I had the same feeling about Grognardia. There was something... off... about their attitude that dulled my already low opinion of the OSR. Nothing big that I can recall. Just lots of little things in how they acted and treated others sometimes.
Allow me to help you with understanding this perception. I decided to go over to
Grognardia and check out the recent posts since James has been posting again over there. I just went back a few weeks, looking over his articles and then it struck me. I'll describe the differences as well, ...a bit later in my post.
In one article from September third, James goes on about Tony Baths'
Hyboria, and about how Tony Bath made his tabletop wargames more interesting by creating novel NPCs. For those of you here that don't know, Tony Bath was a tabletop wargamer from the 1950's. He actually started collecting miniatures just after WWII. Bath founded the
Society of Ancients in 1965. In 1973 his
Setting up a Wargames Campaign was published by the
Wargames Research Group. He worked as an administrative manager for
Miniature Figurines, Ltd., helping them expand their selection of ancient and medieval miniatures. In 1973 I was actually wargaming while I was living in Germany using 1/72, or 20mm minis. Now I didn't learn anything directly about wargaming or Fantasy Gaming from
Tony Bath until sometime in the mid-to-late eighties, but he definitely influenced my very early 70's games with his original ideas about wargame and fantasy game random campaign generation.
In September of 1974 I received one of many very special birthday gifts. It was a copy of Avalon Hills'
Panzer Leader a game that was originally design by
Jim Dunnigan. Now this was a tactical level wargame set in the WWII era. There was a set of scenario cards so you could play through some key historical encounters, Before 1974 was through, I had played all of them, as well as a few scenarios of my own devising drawing on actual historical battle reports that I would literally read through, and then recreate from battles reported in the books. These books are available, even now, from the Army War College, and are known as
The Army's Official History of WWII.
You can check these out for yourself here.
https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/usaww2.html At that time though after school you would find me at the Base Library reading through these books looking at actual battle and AAR reports and taking notes so that I could recreate these battles in tabletop wargames, and evaluate how I would do as the commander in the field at the time.
Panzer Leader went one up on that though, and in the back of the rules section, there was designer's notes. These were also taken from the Tables of Organization & Equipment that were available from the
The Army's Official History of WWII. There was a Macro Game where you could set up a specific unit for a campaign, Say an American Armor or Motorized Infantry Battalion, or Regiment and then run that unit through a random selection of battles facing off against an opponent (or opposing side) to see how well the unit would fare. So very sophisticated roleplaying to determine the effective strength of an actual combat unit under a variety of situations.
Now in January 1977 about the same time as I started playing D&D, Avalon Hill came out with
Squad Leader. Which was an even more refined look at WWII Battles. What made this one of my absolute favorite games from Avalon Hill though, was that there was a campaign mode, where you could pick a leader, and he would advance through a series of battles leading the units featured in the battles, facing off against a foe with a similar leader that they roleplayed. They also had a random scenario construction kit built in to squad leader, that featured, you guessed it, a force draw, and victory conditions draw using a deck of playing cards ala
Tony Bath.
John Hill designed this, ...and of course knew
Tony Bath. So, the first few months playing D&D we were sitting around dungeon delving, but by the winter of 1977 we had expanded our D&D campaign and were playing a wilderness campaign. My first D&D campaign world was a mismash of Tolkien's Middle Earth, and some other stuff picked out of literary fantasy along with some details I just made up. I had this Hobbit vale (With Dwarves nearby), a Kingdom named
Brandywine in a high valley situated between two mountain chains, and just east of the mountain chain was another Hobbit Kingdom the
Low Vales, then some vast unnamed steppe plains leading to a very tropical Jungle and inland sea. I remember there were
Egyptians and
Romans that had settled in the tropical inland sea region. To the south there was a vast desert, with lots of
Dervishes, and
Nomads, and a few lost cities beneath the sand. To the North was a great forest where the Elves lived, but there were some Elves that lived in the Hobbit Vales too.
The mountains contained tombs, old castle ruins (with dungeons), catacombs, and caves and caverns, some of which had been worked by Goblins, Orcs, and Dragons into subterranean cities and settlements. I remember undead being very popular in our earliest games. Wizard's also liked to live out in the wilderness in isolated places, a keep with a dungeon, or a tower with a dungeon. All the NPC wizards had research laboratories in their lairs. They conducted all manner of inquiry and research as well as new spell research, and a high wizard very rarely accepted guests. With the original D&D the wizards often hired guardians to guard their strongholds, and set magical traps for unwelcome guests. Very experienced early players were very reluctant to trespass into a wizard's lair uninvited, or unannounced.
In the original campaigns we had themes, and one of the basic themes of our very first wilderness campaigns was that our fantasy world was an alternate earth, one where history had been changed. The world had advanced into the modern age, or perhaps even into the future, and then some catastrophe or war had knocked it back into the stone age, where the campaign world then evolved forward with magic, mystery, and superstition (almost) replacing all the science, and technology.
With all that setup, we added to our campaign worlds, and setup peripheral kingdoms using the guidelines in the Brown/White Bookset where each new hex being explored might contain a castle or stronghold featuring a noble or lord leading an Army. The original books had the occupants of a stronghold either be a Lord, Superhero, Wizard, Necromancer, Patriarch, or Evil High Priest. We very quickly added on to this, and just randomly rolled up high level NPCs, and randomly rolled the alignment of these NPCs to add variety and surprise into the mix for our players.
Then of course there were wandering monsters in the wilderness, some of which were wandering, and some were in their lair, that the players just stumbled into. ...and the players were expected to rapidly establish their own stronghold, so that their treasures and research could be secured.
You might be asking right about now, ...what does this have in Common with Tony Bath’s
Hyboria, or with his
Setting up a Wargames Campaign? Well, part of my worldbuilding, I learned from my first GM, who incidentally gave me hex paper and told me to map my campaign world. We used hex paper and it was familiar to us from our Wargaming roots. We could easily measure distances, so hex maps became the defacto standard for mapping out our homebrew outdoor campaign setting, so we could easily calculate the movement of our Player Party, as well as all NPCs, Armies, Legendary Monsters, Nomads, etc. etc. You’ll see how this is relevant shortly.
The concept of
"saves" seems to have originated in the wargaming rules of Tony Bath from the late 1950s. Bath's medieval rules have a system such that after a roll is made by the attacker to determine hits, armored defenders make a separate roll to determine if their armor
"saved" them from the hit; e.g. "if he has both armor and a shield, a 4, 5 or 6 will save him." The compound
"saving throw" was widely popularized in the wargaming community by Don Featherstone's reprinting of Bath's wargaming rules in
War Games (1962).
Gary Gygax was familiar with Tony Bath's 1966 edition of ancient and medieval rules (Gygax repeatedly credited them in the late 1960s), which use the term
"saving throw" freely. From there we see saving throws integrated into
Chainmail, where figures roll saves to avoid effects like dragons breath, poison and petrification. Gygax and Arneson's 1972 collaboration
Don't Give up the Ship also has saving throws made after ships are hit by guns.
There’s more… Tony Bath’s Hyboria campaign began in 1963. In 1973 he published Setting up a Wargames Campaign. This was published before D&D, by the way.
Does any of this look familiar to you?… Purchase costs: (worked out on a regimental basis, which under my system is same 600 men)
Leather Armour 25 Gold
Armour 50
Full Mail 100
Plate 200
Shield 25
Horse Armour 100
Sword 20
Spear 10
Lance 15
Axe/Halberd 15
Short Bow 10
Composite Bow 15
Longbow 15
Javelin 5
Pilum 10
Pike 15
Crossbow 25
Sling nil
Ponies 50
Horses 75
Heavy Horses 100
Elephant 120 each
Elephant Armour 125
Light Siege Engine 50 each
Heavy Siege Engine 75 each
Gamets 75 each
It was also necessary to work out the going price for slaves, since players soon developed the nasty habit of selling off prisoners or eking out revenues by same slave raiding in hostile territory! I
established that values fluctuated from time to time, and that if large numbers were thrown on a local market at once, prices would drop!
Averages were:
Fieldworker 5-10 Gold Crowns
Workwoman 10-20
House Slave 10-20
Concubine 20-100
Since I operate in Hyboria on regimental levels and not in individuals, pay was generally quoted on a regimental scale; and to save the trouble of working this out, for anyone who requires it I quote
the regimental pay scales here:
lnfantry 100 Gold crowns per quarter
Cavalry 200
Camel Squadron 50
Chariot Crew 25
Elephant Crew 30
These were peace-time rates of pay, and troops have to be paid regutarly every quarter. In war-time, pay rates are increased by 50%. Guard troops receive double rate at all times. In addition to their pay, troops have to be fed, and forage
provided for their horses.
...And so on. Tony goes on to describe shipbuilding, stronghhold building, and making NPCs which he describes as CHARACTERISATION. To wit;
The subject-matter of this chapter is really only for those who have set up a mythical continent of their own, so historically minded readers can skip it if they wish! Even those who have only made up a map for one brief campaign will probably not wish to adopt the whole system set out here, though there may be a few points which would be of use even in this situation. But for those who intend to use their continent, island or whatever it is for a good period, with continuing campaigns, some degree of characterisation is essential.
And later…
You now have your families set up and all their members named. You now need to create personalities or characters for all these people, and this to my mind is the most fascinating part of the whole thing. Various methods can of course be used for this; you can if you wish assign arbitrary characters to suitable people, or create personalities and then dice to see who they belong to. The system I use is based on assigned values and playing cards. Originally I also used the number of letters in a person's name, dealing one card for each letter; but later 1 found it was better to use an arbitrary number of cards, and I decided on seven, which gives you a good variety without over-doing things.So, for each person's character you deal out seven cards. The first card dealt will decide upon his or her's mast outstanding characteristic: a Heart will indicate Good Nature, a Diamond Love of Wealth, a Spade Ambition, and a Club Lave of War in a man, Patriotism in a woman. The value of the card will determine the depth of this passion, a high card being very strong, a low card relatively weak. The rest of the cards are used individually, and each has a value of its own, as given below:
Ace: Spade ar Club, a disloyal intriguer. Diamond, loyal intriguer.Heart .exceptional good nature.King: Spade or Club, Energy: Heart or Diamond, Courage · Great leverQueen: Great loverKnave: Spade/Club, Unreliability, oath-breaker, liar. Heart/Diamond, Merciless, revenge-prone.Ten: Loyalty, absolute in Diamonds, grading down through Hearts, Clubs, Spades.Nine: Physical beauty, except for Spade, which is Ugliness.Eight: Spade/Club, Cruelty Heart/Diamond, Generosity.Seven: Spade/Club, Personality Heart/Diamond, Jealous of Family Honour.Six: Spade/Club, Lazyness Heart/Diamond, CharmFive: Spade/Club, Wisdom Heart/Diamond, CunningFour: Spade/Club, Stupidity Heart/Diamond, CowardiceThree: Spade Club, Bad Temper Heart/Diamond, Good TemperTwo: Spade/Club, Arrogance, Pride. Heart/Diamond, MercifulSo Tony has an random generated alignment system including characteristics, and equipment and troop price lists, all of which were added to Blackmoor (...and D&D) much later, and and which were also being used in tsome in early Chainmail games, but Tony had worked out many of these campaign level detail at least a full decade earlier, and even published before TSR Did. What TSR had, that Tony Bath didn’t was a magic system, and legendary monsters, and that’s pretty much it.
So when I see james Malizewski talking about Tony Bath’s wargames, like it’s the greatest thing since sandwiches and sliced bread, I’m all like, WTF?
We literally were playing this game, and figuring our way through the lack of rules back in the mid to late 70’s. Even though I didn’t even know about Tony bath until the mid to late 80’s, and not really well until about 2010 or so, we had all been playing an organic version of his wargame as part of our RPG since the time we started playing D&D. It was only later, that D&D changed, and moved away from that model of representing RPGs.