Article 22
After completing a seven-hundred-page book, an author can only feebly protest that there was not sufficient space to include all points of interest on the matter. The argument weakens further when the...
View ArticleHeresies of the Domesday Book
I think there has been something of an informal conspiracy of silence about the contents of the Castle & Crusade Society's famous 1970-1972 fanzine Domesday Book over the years. I suspect this has...
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Domesday Book #1
To start off a series of important documents in the history of wargames and role-playing games, we take a close look at Domesday Book #1. As collectors are extremely concerned about forgeries of these...
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Blackmoor Gazette and Rumormonger #1
The year before Domesday Book #13 ran part one of Dave Arneson's article "Points of Interest about Black Moor," Arneson circulated a one-page campaign newsletter called the Blackmoor Gazette and...
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The LGTSA Medieval Miniatures Rules
Before the LGTSA Medieval Miniatures rules appeared in Domesday Book #5 - and indeed, right on the edge of the time when the LGTSA came to be called the LGTSA - a set of "Geneva Medieval Miniatures"...
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The Great Kingdom (Domesday Book #9)
Since the first copies of my book have trickled out, I've noticed that the coverage of the Great Kingdom as described in Domesday Book #9 has garnered a lot of attention. Several early commentators...
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The Midwest Military Simulation Association (MMSA)
An acknowledgment in the front matter of the original Dungeons & Dragons game made the name of the Midwest Military Simulation Association (MMSA) immortal. At the time that Dungeons & Dragons...
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Rules to the Game of Dungeon (1974)
One of the perennial questions about the history of role-playing games is this: which came second, Tunnels & Trolls or Empire of the Petal Throne? Deciding between the two is largely a question of...
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Gygax's "The Thief Addition" (1974)
As I make my way to GenCon this week, I can't help but think back to thirty-eight years ago, to the first GenCon after the release of Dungeons & Dragons. Bill Hoyer reported then that "this year's...
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GenCon 2012 and 1968
I'm back from GenCon 2012 in Indianapolis. I had a great time hanging out with many of the folks from the Acaeum, with Tavis Allison, and with the trio of documentarians working on the new film...
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Don't Give Up the Ship, in Manuscript
Before they collaborated on Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax and Arneson first worked together on a set of Napoleonic naval rules called Don't Give Up the Ship (1972). By looking at surviving manuscript...
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Blackmoor, in the Era of Loch Gloomen
By 1972, the Blackmoor campaign had evolved many of its signature characteristics: dungeon exploration, gathering experience to advance in level and a heavy emphasis on gear and money. The system,...
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A Playtesting Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (1973)
While researching Playing at the World, I spent years looking for a playtesting edition of the original Dungeons & Dragons. Early sources suggested that some of kind preliminary draft was...
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Armor Class in Chainmail
The man-to-man combat system of Chainmail contains a number of elements that anticipate but differ from Dungeons & Dragons. As originally specified in the first edition of Chainmail, the chance to...
View ArticlePlaying at the World: Now in ePub!
A number of people have requested a DRM-free ebook version of Playing at the World for all of the Nooks, iPads and so on out there. After having a nice exchange with Stewart Wieck about it, I made one...
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The Source of the Chainmail Cover Art
It is widely known that much of the art that graced games of the 1960s and 1970s derived from prior sources. The original cover of Dungeons & Dragons came from a panel of the comic book Strange...
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The Early Works of Gary Gygax
The beginning of Gary Gygax's career as a game designer is generally marked by the publication, through Guidon Games, of three Gygax titles early in 1971, including Chainmail. In the preceding few...
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Gaming is Now 100 Years Old
Gaming as we know it - that is, a hobby surrounding commercial games that simulate conflict, marketed to the general public for entertainment - began one hundred years ago, in December 1912. That's...
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Gary Gygax on Christmas and Christianity
A note from Gary Gygax in the IFW Monthly of February 1969. A topical historical curiosity, yes, but what does it tell us about who Gary was back then? First of all, he strongly self-identified as a...
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Strategos in the Twin Cities
Twin Cities gamers of the late 1960s found inspiration for their wargaming systems in a pretty unlikely source: Strategos: The American Art of War (1880), a work by Charles A. L. Totten. Strategos was...
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