As a change of pace, here’s some proto-roleplaying…
Back in 1956, a guy called Tony Bath wrote a pair of articles in the Bulletin of the British Model Soldier Society. Titled “War Game of the Middle Ages and Ancient Times“, they contained the first published set of Ancient/Medieval wargames rules. Developed over time, these rules were the ancestor of all current Ancient/Medieval miniatures rules, as well as fantasy rules such as Warhammer, its derivatives and competitors. As well, via Chainmail, it was a precursor to Dungeons and Dragons, and thus to the activity we discuss here.
These rules were reprinted in 2022, in the volume “More Wargaming Pioneers (Early Wargames Vol. 4)”, published by the History of Wargaming Project, which I bought about a month ago.
While crude, and with a couple of cringey moments, it has some interesting attributes that make me want to play it. First, like most wargamers at the time, Bath largely played his games solo. (He didn’t have a regular opponent until a little while after the articles were published.) This means that I don’t need to twist any arms to try it out. This also means that he didn’t use a referee, which was required by some of the other wargames of the time. Bath knew about referees though. What would become Game Masters in RPGs weren’t a new invention. He also makes references to campaigns. The idea of the effects of one session of play continuing on into another wasn’t new either.
Finally, in a letter following up from the articles, he wrote:
“Since the compilation of my Middle Ages war game rule, which you have now kindly printed in the Bulletin, numerous campaigns have been fought and a number of modifications introduced.
The most important of these, which I owe to a suggestion from Mr. Saunders, is for individual combat in a melee. Most collectors, I imagine, have favourite pieces among their models; at any rate, I have, and these figures are accordingly elevated above the common warrior and are classified as Champions. Each one is given a numerical value in proportion to its importance, and can only be slain by an opposing Champion or by missile shooting – in the latter case a 6 having to be thrown by the archer, etc….”
Individual characters were thus a part of the game. An optional one, and a bit of an afterthought, but they were there. (They didn’t appear in later iterations of his rules, unfortunately.)
So key elements of RPGs were present even back in 1956.
To gain an idea of what he actually did with these rules, we can look at a 1961 article he wrote, in a US based wargames magazine, The War Game Digest. This article can be found online at Fact or Fancy? (Fact or Fancy? | Table Top Talk)
Skim over the pretext for the article, and get to where he starts talking about world building. Don’t forget that this was published in 1961, and reflects what he had been doing before then.
I’m going to play around with this stuff. My next post will be an Actual Play.
8 responses to “Champions and Dinosaurs – Before D&D”
This is great.
At present, I see three overlapping things that I’ve presented a few times in courses and workshops: wargaming, fringe fiction, and counterculture. right now we’re talking about how they interacted before the three-way central overlap in which role-playing as we know/call it became practiced, probably approximately 1970. I can point at some 1960s overlap in wargaming and fiction, and at a lot of overlap between fringe fiction and counterculture. Since I think these are under-studied, I tend to downplay the wargaming as such, especially since I don’t think much of the comfortable story that role-playing emerged entirely within its sphere. But that doesn’t mean it’s nothing, or doesn’t offer important components – clearly it does.
I also expect that all of these things will show deeper direct roots into the 1950s and 1940s, once we start looking and knowing what we’re looking for.
Short answer: Yes.
Something I am curious about, and is a bit of a distraction for me at the moment, are the Western gunfight games. Not just the geeky point that the Skirmish Wargames group’s rules were published before D&D, but rather that it appears that there was a style of play associated with, say, Boot Hill, that was different from the Big-R Roleplaying that was emerging at the same time.
My impression was that Boot Hill games tended to be more focused on action, and less on the roleplaying as such. (Perhaps this was an effect of the lethality of combat?)
In other words, these games were shoot-em-ups, complete with PvP, different even from tactical squad games, but still somehow roleplaying. Very different from the ossified understanding of roleplaying presented in modern D&D, for example.
I must get back to planning the Sodor Feud, my current concept for my solo medieval game.
I recommend a complete look at Boot Hill, with care. The impression you mention is entirely mistaken, and I say this because until last summer, I shared it. I looked at the 1975 version all the way back in 1978 or so, as well as reading the conversion in the DM Guide in late 1979, and my “shooter” perception was locked in. And it is very, very wrong.
Boot Hill 1979 – which I think I had never seen or never looked at carefully – offers probably the most sophisticated and player-GM interface for situations, and for what people call “running the campaign,” to date. As in, up to date, today.
Jesse first brought it to my attention at the Patreon, and David ran a session at the Happening. In Grit and focus, I presented Jesse’s contribution at the Patreon and David’s play-materials, and I’ve since acquired these rules. They go even further than what Jesse quoted.
It’s very, very clear. The players tell the GM whatever their characters are up to, in terms of the next days, weeks, or months, and this is often individual rather than a party or group-based goal. The GM thinks about the larger context of society, environment, various NPCs’ activities and goals, and we play the nearest upcoming thing in terms of what the active players are going to face as obstacles or problems. Then it’s the next upcoming thing, again, checking into the context which might have been altered by the first thing, depending on what it was.
So this is a serious matter of playing into what is happening as scheduled and determined by what players want their characters to be doing.
If we as a collective/global cohort could have learned from this instead of from things like the Giants modules or The Lost City, the entire cultural activity would have been different.
The early Champions texts aimed in this direction too but got bogged down in canned fight-scenarios and plotlines in their supplements, so maybe if that hadn’t happened … or, since I was inspired by those Champions texts, if I’d written Sorcerer as well as Boot Hill, then maybe the internet wouldn’t have stepped on its collective dick so badly trying to “play story” for the next 25 years.
I overstated my point.
However, the purpose of the campaign system in games of this sort is to provide context for tactical situations. (Justification, goals and so on.) It’s where the strategic and tactical meet.
The question is: which is primary, or are they equally important? If the tactical is primary, then it is indeed a shooter.
My assessment of Boot Hill as a shooter came from discussions with people who played it back in the late 70s/early 80s, rather than from playing it myself. These discussions all ended up being about the dynamite and gatling guns, rather than the reasons why they were being used.
There is a serious discussion to be had about this stuff.
My best contribution would be to actually use these ideas in my medieval game. They are certainly compatible with early wargaming practice.
I don’t see a trade-off between contextual (situational) aspects of play vs. tactical conflict moments. If you want to distinguish between the grammatical trick of [the former encloses the latter and makes them possible] [the latter’s existence requires attention to the former], then I suppose that’s fine, but I do not.
But all of that is very abstract. “Back to reality,” I plan to play a lot of Boot Hill with its remarkable rules text as inspiration, and never mind what people did or didn’t do back then. I also think your investigations and play with any/all wargame-role-playing are going to open a lot of understanding and topics and help us all get out of circular or impressions-based repeated tropes.
This post and conversation really inspired me to play some Boot Hill, and I know I’m not the only one.
Also, it inspired me to try En Garde! in a Play By Mail game (or maybe Play By Discord) after reading it, as I think I see similar ideas, but who knows without trying.
Thank you
En Garde definitely has some similar ideas.
It’s more structured, but could be loosened up.
I think it would really shine with lots of players.