Historical wargaming and the development of RPGs.

[James Holloway]

Over the last couple of years, I've been getting increasingly involved in historical miniatures gaming. And, although I'm just a young 'un and wasn't around for the early years of D&D as discussed in other threads on this forum, I'm noting a marked similarity between the way D&D is described there and the way historical mini games are today. I don't think there's an absolute correspondence, but I think a casual glance at the  historical minis community would be rewarding for the student of RPG history, if only for comparative purposes.

If you pop on over to rec.games.miniatures.historical, or leaf through a copy of Wargames Illustrated, you'll notice, I think, a couple of trends:

a) systems very seldom include explicit instructions on "how to play." It is a basic assumption that you will be able to scrounge up or convert the figures you need, and that you understand implicitly concepts like "ground scale" and so forth. Many games don't include army lists, and it is assumed that you will either just use the army lists from another game(!) or that you will know your favorite army's orbat (and no one will tell you that this means "order of battle") well enough to just improvise it. One game published in this month's WI actually includes a section which says, basically, "I'm not going to include rules for this -- I know all of you have a favorite set of rules you'll use instead." Taken in this context, the vagueness of early D&D fits right in.

b) most systems are extremely idiosyncratic -- they reflect the author's personal views about the state of the hobby, and are conceived as part of a dialogue in which the other parts are other games. It is not uncommon for rules sets to include long ramblings by the author about why this game is "better" than some others. This doesn't really apply much to very early D&D, since it was essentially the only game in the field. But the idea of producing a generic product is not common.

c) most companies producing historical wargames of the miniatures variety are tiny cottage companies, indie as all hell. I can think of only one that isn't, and they're run by the same guys who turned fantasy minis into big business.

Now, there are a few significant differences between historical games and RPGs, and I'll touch briefly on them here:

1) the tension between design goals is seen as being a spectrum with "playability" on one end and "historical accuracy" on the other. Though, mind you, it is of course perfectly possible to create a game which is neither.

2) the contributions of other games are well-recognized and understood. Games frequently include "designer's notes" in which the influence of earlier games on the rules set is specifically referred to. Someone pointed this out ages ago (In Lawrence Schick's "Heroic Worlds?") and wondered why other RPGs don't do the same -- and of course, "awareness of context" is something Ron's been pushing for a while.

I'm not sure if I have a point; any other historical gamers on the board disagree with me? But I think that if you want to understand the way D&D in particular and early RPGs in general developed, you could do worse than to check out the historical wargames community.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi James,

This is a fascinating post, because back in the early 80s, the insights you present here were almost universal common knowledge among the role-players I knew. Role-playing was considered, in the late 70s, to be a sub-set of wargaming, and in some groups, play was only carried out in the context of the events established by the larger-scale wargame rules. That's why people call extended role-playing a "campaign."

You also might be interested in how many RPGs existed within months of D&D's first convention release. In many ways, I think the hobby didn't start with a single innovator at all, but rather parts and pieces of what we now call role-playing were present all around the world - and were synthesized during a very brief post-D&D process of massive communication and experimentation. The earliest players included RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery, High Fantasy, Tunnels & Trolls, and Melee/Wizard, among others that are almost 100% forgotten.

If you can, take a look at that very-first-version D&D some time. You'll be astonished at how little like a role-playing game it is.

Best,
Ron

[James Holloway]

Hi James,

This is a fascinating post, because back in the early 80s, the insights you present here were almost universal common knowledge among the role-players I knew. Role-playing was considered, in the late 70s, to be a sub-set of wargaming, and in some groups, play was only carried out in the context of the events established by the larger-scale wargame rules. That's why people call extended role-playing a "campaign."

It's also, presumably, the origin of terms like "scenario" and "initiative," yeah? I wonder what else. An interesting piece of the dialogue about the nature of RPGs is the section of, I think, HIL Street Blues where the author affects not to understand why long-term RPG games are called "campaigns."

You also might be interested in how many RPGs existed within months of D&D's first convention release. In many ways, I think the hobby didn't start with a single innovator at all, but rather parts and pieces of what we now call role-playing were present all around the world - and were synthesized during a very brief post-D&D process of massive communication and experimentation. The earliest players included RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery, High Fantasy, Tunnels & Trolls, and Melee/Wizard, among others that are almost 100% forgotten.

If you can, take a look at that very-first-version D&D some time. You'll be astonished at how little like a role-playing game it is.

Best,
Ron

Oh, I've seen it, but only with a sort of antiquarian fascination. I just wasn't around when it came out. But one of the things that has been discussed has been that, for example, T&T was an early set of D&D "house rules" that eventually evolved into something that wasn't really D&D at all. And this is something that's very common in historical wargaming -- I've never seen a historical wargame criticized for not being "innovative." They're not supposed to be innovative.

You make a good point about the RPG aspects being there in wargaming and being galvanized by D&D. The really interesting thing is that they're still there -- that almost-but-not-quite RPG material is still bubbling along in the historical wargames community, these days probably aided by feedback from gamers who also play RPGs.  I can't recommend anything better than this month's issue of Wargames Illustrated as an example of this -- you've got a scenario in which the players play individual detailed big-game hunters fighting off unusually intelligent gorillas (with a foreword in which the author feverishly explains why this is not, look with a spot I damn it, fantasy), as well as two articles about adding detailed individual characters to campaigns, one in particular with tons and tons of "flavor" text.

So some of these games made the transition into being what we call RPGs, but there are many which are still in whatever phase Chainmail was in right before someone decided to knock off the armies and just deal with the heroes.

[Thierry Michel]

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beattie/timeline/1972-1979/dd.gif

[b_bankhead]

In many ways, I think the hobby didn't start with a single innovator at all, but rather parts and pieces of what we now call role-playing were present all around the world - and were synthesized during a very brief post-D&D process of massive communication and experimentation. The earliest players included RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery, High Fantasy, Tunnels & Trolls, and Melee/Wizard, among others that are almost 100% forgotten.

 One major player in the evolution of the rpg and its separation from the miniatures wargame is conspicuously missing from your list.  That game is Traveler.  The first 'major' SF rpg was, more than almost any early game, a game that required a definite story.  A lot of D&D was and is played out as series of loosley related miniatures scenarios.  The default model of ,'go into the gilded hole ,kill the critters and take their stuff' simply didn't tranlate to a space game.  A few people tried to run the game like D&D but it didnt work, the concept of walking through endless starship hallways blasting things with laser rifles and stealing their credits seemed stupid in a way it didnt in Dungeonland (actually i thought it seemed stupid there myself too..).

So when playing Traveler there was a premium for creating some kind of story.   Usually it was A-team in Space, but the fact that they had a reason for all the gunplay was a big change from the pointlessness of Dungeonland.

  This is also why it was a slow starter compared with fantasy.  It has no easily grasped gamist default mode comparable to the dungeon crawl.  The closest was a merchant campaign played with the trade rules, but that was more boring than the most dimwitted dungeon...........

So when the history of the big evolutionary between wargames and rpgs is charted I would put the branch closer the the release of Traveler. It forced most people to thing about rpgs games and differently as Call of Cthulhu would four years later....

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings James,

Great post.

Over the last couple of years, I've been getting increasingly involved in historical miniatures gaming. And, although I'm just a young 'un and wasn't around for the early years of D&D as discussed in other threads on this forum, I'm noting a marked similarity between the way D&D is described there and the way historical mini games are today. I don't think there's an absolute correspondence, but I think a casual glance at the  historical minis community would be rewarding for the student of RPG history, if only for comparative purposes.

I don't know if this will be as interesting or insightful a post but, it is a unusual observation... probably from circa the mid-1980s and some of the games I recall.

Odd as it may sound just about every gamer I knew had a mini to represent their main character.  In fact those of who didn't have one (or forgot to bring them to the game) were considered less than serious about our character.  Yet these minis were seldom used for anything other than putting them on the table to show party order or, if there was a map, used as one might move a pawn on a game board.

Can't say if that observation is peculiar to some of the games I ran or not yet, at the same time, I can't say it's because we didn't know about wargames.  I know I owned a few.

Ok, now for something redeeming.  Here's a link to a good site about wargames.  Web-Grognards ("The site for wargames on the web.")


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[contracycle]

Ok, now for something redeeming.  Here's a link to a good site about wargames.  Web-Grognards ("The site for wargames on the web.")

...and just to drive the point home... who recognisese the map on the Grognard Challenge on that page?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi b',

Good call on Traveler - I agree with you entirely. My riffle through the mental Rolodex skipped an entry while typing ...

Best,
Ron

[Walt Freitag]

Yet these minis were seldom used for anything other than putting them on the table to show party order or, if there was a map, used as one might move a pawn on a game board.

Kester, I'm curious -- what else should or could a character miniature have been used for?

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

Walt, I'm guessing that he means that they were never used for combat, just to mark where on the map the party was in a strategic fashion. Marching order just becomes the point of departure for "in the head" play. We played that way as well.

Gareth, I'm not sure, but I'm going to guess that the game on grognards is one pulled from the General magazine. It's most likely some battle in the Phillipines, WWII. I use grognard.com all the time.

Funny thing about Traveller is how it was presented along with all the minitatures battle stuff like Striker, and Snapshot,  and along with the strategic level wargame, Imperium. Really a mixed bag of stuff. I loved the deckplans for the Azhanti High Lightning.

Mike

[talysman]

Thierry Michel beat me to posting the link that's been circulating lately (a wargamer's review and opinions on the recently-released game called dungeons & dragons,) so instead I'll mention something else, related to this quote from Ron:

If you can, take a look at that very-first-version D&D some time. You'll be astonished at how little like a role-playing game it is.

not only was D&D very little like a role-playing game, but also: it doesn't mention role-playing at all. I scanned through the booklets a couple months ago, during some huge discussion here at the Forge about original D&D, and was a little startled. D&D was presented entirely as an individual-level tactics medieval fantasy wargame based around "dungeoncrawls" and wilderness exploration. role-playing -- in the pre-gaming sense -- was certainly at the back of gygax and arneson's minds, but it wasn't part of the game, so there were no rules for it.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings wfreitag,

Apologies for the confusion.

Yet these minis were seldom used for anything other than putting them on the table to show party order or, if there was a map, used as one might move a pawn on a game board.

Kester, I'm curious -- what else should or could a character miniature have been used for?

Well when I say used like a pawn on a game board I meant that rather loosely.  We moved the characters around to roughly show our positions (mostly in towns and caverns) but we had no *rules* for movement.  In fact sometimes we totally forgot about the minis sitting on the table till we needed to have a way to visualize the scene, then we had to quickly rearrange the minis (which always bothered those who kept grabbing them to line them up to show party order for some reason) so... well...

Guess you just had to be there.

Mostly we could have used rules for movement and followed them.


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Kester Pelagius]

I scanned through the booklets a couple months ago, during some huge discussion here at the Forge about original D&D, and was a little startled. D&D was presented entirely as an individual-level tactics medieval fantasy wargame based around "dungeoncrawls" and wilderness exploration. role-playing -- in the pre-gaming sense -- was certainly at the back of gygax and arneson's minds, but it wasn't part of the game, so there were no rules for it.

And for anyone wandering into this thread who would like to have a look see for themselves:

Here's a link to The Classic D&D Page, it has the first three OD&D booklets available for download in PDF format and much, much more.  Check it out now!


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Mike,

Walt, I'm guessing that he means that they were never used for combat, just to mark where on the map the party was in a strategic fashion. Marching order just becomes the point of departure for "in the head" play. We played that way as well.

Yep, yep yep.  That's it precisely.

Oddly enough we usually had a map (or a mapper) but never seemed to make full strategic use of our minis.  Then again they were rather expensive bits of lead and (if you bothered) paint, weren't they?

Topically redeeming question:  Did anyone ever use their wargame maps and chits in a RPG?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Valamir]

Topically redeeming question:  Did anyone ever use their wargame maps and chits in a RPG?

AD&D came out with an absolutely HORRIBLE miniatures war game called Battle System.  Its one redeeming feature, was that it had hundred of scaled counters for D&D creatures and troops, from peasants armed with pitchforks, to elven bowman, trolls, orcs, warg riders, etc.  We used those counters all the time in place of minis.