Historical wargaming and the development of RPGs.

[b_bankhead]

Greetings James,


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.

 As fantasy role playing games grew directly out of miniatures gaming, they have used miniatures from the start of the hobby.  When I started in 1977 having a mini for your character was a very important investment in the avatarism, people went to great lengths to find and paint up miniatures that matched the conception of a particularly loved character.  For the DM however, miniatures were an even bigger issue.  It was considered quite the thing for a DM  to have a nice liabrary of miniatures to represent the monsters he was going to throw at you. The typical sign of a DM ,as much as the little brown books, was the rattling box of miniatures they lugged around (particularly fashionable DMs got those little utility boxes with numerous plastic drawers for screws and bolts and such) A major issue in becoming a DM was 'do I have the money and time to paint and buy miniatures'?

 As rpgs moved from miniature wargame to story orientation a curious thing happened, the use of miniatures began to decline.  The visual focus of the game became the gamemaster and the players around the table rather than the table itself.  More and more DMs began to rely on verbal descriptions and rely less and less on miniatures. Plus with the story orientation the issue of the value of the time and money spent on miniatures, painting them and so on would come to the fore.  Money spent on a rpg magazine with story ideas was better spent that money for paint and lead as well as time. Likewise for players time was better spent mastering increasingly complex character genreation systems (like Champions) that the investment made in the lead avatar.

 By about the time period KP writes about miniatures were just a vestige.  A few people would still by minis for their characters and dress the table with them but often they would go ignored the whole game.  Within a few years they stopped even that.

 Some have argued that 3ED&D would revive miniatures but the the groups that I have seen running the game use miniatures very little.  Games Workshop brought out what was essentially an rpg (The Inquisitor line) and then made the mistake of basing it around a limited line a of big (54mm) minis for a whopping $20 apiece. Not only did they prevent you from using the existing scenery/vehicles but you had to build as well as paint them. And for thak kind of money a GM would have to spend several hundred dollar to compile a decent collection of minitaures in this scale.
Of course the inquistor game didnt need any particular scale of miniatures as per the rules. Of course GW was keeping the fact that it was publishing an rpg a deep dark secret. (Inquisitor is essentially the only published W40K rpg) so the rpg crowd stayed away.  But if GW cant float a miniatures based rpg ,I dont see how anybody else can.  I think that miniatures have fallen and will never really rise again,

[Jack Spencer Jr]

This talk of miniatures has got me thinking. AFAICS miniatures are mostly of use in a position-orientated combat system. One thing I've noticed about such things is they can be mind-bogglingly complex because of the man-to-man scale. Granted my experience with wargames is Chess, Checkers, Risk, Warhammer Fantasy Battle and that's pretty much it.

A RPG combat system of this nature is essentially a wargame at the man-to-man scale. Because of this, factors are taken into account that would seem superflurious or unnecessary or just too cumbersome in a troop scale wargame. Things like the variable weapon damages or the effect of armor on that damage (halves bladed damage, quarters blunt damage) and so on.

Maybe this sort of thing is only really, really bad on the homebrewed level. I remember thinking my friend's game was pretty bad in action with all sorts of situational modifiers to keep track of for special manuevers and such.

Anyone else feel this way or notice a similar phenomenon?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Jack, I'm not sure if "bad" or "good" is really the issue so much as one of prevailing aesthetics. I remember the days that b' is talking about (~1979), and I must say, well-painted miniatures were often amazing works of art. Having people appreciate the actual labor involved was a big part of being respected as a practitioner of the hobby, just like the really spiffy screens and the binders full of hex/grid paper.

Kester's description is very accurate for a few years later, say, 1983. Most of the "facing" rules or other fairly close-focus* situational modifiers for combat were largely abandoned by then - frankly, given AD&D's one-minute combat round, it was hard to understand how they were supposed to be applying anyway. And in games like RuneQuest, the modifiers were applicable to the imagined/verbal map in everyone's head almost more easily without a map. It would be another five or six years before many people stopped caring about movement rates, but that eventually came as well.

But back to your point, I think the key issue is the time-scale of resolution. If a unit of "exchange" is reasonably modified by the issue in question, then all's good if that's what the game is about (immediate local circumstances). But if you have, say, a "facing modifier" for what is supposed to be a whole minute of bobbing, weaving, feinting, and essentially unmodelled local tactics, then people will swiftly ignore it in play.

The above paragraph assumes a fairly Simulationist task-orientation toward Fortune mechanics, historically speaking. Other modes of play, I think, are so much more oriented toward other "things" in conflict besides immediate logistics that the discussion would shift quickly elsewhere.

Best,
Ron

* I call this "fine-grained" but apparently "grain" is a problematic term for many.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not sure what phenomenon you're talking about? That miniatures when used actively tend to be used in a "Wargamey" fashion? Um, yup. That's the whole point of the thread, I think; that early RPGs were often, from today's perspective, played as wargames for all intents and purposes.

Yes, that's pretty much true.

Bad? You're criticizing the first four years of my RPG career pretty heavily there. I'd call it different.

In fact, I still like to play this way occasionally. For an interesting comparison, see the game Gladiator (often in a boxed set with Circus Maximus the chariot racing game). You design gladiators making about three choices, and then they fight and kill each other. Fun, fun, fun. Never intended to be an RPG, you can see what a man-to-man scale wargame is really like. For this sort of play, give me as many modifiers as you can find. Anyone play Advanced Squad Leader out there, or Star Fleet Battles? Two great wargames, with more detail than you can shake a stick at. I played SFB just a couple of weeks ago; great stuff. For this sort of game, detail is everything.

The basic difference between this sort of game and D&D when it came out, is that D&D was left a little (a little) more open-ended. Since the environments were not really all that set, and "encounters" could happen in the "countryside" or even in "town", the idea is put forth that one can put together any scenario that might happen to a character. This concept leads to the idea that characters can do "anything a person can do". And then further that one ought to play the character not as a playing piece, but as a person.

This is the development, mentally, of what RPGs could be in the first two years or so. I don't believe that either Gygax or Arneston envisaged any of this early on. They made a wargame that was just one-to-one, and very open-ended, and indicated a feeling of avatarism. The actual "role-playing", as we think of it, just developed as a natural extension. At best the early designers had a feeling that more could be done; but not until they'd played a bit did they realize what the range is. Nor have we yet realized all of it today.

And this is why we speak of the "wargaming heritage". There has never been a single point at which RPGs have just "jumped" away from being wargames (White Wolf notwithstanding; they talked about juming away from wargames, but did not). RPGs have gradually drifted away from wargames, but the imprimatur is still there (mostly, as I'm fond of pointing out, with the assumption that an RPG needs a combat system).

Today we have RPGs that cannot be said to be wargames in any way at all. But they are few, and the exception. People who play RPGs as though they are not wargames are the majority, however. But there are still a few that play RPGs with little attention to anything beyond what could be described as the "wargaming" details. Heck, I occasionally make Hero characters or whathaveyou, and just have them beat on each other for the tactical joy of it.

I feel old describing this. It seems to me like everyone should have observed the gradual trasformation and understand it implicitly.

Mike

[Thierry Michel]

Because of this, factors are taken into account that would seem superflurious or unnecessary or just too cumbersome in a troop scale wargame.

Actually, many of the factors taken into account would be too cumbersome in a skirmish wargame as well (hit point tracking, for instance).  It doesn't mean it can't be done (for instance naval games track the damage of each ship), just that it's not often worth it.

[Walt Freitag]

Thanks for the clarification about the miniatures, Kester and Mike.

This sounds very similar to my early experiences. The first time I played D&D in '77, we had no miniatures. Instead, the GM had managed to obtain business-card-sized cards with blanks to fill in for character stats (from where, I don't know. They weren't homemade but I never saw them anywhere else.) This group used these cards laid out on a bare tabletop as rudimentary miniatures to establish marching orders and general locations such as who was inside or outside a room (but not specific locations on a map).

As a GM, I apparently regressed relative to the progression away from minis described in this thread. In my first significant game as GM (79-82), I used miniatures and a hex mat for combat -- and for any homebrew that uses the AD&D spell lists, I still do, mainly because of the irreducible tactical importance of areas of effect. Same goes for Hero system.

Wargamey? Perhaps. Caused by influence from war games? In my case, quite frankly, no. And though I know miniatures have a deep history among historical war gamers, my recollection of the late-70's-early-80's is that a resurgence in using (and retailing) military miniatures followed, not pre-dated, the interest in fantasy figures for role playing games. With arguably the most important "missing link" between the two being Jackson's Ogre.

- Walt

[b_bankhead]

Greetings Mike,

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

 I know a couple of example of those who did use wargames for the strategic level of their games.  One friend set a traveler campaign during the fifth frontier war, which was a grand strategic wargame GDW set in that section of the spinward marches.  Every couple of weeks he would get a friend together to play a few rounds and then take careful notes as to what happened.

  Events that happened at the wargame level filtered down to the rpg level. You might come out of warp to find your homeworld had been taken over by the Zhodani or in the middle of a debris cloud left over from a massive space battle, or a fleet being mustered for a coming battle, it made for a universe that was dynamic in a logical way but at the same time fairly undpredictable....

Another case I played in  runequest game played in a campaign world set on the map for the wargame Divine Right.  The major historical events for the world being set by notes taken from a single previous game on that map....

[b_bankhead]

This talk of miniatures has got me thinking. AFAICS miniatures are mostly of use in a position-orientated combat system. One thing I've noticed about such things is they can be mind-bogglingly complex because of the man-to-man scale

 And D&D is nothing if not position oriented, check out the modern Attacks of Opportunity rules, I can actually remember calculating the displacement of rooms in order to see who got engulfed in a fireball spell!

  One of he earmarks of Rons 'fantasy heartbreakers' was for the combat system to add chrome that was appropriate to a system that was finer grained than D&D. Positional modifiers,weapon/armor class modifiers, special tactics etc, all reflected a longing for a finer time scale while still mantaining D&D assumpitons which were essentially those of a mass combat system directly scaled down with little conceptual modification.

Thats what I liked about BRP combat, It had the feel of being designed for individual combat,( it was the first system I ever saw to hand martial artists well) making armor be 'harder-to-hit' works out well when averaging hundreds of figures together but creates the wierd conceptual problems that D&D has on the individual scale level

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings b_bankhead,

Greetings Mike,

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

 I know a couple of example of those who did use wargames for the strategic level of their games.  One friend set a traveler campaign during the fifth frontier war, which was a grand strategic wargame GDW set in that section of the spinward marches.  Every couple of weeks he would get a friend together to play a few rounds and then take careful notes as to what happened.

  Events that happened at the wargame level filtered down to the rpg level. You might come out of warp to find your homeworld had been taken over by the Zhodani or in the middle of a debris cloud left over from a massive space battle, or a fleet being mustered for a coming battle, it made for a universe that was dynamic in a logical way but at the same

Even better, integrating wargaming with role-playing!

Of course you are probably unaware of just how lucky you were to experiance such a thing.  Don't ask me why but role-players (at least in my experience) have been notoriously uninterested in wargames.  It's almost as if they were werewolves and wargames was wolfsbane.  I couldn't get my players to go near them, save of course to use a map from a space game or some such here or there.

And the wargamers I knew?  A tight knit bunch.  The sort that would play games at the game shop after hours and...

If you just left from your in-store game and forgot something inside heaven help you cuz they didn't like to let anyone back in and were not about to go out of there way to help you by walking the five feet from their game table to open the door and toss you your stuff, oh, no, wait they would do that if you refused to leave.  But they weren't nice about it.

In fairness I only remember that happening once.  Wasn't my stuff though so I have no idea if they were just like that or if they didn't like the guy in question.

So, wargamers, what's your take on why wargamers and role-players couldn't seem to get along for a while?  (I would assume, the hobbyies having matured and grown up, that this sort of thing is no longer the case?)


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[clehrich]

This may be thread-drift, but it does sort of look like the thread has already drifted somewhat.

Of course you are probably unaware of just how lucky you were to experiance such a thing. Don't ask me why but role-players (at least in my experience) have been notoriously uninterested in wargames.

I think this really boils down to one of Mike's Standard Rants, which is why it surprised me somewhat to see him coming down on this subject as he has.  To my mind, the integration of wargaming with RPGs, once the initial split was effected, becomes problematic because it clearly indicates a single focus for gaming: combat.  This isn't specifically a Gamist thing; in fact, for many, I think it was really a simulation issue (in the broad sense).  My own recollection is that the miniatures were supposed to make clear exactly what was happening in a combat, so you could imagine it better.

So once you shift away from the old conception that all RPG play is primarily oriented toward fighting, the miniatures and hex maps begin to seem atavistic.  Certainly if an RPG is relatively low on combat, such an expenditure of time, effort, and money as the miniatures called for seems kind of wasteful.

In addition, wargame and miniatures structure the nature of what is simulated quite specifically.  For example, truly three-dimensional combat becomes a nightmare (involving little pedestals with height markings and whatnot), such that doing a wild Hong Kong flying kung-fu scene seems more trouble than it's worth.

[b_bankhead]

Greetings b_bankhead,

Of course you are probably unaware of just how lucky you were to experiance such a thing.  Don't ask me why but role-players (at least in my experience) have been notoriously uninterested in wargames.  It's almost as if they were werewolves and wargames was wolfsbane.  I couldn't get my players to go near them, save of course to use a map from a space game or some such here or there.

 I think its an aspect of the era I entered the field,but it wasn't that uncommon.  But I also agree as time went on the distance between the two increased,the number of people who straddled the line decreased.  I tried for years to get interested in wargames and miniatures but they never took.  I never saw any of the hostility you mentioned either.  I think the tactical orientation and the story orientation are really different things and a different tastes.

[Ron Edwards]

Hmmmm, regarding the last two posts, I wouldn't be quite so quick to identify "story" with role-playing and "combat" with wargaming.

Despite the name, quite a few wargames were very concerned with the drama (small "d") of their content. Some historical ones integrated the personality quirks of generals into their rules because those quirks had played a role in real history, and so seeing how they might play out "again" was a priority of play. Others, based on various fiction, preserved the features of those stories as a basis for play, such as the John Carter of Mars game in which the villain inevitably kidnapped the hero's beloved and fled across the Barsoomian plains.

Conversely, many role-playing games, as we know, have either preserved combat as the central "go-unit" of play quite openly, or merely caused it to be central functionally despite rhetoric to the contrary.

Best,
Ron

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Ron,

Some very good points.

Hmmmm, regarding the last two posts, I wouldn't be quite so quick to identify "story" with role-playing and "combat" with wargaming.

Despite the name, quite a few wargames were very concerned with the drama (small "d") of their content. Some historical ones integrated the personality quirks of generals into their rules because those quirks had played a role in real history, and so seeing how they might play out "again" was a priority of play.

Indeed, that was the entire point of historical wargames.  Which, now that I think about it, are precisely the sort my players (and friends) wouldn't go near.

Starship battles?  Sure.

Magic Realm?  Sure.  (If you've never played this you've really missed out on a great RPG styled tabletop board/wargame.)

Arab & Israeli wars?  Not a chance.  Too many chits.

Sit around to play Warlock of Firetop Mountain?  Maybe.  (And then only if they forgot about my Dr. Who game.)

But the straight-up historical wargames, no.  Not even my Middle Earth ones.  Never understood why.

Conversely, many role-playing games, as we know, have either preserved combat as the central "go-unit" of play quite openly, or merely caused it to be central functionally despite rhetoric to the contrary.

Depends on the game really.  Which ones did you have in mind when you wrote that, Ron?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[M. J. Young]

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.

Oddly, I used BattleSystem quite effectively to run a huge war following a run of Keep on the Borderlands, all adapted slightly for OAD&D play. There were many aspects of it which made massed combat of that sort a lot smoother to resolve. However, I did not use the chits or lay out the battle on the table at all--it was more the resolution mechanics for group vs. group and individual vs. group that were the lifesaver. I've more than once recommended finding a copy of the set to D&D players trying to figure out how to run a war within their D&D campaign.

We did use chits and maps when playing StarFrontiers; I'm not really sure why, unless it was that the referee thought the module required them. I recall three scenes in particular.

One was while we were on a spaceship fighting space pirates. She handled this well, as she only placed pirate chits on the board when one of us could see them; but having the map of the ship was probably more than we should have had, because I'm still not certain whether my character would have known how to find the bridge, the luggage, or the lifeboat, if they weren't clearly marked on the map on the table in front of us.

The second was an oasis in the desert, where I think the function was really to identify which characters were subject to attack by sand sharks, but we quickly figured out how to avoid walking on the sand.

The third was a set piece battle, and about the only thing we got out of it really was that the referee got so show what forces were on each side.

In all, I never saw much use in them. Once in a while if we needed to do character positions for some reason, we'd lay file cards on the table, or assign each character his own die, or use cups and other table objects to represent things. We never owned or used any miniatures, although there was a plastic dragon and I think a plastic figure of a knight who sometimes came to the table to decorate it.

We did have painted dice containers, which we put a lot of time into.

Incidentally, someone on the CGG list did a follow-up search on that article (the old D&D review) and came up with http://www.digitaldragon.org/blast_past/blast_04.html">This: http://www.digitaldragon.org/blast_past/blast_04.html, a review of the Knights and Magick rules set which appears to have been written by the same Arnold Hendrick who panned the D&D rules in that review.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

Oddly, I used BattleSystem quite effectively to run a huge war following a run of Keep on the Borderlands, all adapted slightly for OAD&D play. There were many aspects of it which made massed combat of that sort a lot smoother to resolve. However, I did not use the chits or lay out the battle on the table at all--it was more the resolution mechanics for group vs. group and individual vs. group that were the lifesaver. I've more than once recommended finding a copy of the set to D&D players trying to figure out how to run a war within their D&D campaign.

M.J., you just reminded me of something.  Years ago, when I was just starting to get back into gaming at the start of college, I was in a game store and I saw the BattleSystem.  I'd vaguely heard that it was D&D-does-big-battles, and I asked about it.  The guys in the shop were adamant that this simply wasn't true.  They said that (1) it was badly written, and didn't play well; (2) it was not at all compatible with regular AD&D stuff; and (3) the "correct answer" was clearly Warhammer.  I never looked at it, since I'd seen Warhammer and it wasn't for me.  But my impression was certainly that this was a return to table-top miniature wargaming within the AD&D universe, rather than a smooth add-on to the game.  Care to bring me up to date, as it were?