to this city seven years later and would live there ever since. I don’t specifically recall how I actually distributed them at that convention, how many copies I had printed, etc. Let me also stress that it would never occur to me in those days to sell those rules. I just wanted to spread the game around, and get a little recognition in the process. I still had no idea that D&D existed, nor that it would gain any commercial presence. I should also stress that I don’t really know to what extent people other than me and my immediate circle actually used those rules after I wrote them. I suspect that we may have been the only ones to use them, and even then my friends would use their own variations when it was their turn to be dungeon-master. I probably played my last game of Dungeon sometime in 1975, as that was the year that I discovered that spending time with young women carries much greater charms than rolling dice with other guys. To the extent that I continued to play games, they were more often the table-top war-games at the Little Tin Soldier. I was also very interested in painting the figurines we used in those games, both of the realistic and the fantasy variety. That was the only context in which I ever knew M.A.R. Barker, as he paid me once to paint a bunch of Norman foot soldiers for him. I was vaguely aware of the games that he invented and played, but never got involved in those. As time passed I came in contact with people who did play D&D. Chief among them was Michael Mornard, whom I initially came to know through the local SCA chapter (for which I think he was the main founder), in war-gaming at the Little Tin Soldier, and in our shared interest in painting figurines. Michael lived in a group home with the aforementioned Al Kuhfeld (among others), and while Al knew our version of Dungeon the games that they played in this home were straight D&D. For a couple of years (c.1975-1977) this place was virtually my weekend home, as they often gave me the use of their guest room. Most of the people who played D&D at this home were also members of SCA. I think I played it with them fewer than half a dozen times; by then I had really lost interest in this sort of game. Michael was from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and I did travel there one time to participate in an annual war-gaming convention. This was most likely 1976 (I had just gotten my learner's permit), and it was the only time I met Gary Gygax and others in that group. It made little impression on me, as I recall being more interested in Michael’s little sister than in his old friends (you may note a pattern here). I also remember devoting more attention to a game based on the Battle of Brandywine than on any of the fantasy games. I drifted away from all of these pastimes during my years at the University of Minnesota (1977-1981), and especially after I moved to Washington, D.C. for graduate school in 1981. When Jon unearthed and posted my old Dungeon rules in 2014 it was the first time I had seen them in close to 40 years. I must have kept a few copies for a while, but don’t think I have any in my old files. Games were not an important part of my life in the 1980s and 1990s, but when I started to teach at Harvard in 2000 I began to devise games as a means of teaching the principles and practicalities of my field (trade policy). I now make role-playing games a fairly important part of the classes in which I teach professionals, and they carry at least an echo of my 1970s pastime.
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 21, 2019 20:23:29 GMT -5
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 21, 2019 21:41:31 GMT -5
That is fascinating cvangrasstek, I did have one advantage though, all through the '70s I gamed with young women with almost always equal numbers men and women in our games. What were some of the other DMs like that you played with in Dungeon? What was it like playing in Michael Monard's game?
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 21, 2019 22:07:52 GMT -5
I really do not remember. I think I acted as DM in the great majority of the Dungeon games in which I was involved; I have no specific recollection of anyone else's game. I do know that the feel and the culture of our games was vastly different from what D&D players did. Their games seemed grimly serious to me by comparison, and way too focused on a kind of ersatz careerism for their characters. We treated our games mostly like exercises in theater of the absurd or as set-ups for punchlines, or as riddles. We were, in short, more interested in a good joke than in replicating anything that remotely resembled any sort of real or imagined world. The few specific episodes that I can recall now strike me as sophomoric (at best), but at the time it felt like we were edgy, clever, and hip. I know that from the D&D players' perspective what we did seemed contemptibly trivial and irreverent; Michael has said as much recently. Given the choice, I prefer to have memories of having been laughably silly than having been even more laughably self-important. The only woman I can recall playing any of these games was Michael Mornard's first wife, Deborah, but that was straight D&D and hence she was as grim as the rest of them. There were plenty of women in SCA and MNStF, but not among the gamers.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 22, 2019 1:02:49 GMT -5
I was Ref the majority of the time in college and our game had a mix of both types you mention. While we had our serious stuff and grim tense moments, we also had our humor to break the tension. We had quite a few punsters and we joked and laughed a lot. We kidded each other a lot and had puzzles and such to figure out during the game. IMO humor is vital to the game and IMO crucial to immersion. Our games were roller coaster rides of emotion from the grimmest high tension to roll on the floor laughter.
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Post by Mighty Darci on Nov 24, 2019 16:40:34 GMT -5
cvangrasstek , if you were going to revisit Dungeon now, what would you change? What would you leave the same? What are the tweaks/changes that you have come up with since then that you use in your work?
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Post by cvangrasstek on Nov 25, 2019 22:41:58 GMT -5
I don't think I would change anything if I were doing it in that time and place, as it all made sense then and there, but most of the references would be lost today. Unless of course you know about Herbie Popnecker and Vikings who sing about spam, which were well-known tropes to my friends in those days. What I use today from those times is make sure that I slip little jokes into the educational games that I design. Not everyone gets it, especially when they don't expect there to be anything but a lesson or a challenge, but those who know me long enough learn to look for the hidden meaning. If they do get it, I can share a laugh with them; if they don't, I quietly have a laugh at them. I do the same thing with my writing, with every book I have written since 1985 having Easter eggs in them. I am especially fond of writing footnotes that seem serious but are instead elaborate jokes.
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