Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;934667What were those competing rulesets, and which ones would have been suitable for hacking an RPG from it?

It looks like

War Games Rules 1000 B.C to 500 A.D (Ancient War Games Research Group, 1969)
War Games Rules 1000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. (War Games Research Group, 1971)

Both by the same British group and the only medieval wargames published prior to Chainmail.

Outside of Medieval wargames there were a couple of Napoleanic rules, naval rules, and a World War 2 game called Angriff.

An alternative would have had been developed out of somebody personal rules.

Quote from: AsenRG;934669. . . I see no value in drawing an arbitrary separation line between clones of older D&D editions and clones of, say, TFT.

The value is, as estar notes, in knowing that OSR games have as their origins pre-2e D&D, not TFT or MSH or James Bond 007.

OSR was self-selected by the publishers of those early retro-clones and, more importantly, the modules produced for them to represent their work as a return to playing older editions of D&D. Because they were successful and well-received, they generated buzz which jock-sniffers decided to cash in on by labeling any old re-tread 'OSR.'

Personally I think 'DIY D&D' is preferable to 'OSR' or even 'retro-clone' for most of the 'third-wave of the OSR.' In my experience, they are far closer in both philosophy and feel to EotPT and Arduin Grimoire, the first DIY D&D games, than they are to the retro-clones. Returning to the path less traveled, the one blazed by Doc Barker and Mr Hargrave in the Seventies then allowed to overgrow, may be the coolest thing to come out roleplaying games in the last decade.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;934871The value is, as estar notes, in knowing that OSR games have as their origins pre-2e D&D, not TFT or MSH or James Bond 007.

Estar also noted that within the D&D-based OSR you need to know what edition you're going for. IME, converting between different editions might be harder because the superficial similarities might trip you up:).

QuotePersonally I think 'DIY D&D' is preferable to 'OSR' or even 'retro-clone' for most of the 'third-wave of the OSR.' In my experience, they are far closer in both philosophy and feel to EotPT and Arduin Grimoire, the first DIY D&D games, than they are to the retro-clones. Returning to the path less traveled, the one blazed by Doc Barker and Mr Hargrave in the Seventies then allowed to overgrow, may be the coolest thing to come out roleplaying games in the last decade.

I totally agree with that part, however;).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;934871Personally I think 'DIY D&D' is preferable to 'OSR' or even 'retro-clone' for most of the 'third-wave of the OSR.' In my experience, they are far closer in both philosophy and feel to EotPT and Arduin Grimoire, the first DIY D&D games, than they are to the retro-clones. Returning to the path less traveled, the one blazed by Doc Barker and Mr Hargrave in the Seventies then allowed to overgrow, may be the coolest thing to come out roleplaying games in the last decade.

While I agree you your sentiment, from personal observation it has been notoriously hard to change everybody usage of OSR. Of course you are free to try and many have. Personally I am not going to change because OSR only gets your foot in the door to get a person to look. Everything after that is on you. Whether you wrote something good to download, view, or publish. Whether you comes across as personable. Etc, etc,

After the spectacular shitstorm that was TARGA around 2009, I think, there never been another attempt to organize any kind of OSR brand. The closest are the occasional interesting logo that crop up every few months. Even things like the Swords & Wizardry Creative Guild get traction. What been more important is how friendly the trademark license is for a given clone. With Swords & Wizardry it amounts to writing all your AC like this AC 7[12]. And that it. A lot of OSR publishers don't bother or more commonly do think of putting out a separate trademark license. A few do like the author of White Star. When done right get people excited around making stuff for that particular clone/supplement.

That pretty much how formal the current OSR is. Not very.

Quote from: AsenRG;934882Estar also noted that within the D&D-based OSR you need to know what edition you're going for. IME, converting between different editions might be harder because the superficial similarities might trip you up:).

I think it a make a small difference for fans of AD&D. But outside of that OD&D, B/X, BECMI, RC, and the galaxy of retro-clones that surrounds those editions are sooo close to each other that nobody really cares. The exception are stuff like ACKS where there are hobbyists interested in products that take advantage of their domain rules. Writing something that works for White Star and something that works with Stars without Number, or works with Spacemen and Starships also a small point of different as while all are D&D based science fiction RPGs, they each tackle different sub-genres. But again while there is a distinction is a very small one.

The best policy is to be friendly, don't be a dick on other people's forums, answer questions, and be reliable in terms of quality and production times.

Quote from: estar;934865It looks like

War Games Rules 1000 B.C to 500 A.D (Ancient War Games Research Group, 1969)
War Games Rules 1000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. (War Games Research Group, 1971)

Both by the same British group and the only medieval wargames published prior to Chainmail.

Outside of Medieval wargames there were a couple of Napoleanic rules, naval rules, and a World War 2 game called Angriff.

An alternative would have had been developed out of somebody personal rules.

WRG rules were mass battle rules where each fig represented like 100 men (I forget the number exactly), so I think it would have been a bigger leap to hack an RPG out of them than it was with chainmail.

There was also Tony Bath's wargame rules that were played in the late '60s. Bath's games, I think, included some of the forerunners of RPGs like using a referee to adjudicate situations the rules didn't cover, introducing story elements into wargaming, and the continuous campaign.  I'm not sure how big of an influence they were on roleplaying however.  Also, Like WRG, Bath's rules were still a mass battles game that never made the jump to one character per player which came naturally out of Chainmail.

... of course I'm not the expert in this category.

Using a referee for a wargame goes back at least to the 19th century, and maybe the 18th.

A much better candidate than the WRG rules would be the Old West Skirmish rules written by Mike Blake, Ian Colwill, Steve Curtis. The first edition was published in 1970, and you can get a look at the 3rd edition, published in 1975, here:

Old West Skirmish rules


I played games with these rules before getting 1st edition OD&D. These rules were near as dammit an RPG right down to having individual characters, gm'd games, and a campaign setting, the main difference being that you played out an encounter as a full-on tabletop wargame, and then one of the players would move the story on to the next battle by coming up with a narrative and a new scenario for the other player to take part in.

I'm pretty certain that both Gary Gygax and probably Dave Arneson were aware of the Old West rules before they published D&D. Gary Gygax used to write letters and articles for Donald Featherstones 'Wargames Newsletter' magazine at the same time that it featured articles about the Old West rules and some really rather great battle reports of games played using the rules. Donald Featherstone went on to write a book about skirmish wargaming, which was published in 1975. You can see details of a more recent edition here:

Skirmish Wargaming

Wargame Newsletter also published its own rules sets, several of which were similar to Chainmail in complexity and style of play. The rules were first published in the mid-late 60s, pre-dating the WRG rules mentioned earlier. They included Tony Bath's ancient and medieval rules sets, which were (I believe) used to run his famous Hyperboria campaign, which is the subject of how to set up a Wargames Campaign. If you haven't seen this book, it is well worth tracking down, because t included several proto-roleplay type mechanics used to generate the personalities of leaders of the armies taking part in the campaign.

Some info on a reprint of the Wargames Newsletter rules can be found here and How To Set Up A Wargames Campaign here.

Quote from: Glazer;934978A much better candidate than the WRG rules would be the Old West Skirmish rules written by Mike Blake, Ian Colwill, Steve Curtis. The first edition was published in 1970, and you can get a look at the 3rd edition, published in 1975, here:

Old West Skirmish rules


I played games with these rules before getting 1st edition OD&D. These rules were near as dammit an RPG right down to having individual characters, gm'd games, and a campaign setting, the main difference being that you played out an encounter as a full-on tabletop wargame, and then one of the players would move the story on to the next battle by coming up with a narrative and a new scenario for the other player to take part in.

I'm pretty certain that both Gary Gygax and probably Dave Arneson were aware of the Old West rules before they published D&D. Gary Gygax used to write letters and articles for Donald Featherstones 'Wargames Newsletter' magazine at the same time that it featured articles about the Old West rules and some really rather great battle reports of games played using the rules. Donald Featherstone went on to write a book about skirmish wargaming, which was published in 1975. You can see details of a more recent edition here:

Skirmish Wargaming

Wargame Newsletter also published its own rules sets, several of which were similar to Chainmail in complexity and style of play. The rules were first published in the mid-late 60s, pre-dating the WRG rules mentioned earlier. They included Tony Bath's ancient and medieval rules sets, which were (I believe) used to run his famous Hyperboria campaign, which is the subject of how to set up a Wargames Campaign. If you haven't seen this book, it is well worth tracking down, because t included several proto-roleplay type mechanics used to generate the personalities of leaders of the armies taking part in the campaign.

Some info on a reprint of the Wargames Newsletter rules can be found here and How To Set Up A Wargames Campaign here.

There you go. Thanks!

And I believe that that M.A.R. Barker even used a chargen system for NPCs in his own Tekumel campaign that was based on Tony Bath's method

Part of what makes research on this difficult is the fact that house rules were so common.  For instance, somewhere in my archives I have a British wargaming magazine from 1971 or 1972 that has a set of gladitorial combat rules in it.

I'd bet a dollar that those rules were never published elsewhere.  Publishing and distribution was expensive and difficult.

And in that article, the author talks about being inspired by other gladiator games.  Skirmish wargaming was already well known by 1971 when I got into wargaming, it's just that so little of what was happening in the wargame hobby was ever professionally published.

Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign rules would be interesting as a basis

Quote from: Tristram Evans;935029Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign rules would be interesting as a basis

Yeah. And his series of articles titled as I recall "Hyboria, The Campaign that Grew" makes entertaining reading too.

It isn't quite an rpg as we understand it now, more of a wargame campaign, but I guess you could treat it as an rpg where all the characters have political power and the players are all playing the "domain game" (against each other)

Quote from: Zirunel;935037Yeah. And his series of articles titled as I recall "Hyboria, The Campaign that Grew" makes entertaining reading too.

It isn't quite an rpg as we understand it now, more of a wargame campaign, but I guess you could treat it as an rpg where all the characters have political power and the players are all playing the "domain game" (against each other)

FWIW,  that was exactly my impression from reading it a couple months ago.