Chainmail — The rulebook before the role-playing game¶
1. Purpose of the research¶
Within the genealogy that leads to Dungeons & Dragons, Chainmail occupies a strange position.
It was not a role-playing game.
It had not been designed to explore dungeons through persistent characters nor to represent a world guided by a referee in the way that was being developed in Blackmoor.
It was fundamentally a medieval miniatures wargaming ruleset.
However, when Dungeons & Dragons appeared in 1974, its rules still explicitly referred to Chainmail as one of the possible systems for resolving combat.
Moreover, numerous concepts present in Chainmail, particularly in its Fantasy Supplement, would reappear transformed within D&D.
Therefore, it's tempting to build a simple genealogy:
CHAINMAIL
↓
BLACKMOOR
↓
D&D
The history seems to have been much more complicated.
The aim of this research is to determine:
What did Chainmail actually contribute to the process that ended up producing Dungeons & Dragons?
And especially:
What led Gary Gygax to his collaboration with Dave Arneson before both began to turn their experiments into a publishable product?
2. Before Chainmail: Jeff Perren¶
The story of Chainmail does not begin only with Gary Gygax.
DOCUMENTED FACT
Jeff Perren, a member of the Lake Geneva wargamers community, had developed rules to represent medieval combats with miniatures.
Gygax took those rules as a starting point, expanded them considerably, and participated in their circulation within wargaming communities.
Early versions of these rules appeared before the commercial edition: a version titled Geneva Medieval Miniatures appeared in Panzerfaust in April 1970 and another version was published in Domesday Book #5 in July of that year.
Therefore:
JEFF PERREN
medieval rules
│
▼
PERREN + GYGAX
expansion and development
│
▼
circulation in the hobby
│
▼
CHAINMAIL
This is important for RPG Archaeology.
If we want to avoid building a history based solely on great names, Perren must retain his place in the genealogy.
3. The Castle & Crusade Society¶
The development of these rules occurred within an extremely active enthusiasts community.
Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz founded in 1970 the Castle & Crusade Society, an organization linked to the International Federation of Wargamers and dedicated especially to medieval wargaming.
Its publication, the Domesday Book, allowed circulating:
- rules;
- variants;
- campaigns;
- ideas;
- scenarios;
- correspondence between players.
The rules that would lead to Chainmail circulated precisely within this ecosystem before becoming a commercial product.
This reinforces an observation already appeared during our research on Blackmoor:
The first RPGs did not emerge solely from individual designers. They arose from networks of enthusiasts who constantly modified, shared, and recombined systems.
The fanzine functioned almost as distributed development infrastructure.
4. Chainmail becomes a product¶
In 1970 Gary Gygax got in touch with Don Lowry, founder of Guidon Games.
Lowry was preparing a collection of rulesets called Wargaming with Miniatures and hired Gygax to work on it.
The first title published within that collection was precisely Chainmail.
DOCUMENTED FACT
The first commercial edition appeared in 1971, credited to:
Gary Gygax & Jeff Perren
and published by Guidon Games.
The edition had approximately sixty pages and contained something that would end up being much more historically important than its size suggested:
Fantasy Supplement
The first edition dedicated about fifteen pages to these fantasy rules.
5. What Chainmail really was¶
It is important not to retrospectively reinterpret Chainmail as a proto-RPG.
DOCUMENTED FACT
Chainmail was fundamentally a medieval miniatures wargame.
Its main objective was to provide procedures for representing medieval military battles on a table.
It included different scales and procedures related to:
- troops;
- movement;
- combat;
- armor;
- weapons;
- morale;
- formations;
- terrain;
- sieges;
- individual combat;
- tournaments.
Representation continued to belong to the wargaming paradigm:
MINIATURES
+
TERRAIN
+
DISTANCES
+
TROOP TYPES
+
RULES
↓
SIMULATED BATTLE
The player continued to control primarily military forces.
We were not yet at:
CHARACTER
↓
PERSISTENT WORLD
↓
EXPLORATION
↓
ADVENTURE
That jump belongs to another part of our genealogy.
6. Different scales of combat¶
One of the interesting aspects of Chainmail is that it was not limited to a single resolution scale.
There were rules for unit combats, but also procedures to represent man-to-man confrontations, where each miniature could represent an individual combatant.
The individual combat system used 2d6 and a matrix relating weapon types to armor levels to determine the required attack result.
This is historically interesting because it reduces the scale:
MILITARY UNIT
↓
INDIVIDUAL COMBATANT
But we must avoid drawing conclusions too quickly.
NOT DEMONSTRATED
Individual-scale combat does not automatically turn the combatant into an RPG character.
There can exist:
tactical individualization
without existing yet:
persistent character identity.
This will be a fundamental difference when we compare Chainmail with Blackmoor.
7. The Fantasy Supplement¶
Here appears the stratum of Chainmail that will have greater importance for our genealogy.
The Fantasy Supplement introduced procedures to incorporate fantastic elements into battles.
Among them appeared:
- Heroes;
- Super-Heroes;
- Wizards;
- Elves;
- Orcs;
- Dragons;
- Elementals;
- Trolls;
- fantastic creatures;
- magic weapons;
- spells.
We also find names that would immediately be familiar to later D&D players:
- Fireball;
- Lightning Bolt;
- light and darkness effects;
- summoning;
- resistance to certain magical effects.
The supplement also introduced an opposition between Law and Chaos, related to contemporary fantasy literary traditions.
Suddenly, the medieval battlefield could contain:
KNIGHTS
+
HEROES
+
WIZARDS
+
DRAGONS
+
SPELLS
Still it was a wargame.
But its vocabulary was beginning to resemble what the fantasy RPG would later use.
8. Heroes and Super-Heroes¶
Heroes constitute a particularly interesting case.
In the Fantasy Supplement, a Hero could be roughly equivalent to about four ordinary combatants in certain combat situations, while the Super-Hero represented an even more powerful figure.
Conceptually something important appears:
An exceptional individual can break the equivalence between a miniature and an ordinary soldier.
We now have individual figures with capabilities far superior to common units.
However:
CAUTION
We should not automatically project over these Heroes the later concept of a D&D character.
They still belong to the context of a miniature battle.
What is interesting archaeologically is to observe how wargaming began to dispose of vocabulary to represent extraordinary individuals.
Blackmoor will take individualization much further.
9. The Wizard: magic converted into procedure¶
The Wizard is perhaps even more significant.
Introducing a wizard into a wargame requires resolving a new problem.
A conventional unit can be described through:
- movement;
- protection;
- attack;
- morale.
But a wizard can declare:
"I cast a fireball."
This requires turning a fantastic action into a reproducible procedure.
The ruleset needs to determine:
what can do
↓
range
↓
target
↓
effect
↓
resistance
↓
result
Here we find a characteristic that would later be fundamental for RPGs and, still later, for CRPGs:
converting fantasy fiction into executable rules.
Magic stops being exclusively literary description.
It becomes a system.
10. Chainmail as formalization¶
Here probably appears the main conceptual contribution of Chainmail for our research.
Wargaming needed to transform imagined situations into shared procedures.
Chainmail fully belongs to that tradition:
FICTIONAL SITUATION
↓
CATEGORIZATION
↓
RULE
↓
TABLE / DICE
↓
RESULT
This is different from the model we observed in Blackmoor, where many situations could be resolved through direct referee adjudication.
We can begin to see two trends:
BLACKMOOR
situation
↓
referee
↓
interpretation
↓
result
versus:
CHAINMAIL
situation
↓
written procedure
↓
dice / tables
↓
result
This opposition is useful.
But it should not become a caricature.
Arneson also designed rules.
Gygax also designed worlds, situations, and game ideas.
The difference describes trends and backgrounds, not two incompatible personalities.
11. Arneson and Gygax were already connected¶
The two branches didn't have to wait for D&D to come into contact.
Arneson belonged to the Castle & Crusade Society, organization founded by Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz.
Enthusiasts exchanged:
- letters;
- fanzines;
- rules;
- maps;
- campaigns;
- ideas.
Arneson and Gygax maintained correspondence before D&D existed.
The wargaming community provided the infrastructure that allowed the encounter.
12. Blackmoor arrives at Lake Geneva¶
One of the fundamental events of our genealogy occurred when Arneson showed Blackmoor to Gygax.
The exact chronology of some early encounters and demonstrations has been reconstructed in different ways by later sources, so it is wise to be cautious about overly precise dates.
What is clear enough is:
Gygax directly got to know the type of game Arneson was developing in Blackmoor.
That was different from a conventional miniature battle.
There were:
- characters;
- exploration;
- dungeon;
- progression;
- adventures;
- campaign;
- referee.
Gygax recognized that something with enormous potential existed there.
13. The convergence¶
From then on, a collaboration process began.
Arneson and Gygax exchanged:
- rules;
- notes;
- ideas;
- manuscripts;
- comments;
- playtest results.
Development was carried out through correspondence and distant conversations, accompanied by playtesting in different groups.
Between 1973 and 1974, both collaborated on the work that would end up becoming Dungeons & Dragons.
Here our genealogy stops having two independent branches.
BLACKMOOR CHAINMAIL
│ │
│ │
▼ ▼
ARNESON GYGAX
│ │
└───────────┬────────────┘
│
▼
COLLABORATION
│
rules + playtests
writing + revision
│
▼
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
14. It was not simply Blackmoor + Chainmail¶
The formula:
Blackmoor + Chainmail = D&D
is attractive.
But it's too simple.
D&D incorporated ideas from numerous places:
- wargaming;
- Braunstein;
- Blackmoor;
- Chainmail;
- fantasy literature;
- previous campaigns;
- experiments by other players;
- new rules developed specifically during the process.
Moreover, some procedures used in Blackmoor were replaced.
Other Chainmail concepts disappeared or were deeply transformed.
Therefore:
BLACKMOOR + CHAINMAIL
≠
FULL D&D
Both are fundamental layers, not exclusive ingredients.
15. The problem they faced¶
Blackmoor had demonstrated that the experience worked.
But there was an enormous difference between:
playing Blackmoor with Dave Arneson
and:
buying a rulebook and trying to create your own Blackmoor.
The new product had to transfer knowledge.
That required answering questions like:
- what is a character?
- what attributes does it have?
- how does it improve?
- how does it fight?
- how does armor work?
- what can a wizard do?
- how is a monster represented?
- how is a dungeon explored?
- what does the referee do?
- how is a campaign created?
- how is uncertainty resolved?
The challenge was not only designing a game.
It was describing a new way of playing.
16. Dungeons & Dragons appears¶
In January 1974 was published:
Dungeons & Dragons: Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures
The subtitle is archaeologically revealing.
D&D was still described using the vocabulary of the world it came from:
Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns
The modern term role-playing game was not yet the established commercial category it would later become.
The new genre was appearing before there was fully consolidated vocabulary to describe it.
17. Three small volumes¶
The first edition appeared in a box containing three small books:
- Men & Magic
- Monsters & Treasure
- The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures
The division is fascinating because it almost allows observing the architecture of the new game.
MEN & MAGIC
characters + abilities + magic
MONSTERS & TREASURE
content + risk + reward
UNDERWORLD & WILDERNESS
space + exploration + campaign
Character.
World.
Procedures.
The RPG was beginning to become a document.
18. What D&D formalized¶
OD&D provided structures for elements like:
- characters;
- classes;
- levels;
- experience;
- attributes;
- combat;
- armor;
- magic;
- spells;
- monsters;
- treasures;
- movement;
- exploration;
- dungeon;
- wilderness;
- campaigns.
An experience that previously could depend enormously on the referee's implicit knowledge began to have a shared vocabulary.
Now groups separated by geography could talk about:
- Fighter.
- Magic-User.
- Level.
- Armor Class.
- Hit Points.
- Experience Points.
The new game was beginning to be portable.
19. But D&D still needed the referee¶
Here we find a fundamental paradox.
D&D formalized the experience enormously.
But it did not attempt to eliminate the referee.
On the contrary.
Much of the game continued to depend on the referee's ability to:
- interpret situations;
- build the world;
- prepare maps;
- control monsters;
- manage information;
- decide consequences;
- resolve unanticipated actions.
The model continued being:
PLAYER
│
│ declares intention
▼
REFEREE
│
├── consult rules
├── interpret
├── adjudicate
└── update world
│
▼
RESULT
Two centuries after Kriegsspiel, the umpire figure was still alive.
It had just changed scenery.
20. The Dungeon Master as a human machine¶
From the future perspective of the CRPG, we can describe the referee in a deliberately mechanical way.
It receives:
INPUT
"Abro la puerta." "Ataco al orco." "Busco una trampa." "Lanzo Fireball."
It queries:
STATE
- map
- characters
- enemies
- inventory
- rules
- hidden information
It executes:
PROCEDURES
- movement
- rolls
- combat
- detection
- magic
- reaction
It produces:
OUTPUT
"Encuentras..." "Fallaste..." "El orco..." "La puerta..."
That is to say:
INPUT
↓
STATE + RULES
↓
REFEREE
↓
RESULT
↓
NEW STATE
This observation will be fundamental later.
Because the computer will try to occupy precisely that space.
21. TSR¶
Publishing a new game required money, printing, and distribution.
Gary Gygax and Don Kaye founded Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) to publish D&D.
The first run was small.
But the game began to spread rapidly within the hobby.
Here another important transformation occurs:
LOCAL EXPERIMENT
↓
RULESET
↓
PRODUCT
↓
DISTRIBUTION
↓
NEW GROUPS
↓
NEW CAMPAIGNS
Knowledge no longer needed to be transmitted only through personal contact.
It could travel inside a box.
22. The game escapes its creators¶
This might be one of the most important moments of our genealogy.
Blackmoor depended enormously on Arneson.
Gygax's campaigns depended on Gygax.
But D&D could produce:
PERSON WHO
NEVER MET
ARNESON OR GYGAX
↓
BUYS D&D
↓
INTERPRETS RULES
↓
CREATES DUNGEON
↓
RUNS CAMPAIGN
↓
OTHER PLAYERS
CREATE CHARACTERS
The new way of playing had become reproducible at a distance.
That is a gigantic historical difference.
23. An incomplete rulebook¶
However, the 1974 OD&D was not a particularly pedagogical modern manual.
Its text assumed some wargaming knowledge and left many procedures open to interpretation.
It even referred to Chainmail as an option for certain combat procedures, although it also included what was called the Alternative Combat System, based on the d20.
This reveals something important.
D&D was still between two worlds:
WARGAME
│
│
▼
OD&D 1974
│
│
▼
RPG AS
AUTONOMOUS GENRE
The product existed.
But its language was still learning how to explain what it was.
24. Two styles still present in the game¶
The collaboration between Arneson and Gygax did not eliminate the two trends we have observed.
The RPG continued to contain simultaneously:
Adjudication
The player tries something unexpected and the referee decides how to resolve it.
System
The player performs an anticipated action and the rulebook provides a procedure.
Therefore:
RPG
│
┌───────┴───────┐
│ │
▼ ▼
ADJUDICATION RULES
│ │
▼ ▼
FLEXIBILITY CONSISTENCY
The tension between both extremes will not disappear.
In fact, it will continue to accompany RPG design for decades.
25. Arneson enters TSR¶
After the initial success of D&D, Dave Arneson ended up working for TSR in 1976.
His tenure at the company was brief.
Later sources describe:
- methodological differences;
- organizational problems;
- personal disagreements;
- different expectations;
- conflicts over production and work.
Some testimonies have emphasized Arneson's difficulties adapting to editorial deadlines.
Other participants from that time offer a more complex image of TSR's internal culture.
CAUTION
We should not reduce his departure to: "Arneson didn't meet deadlines and TSR fired him."
The available evidence points to a much more complex relationship.
The matter deserves to be studied through specific documentation if we want to reconstruct it with greater precision in the future.
26. The transformation of TSR¶
TSR was leaving behind a small operation created to publish a strange game.
D&D was growing.
Appeared:
- supplements;
- new rules;
- products;
- employees;
- production needs;
- contracts;
- intellectual property;
- editorial calendars.
The ecosystem had changed.
In Twin Cities, a rule could be modified during the next session.
In a publishing house:
IDEA
↓
MANUSCRIPT
↓
REVIEW
↓
LAYOUT
↓
PRINTING
↓
DISTRIBUTION
needed to become a finished product.
The experimental culture of the hobby was coming into contact with the demands of an industry.
27. Gygax and written production¶
In this transition, one characteristic of Gary Gygax was especially important:
his enormous written production.
Before and after D&D, he produced:
- articles;
- rules;
- supplements;
- scenarios;
- correspondence;
- editorial material.
This capability was especially suitable for a company whose raw material consisted precisely of turning game ideas into publishable documents.
This does not make Gygax simply:
"the one who wrote Arneson's ideas."
His participation in design was substantial.
But it helps explain why his role grew as D&D became an editorial line.
28. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons¶
During the second half of the 1970s, a new branch appeared:
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
The main books were published under Gary Gygax's authorship.
AD&D represented, among other things, a much greater systematization of the game.
But it also opened a fundamental contractual problem.
Was AD&D:
a new and independent game?
Or was it:
an evolution or derivation of Dungeons & Dragons?
The answer had economic consequences.
Dave Arneson had contractual rights related to D&D.
If AD&D belonged to that same contractual family, there could be royalties to claim.
29. The conflict¶
At the end of the 1970s, Arneson initiated legal actions related to D&D and AD&D.
The conflict mainly affected:
- royalties;
- contracts;
- authorship;
- derivative nature of certain products;
- recognition.
Therefore, it's incorrect to summarize it only as:
"Arneson sued to get his name on it."
The conflict was also economic and contractual.
And it was closely related to a fundamental question:
Whose was the work that had been born from that collaboration?
30. Do not turn the dispute into mythology¶
Decades of discussion have produced two recurring caricatures.
Mythology A
Arneson invented everything and Gygax took it.
Mythology B
Arneson had some ideas, but Gygax really created D&D because he was able to write it down.
Both explanations are too simple.
The documentation we have studied shows a much more interesting process.
Arneson contributed a decisive experience developed around Blackmoor.
Gygax contributed considerable experience as a designer, writer, and hobby organizer.
Both worked together on D&D.
And both were using ideas developed within much older communities.
History doesn't need a single hero.
31. Authorship as an archaeological problem¶
The question:
"Who invented D&D?"
might be poorly formulated.
We can replace it with several better questions:
- Who developed certain practices?
- Where are they first documented?
- Who turned them into rules?
- Who integrated them?
- Who published them?
- Who made others able to reproduce them?
Then a much richer chain appears:
COMMUNITY
↓
EXPERIMENT
↓
PRACTICE
↓
RULE
↓
DOCUMENTATION
↓
PRODUCT
↓
PUBLISHING
D&D is the result of that entire process.
32. The work of Arneson and Gygax¶
So, what did they do together?
Our provisional conclusion would be:
Arneson and Gygax managed to turn a series of experimental practices from wargaming, campaigns, adjudication, and fantasy into a product that allowed other groups to create their own worlds, characters, and adventures.
Arneson does not contribute simply "imagination."
Gygax does not contribute simply "the rules."
Both design.
Both adapt.
Both come from previous communities.
But their convergent trajectories help explain why D&D achieved what Blackmoor and Chainmail separately had not:
making a new way of playing reproducible.
33. What Dungeons & Dragons left behind¶
From the perspective of RPG Archaeology, the importance of D&D does not lie only in having created an industry.
D&D consolidated a set of extraordinarily fertile abstractions:
CHARACTER
CLASS
LEVEL
EXPERIENCE
HIT POINTS
ARMOR CLASS
SPELL
MONSTER
TREASURE
DUNGEON
PARTY
CAMPAIGN
Not all were invented from scratch by D&D.
But D&D gathered them all into a shared and enormously influential system.
And that vocabulary would be especially important when the computer appears.
34. The next problem: eliminating the referee¶
Here begins our real bridge toward the CRPG.
In a D&D table:
PLAYERS
│
▼
CHARACTERS
│
▼
REFEREE
┌───────┼───────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
MAP RULES WORLD
│ │ │
└───────┼───────┘
▼
RESULT
But a computer does not initially have a human capable of interpreting any intention.
Someone will have to transform:
"What do you want to do?"
into:
- MOVE
- ATTACK
- CAST
- USE
- OPEN
- TAKE
The open freedom of tabletop will have to become a finite set of commands.
35. From the referee to the algorithm¶
Here our entire genealogy reappears in a new form.
KRIEGSSPIEL
│
▼
UMPIRE
│
▼
FREE KRIEGSSPIEL
│
▼
BRAUNSTEIN
│
▼
REFEREE
│
▼
BLACKMOOR
│
▼
DUNGEON MASTER
│
▼
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
│
▼
???
The next layer will have to replace:
REFEREE
with:
SOFTWARE
And then a fascinating problem appears.
The referee can understand:
"I try to distract the guard by rolling a coin down the hallway."
The 1970s computer couldn't.
Therefore, the first CRPG will have to decide:
Which parts of D&D are important enough to be coded?
36. D&D as an imperfect specification for the computer¶
We can interpret D&D in a deliberately anachronistic but useful way.
The ruleset provides:
Data
STR
INT
WIS
DEX
CON
CHA
HP
AC
LEVEL
XP
Entities
CHARACTER
MONSTER
ITEM
SPELL
Space
ROOM
CORRIDOR
DOOR
DUNGEON
WILDERNESS
Procedures
MOVE
ATTACK
DAMAGE
SAVE
CAST
GAIN XP
LEVEL UP
State
alive
dead
wounded
poisoned
equipped
known
unknown
To a programmer, this begins to look suspiciously familiar.
D&D had already performed part of an essential operation:
converting fantasy into manipulable abstractions.
37. What the computer will inherit easily¶
Some parts of D&D are extraordinarily easy to imagine as software:
- Hit Points
- Experience Points
- Levels
- Armor Class
- Attack tables
- Saving throws
- Spell slots
- Inventory
- Monster statistics
- Dungeon coordinates
- Random encounters
- Treasure tables
They are numbers, states, tables, and procedures.
The computer is extraordinarily good with them.
38. What the computer will lose¶
Other parts are much more difficult.
Especially:
open adjudication.
The human referee can respond to an action that no one had anticipated.
The computer can only execute what the programmer has represented.
Therefore:
TABLETOP RPG
narrative possibilities
↓
enormous
↓
referee
will initially become:
COMPUTER RPG
programmed actions
↓
limited set
↓
algorithm
The CRPG gains:
- speed;
- calculation;
- automatic persistence;
- representation;
- constant simulation.
But it loses a huge part of interpretive freedom.
39. The dungeon as a perfect candidate¶
Here we understand even better why the dungeon crawler is so important to CRPG history.
The dungeon already has an easily formalizable structure:
ROOM
│
CORRIDOR
│
DOOR
│
ROOM
It can easily become:
GRID
│
CELL
│
EDGE
│
ENTITY
And the most frequent actions can also be reduced:
- MOVE
- TURN
- OPEN
- ATTACK
- CAST
- TAKE
The dungeon limits the possibility space enough for a primitive computer to represent it.
It's not a coincidence that so many early attempts to transfer D&D to computer focus precisely on dungeons.
40. From the table to the mainframe¶
Our complete genealogy can now be extended:
KRIEGSSPIEL
│
▼
WARGAMING
│
▼
BRAUNSTEIN
│
▼
TWIN CITIES SCHOOL
│
▼
BLACKMOOR
│
├─────────────────┐
│ │
│ CHAINMAIL
│ │
└────────┬────────┘
▼
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
1974
│
▼
RPG AS SYSTEM
│
▼
UNIVERITIES +
MAINFRAMES
│
▼
?
That question mark will be our next layer.
41. Archaeological synthesis¶
After tracing from Kriegsspiel to D&D, we can formulate a provisional conclusion.
Dungeons & Dragons did not appear as an isolated invention.
It was the result of decades of evolution and the convergence of different communities.
In the Twin Cities, Wesley and other wargamers experimented with individual characters, asymmetric information, and referee adjudication.
Arneson turned part of that tradition into Blackmoor, where characters and world gained persistence.
In Lake Geneva, Perren and Gygax worked on formalizing medieval and fantasy combat through Chainmail.
Arneson and Gygax connected both trajectories and collaborated to produce D&D.
The great historical innovation of the product can be stated as:
An experience that depended on specific communities and specific referees became a set of documented abstractions that strangers could use to build their own campaigns.
D&D did not eliminate the referee.
But it formalized enough of the world surrounding the referee to make the game transmittable.
42. The anchor toward the CRPG¶
Here ends the prehistory that RPG Archaeology needed to build.
Our excavation began with armies represented on battlefields.
It ends with persistent individuals exploring imaginary worlds.
ARMY
↓
UNIT
↓
INDIVIDUAL
↓
CHARACTER
↓
PERSISTENT CHARACTER
↓
PARTY
↓
DUNGEON
↓
CAMPAIGN
And simultaneously:
MILITARY ARBITER
↓
UMPIRE
↓
REFEREE
↓
DUNGEON MASTER
↓
???
The next stage of RPG Archaeology will precisely try to answer what occupied that last place.
When students and programmers with computer access began to know D&D, some of its abstractions seemed almost designed to be programmed:
numbers, tables, statistics, maps, monsters, experience, treasures, and combat.
The next step was inevitable.
Turn the ruleset into code.
43. Open questions¶
Issues that should be kept for future excavations:
- What exactly did Gygax see during the first Blackmoor demonstrations?
- What documentation did Arneson and Gygax exchange during 1972–1974?
- Which parts of the OD&D manuscript can be attributed documentally to each one?
- What elements came from collaborators and players?
- What Blackmoor rules were discarded?
- What specific Chainmail elements survived in OD&D?
- Why did the Alternative Combat System based on d20 end up prevailing?
- How did the referee concept evolve until the figure of the Dungeon Master?
- How were the contractual rights initially divided?
- What factors really explain Arneson's departure from TSR?
- How should the creation of AD&D be interpreted historically?
- Which claims about the Arneson/Gygax conflict come from contemporary documentation and which from later memories?
- When did the expression role-playing game begin to be stably used?
- Which OD&D elements were the first to be transferred to software?
- What did the authors of the first mainframe RPGs really know about D&D?
The last two questions already belong to another excavation.
44. Sources and documentary criteria¶
For this document, we maintain the same source hierarchy used in previous investigations.
Contemporary documentation¶
Should receive priority when available:
- original editions of Chainmail;
- 1974 OD&D;
- fanzines;
- correspondence;
- Castle & Crusade Society documents;
- contracts;
- legal documentation;
- preserved maps and notes.
Participant testimonies¶
They are especially valuable to reconstruct practices that were never formally written down.
The documentary:
is particularly useful to reconstruct the Twin Cities ecosystem and contrast later narratives about Wesley, Arneson, and Blackmoor.
It should be classified as retrospective testimony, not contemporary documentation.
Secondary historical research¶
Modern reconstructions are especially useful for relating scattered documents, but controversial claims about authorship, priority, or causality should always be contrasted when possible.
45. Final methodological note¶
RPG Archaeology does not intend to solve the history of Dungeons & Dragons through a competition between its creators.
The evidence examined so far suggests something much more interesting.
COMMUNITIES
│
┌──────┴──────┐
▼ ▼
TWIN CITIES LAKE GENEVA
│ │
BRAUNSTEIN CHAINMAIL
│ │
BLACKMOOR │
└──────┬──────┘
▼
ARNESON + GYGAX
│
▼
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
│
▼
NEW MEDIUM