An excerpt from Chapter 29, "THINGS PEOPLE DON'T KNOW but talk about on the Internet anyway"

TSR WARGAMES, INC.

   On another subject… D&D is not the first game TSR published.  (It’s not the first game Gary published either.  CHAINMAIL is not the first game Gary published, for that matter.  But that’s in a different chapter.)  That honor, in point of fact, goes to “Cavaliers and Roundheads,” a set of English Civil War miniatures wargame rules.  When Gary and Don launched TSR, they considered it to be a wargame company, and D&D was a wargame.  In fact, looking in my copy of First Printing D&D (Dec. 1973), the last page of Volume 1 lists these games:

   “Cavaliers and Roundheads”
   “Tricolor” – Napoleonic era miniatures rules

   And under “Many new rules booklets to be released” we see

   Space Wargame Rules
   Napoleonic Naval Campaign Rules
   Naval Orders of Battle for the Great Age of Sail
   Wild West Campaign Rules
   Ancient Rules

   This list is most revealing; notice that there are NO additional fantasy games, and only one science fiction game listed – and that a wargame.  When we move forward approximately 18 months and look in the back of “Supplement 1, Greyhawk,” we find the following:

   “Cavaliers and Roundheads”
   “Dungeons and Dragons”
   “Greyhawk”
   “Tricolor”
   “Warriors of Mars,” Brian Blume’s skirmish miniatures/RPG of Barsoom
   “Star Probe,” a strategic science-fiction exploration game
   “Chainmail”
   “Tractics,” WWII miniatures in 1/87 scale
   “Panzer Warfare,” WWII miniatures in 1/285 scale
   “Boot Hill,” Wild West skirmish/RPG
   “Classic Warfare,” ancients miniature wargame

   This list is truly fascinating.  There are 2 D&D products… and 2 World War 2 miniatures wargames.  There are 6 historical miniatures wargames, 2 SF games (counting Barsoom as SF rather than fantasy), 2 fantasy game products, and 1 Old West game.  Or to put it another way, since Star Probe is much more a wargame than an RPG, there are 7 wargames and 4 RPG products.

   The significance of this cannot be overstated; a year and a half after D&D was released, the TSR catalog was dominated by wargames, with over half its products being historical miniatures wargames.  It’s probably the best tool I can think of for showing how pretty much all of us viewed the hobby.  D&D was just one of the wargames we played, just one of the things were interested in.  Gary and Don launched TSR to be a wargame company.  The intent was never to be “the D&D company.”  It turned out that way, of course, but that was not the original intent.

   And, of course, Gary was not just “the compiler of D&D.”  He was actively working on Boot Hill, Warriors of Mars, D&D, Cavaliers and Roundheads, and material that would end up in Greyhawk, all before D&D was first published, and though I never participated in playtesting “Classic Warfare,” he must have been already working on that as well in order to have it written, playtested, and published by 1975!  For that matter, he was also working with Dave and Mike Carr on “Don’t Give Up the Ship” at about the same time he was working on CHAINMAIL.  In short, Gary thought of himself as a wargame designer, not “The D&D guy,” and TSR was a wargame company, not “The D&D company.”

   As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”  But creating a game sure looks different when it’s one of a half dozen projects you’re working on rather than this single magnum opus you’re dedicating your life to.

Of course the interesting detail here to me is that Gygax relatively quickly separated the notion of "RPG" from "Wargame".  He didn't try to just take over the wargaming hobby; after a relatively brief time he understood that it was a separate hobby and struck out to have that game (and subsequent hobby) live or die under its own impetus.

RPGPundit

Whatever happened to Star Probe? How was it a wargame and about exploration? Was a "use the space fleet to capture hexes" game?

Although this is what I assume the game is about...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tZar4wRP40

Quote from: Old Geezer;728777"Cavaliers and Roundheads"

Two years ago, I wrote the following:

QuoteI have this secret fantasy. It's 1967, and instead of Siege of Bodenburg, somebody puts a copy of Breitenfeld in Gary Gygax's hands, and rather than writing a medieval wargame, Mr Gygax would develop a set of English Civil War or Thirty Years War rules that Dave Arneson would tap to create the first roleplaying game, Sorcerers and Swashbucklers.

Little did I know how close I was to getting S&S or Magicians & Musketeers.

Quote from: Spinachcat;729385Whatever happened to Star Probe?

Star Probe is an interesting game. It was supposed to be one game of three, but eventually became one game of two since the third one never materialized.

Star Probe is basically about galactic exploration. The map is essentially a hex map (they used squares offset like hexes) with bunches of dots on it to represent stars. It's a 3D map since each star also has a +/- position above or below the plane of the paper.

Star Empire brought a bunch more detail to the game. It was more like a miniatures game with all sorts of weapon types, etc. I didn't play it much.

I forget the name of the proposed third game of the series, but it was supposed to be a science fiction RPG.

Quote from: finarvyn;729436Star Probe is an interesting game. It was supposed to be one game of three, but eventually became one game of two since the third one never materialized.

Star Probe is basically about galactic exploration. The map is essentially a hex map (they used squares offset like hexes) with bunches of dots on it to represent stars. It's a 3D map since each star also has a +/- position above or below the plane of the paper.

Star Empire brought a bunch more detail to the game. It was more like a miniatures game with all sorts of weapon types, etc. I didn't play it much.

I forget the name of the proposed third game of the series, but it was supposed to be a science fiction RPG.

Yep.