3/7/2024 0 Comments 3d medieval stratego game pcPatt's rules appeared in the NEWA magazine The Courier, which would briefly merge with TSR's Little Wars later in the 1970s. But until now, I had erroneously supposed that NEWA “opted not to publish their system,” when in fact it simply appeared in a place I hadn’t yet been able to unearth. Fantasy rules were, at the time, virtually unheard of. I was aware of the existence of Patt’s game when I wrote Playing at the World in fact, I speculated in a footnote that, “It is certainly possible that news of the positive reception of NEWA’s Tolkien game influenced Gygax’s decision to include fantasy rules in Chainmail” (pg44). The picture above shows this system in play at a Miniature Figure Collectors of America convention in October 1970 representing the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, a demonstration that won a “Best in Show” award. Patt’s system shows us the first fantasy game with heroes, dragons, orcs, ents, and wizards who cast fireballs at enemies, though his contribution today goes entirely unacknowledged. Chainmail itself drew on a two-page set of rules developed for a late 1970 game run by the New England Wargamers Association (NEWA), which were designed by one Leonard Patt. Something has been forgotten, however, in the forty-five years since Chainmail was published. The Fantasy Supplement that Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren tacked on to the end of Chainmail inspired Dave Arneson as he created the Blackmoor setting, and formed the basis for the original set of monsters and spells underlying Dungeons & Dragons. A Precursor to the Chainmail Fantasy SupplementĬhainmail (1971) is correctly regarded as the first commercially-available fantasy wargame system.
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