The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games - Michael J. Tresca [30]
Reiswitz’s work impressed Lieutenant Helmuth von Moltke. In 1828, von Moltke established a wargaming club called Kriegspieler Verein. When he became chief of staff in 1837, he pushed wargaming through the ranks. Colonel Julius Adrian Friedrich Wilhelm von Verdy du Vernois published a German wargame in 1876. Unlike Kriegspiel, Vernois eliminated dice rolling and introduced an umpire who determined results from his own combat experience (Gray 1995). This umpire role would reappear later in the form of the Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons.
The importance of wargames took center stage when, in 1870, the militia army of Prussia decisively defeated the professional army of France. Many believed that wargames were responsible for Prussia’s success. Suddenly, militaries around the world were building their own wargame systems.
Major William R. Livermore of the U.S. Army introduced American Kriegspiel in 1882. William McCarty Little, who established the Naval War College, made the acquaintance of Livermore. Thanks to Livermore, Little made wargaming an integral part of the war college’s curriculum. A series of complex wargame rules sprung up as a result.
The modern wargame was born in 1913 thanks to British sci-fi author H.G. Wells. It was improbably titled Little Wars: A Game for Boys from Twelve Years to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girl Who Likes Games and Books. Wells’s contribution cannot be underestimated. Little Wars’ rules, coupled later with plastic toy soldiers, opened wargaming to a larger audience beyond military and nobility. It also established the notion of a burst radius for cannon rounds, a feature Gygax adapted for fireballs in Dungeons & Dragons (Wells 2004).
After World War I the Treaty of Versailles denied Germany the right to field an army large enough for training exercises, so wargames replaced actual warfare as a training tool. Wargames also played a key role in World War II. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz proclaimed that wargames were an important part of America’s naval victory over Japan.
In 1953, Charles Roberts published a game through Stackpole Books called Tactics. Tactics was unique because it used a paper board and cardboard counters. The changes made the game more accessible and easier to distribute. The success of the game led to the creation of Avalon Hill, a company which became the preeminent maker of cardboard wargames.
Wargames, although popular in their time, struggled to attain the reach of other gaming mediums. Wargaming’s roots primarily appealed to those interested in history. In the early days of the hobby, historical accuracy mattered most, as the majority of games reproduced actual battles.
Tony Bath made a significant contribution in shifting the perception of wargames from the purely historical to fantasy-based. His Hyboria campaign, based on the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, is often cited as the first fantasy wargame.
It wasn’t until 1968 when Dave Wesley changed the miniatures game from one of two outcomes to a multiple, zero-sum game wherein different parties had varying goals, not all of them the ultimate destruction of the enemy (Fine 1983:13). Wesley considered the multiplayer game to be a failure, but one of his players had a different take. That player was Dave Arneson, a member of the Castles & Crusade Society and eventual co-author of Dungeons & Dragons.
Guidon Games published Chainmail, a medieval miniature wargame, in 1971. It would be released and released in several editions by TSR, Inc., remaining in circulation until 1979. During one of Arneson’s games, a druid high priest cast a spell that laid low a Roman war elephant. The spell was inspired by an episode of Star Trek playing on television—and thus we get the first glimpse of a spell in