Talk:Chainmail (game)

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I was motivated to rewrite this article because the statement about Chainmail being developed by people at the University of Minnesota was wrong. I confirmed this with the man himself (see below). I have a copy of the 1975 rules in front of me, so I was able to add a short description of the Chainmail rules, something the article was sorely lacking. I diminished talk about Dave Arneson and Blackmoor. There are links for the reader who wants to find out more about Dave and his campaign. I also diminished talk about Swords & Spells. If someone thinks this supplement deserves a full paragraph, I recommend they create a stand alone article. Grubbiv 17:26, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Correspondence with Gygax on Dragonsfoot

Grubbiv wrote: Hi Gary,

I wanted to ask you what Jeff Perren was doing and where he was living when you guys developed Chainmail back in 1968-69. The reason I ask is because the Wikipedia article on Chainmail opens with

Chainmail (1971) was a medieval miniatures wargame created by enthusiasts in the late 1960s at the University of Minnesota.

The part about the University of Minnesota seems wrong, but then again maybe Jeff was a student at UM.

Thanks, Clark

Bah!

That Wikipedia bit is absolutely incorrect. Jeff Perren was living in Rockford, Illinois, attended a GenCon here in Lake Geneva, brought four pages of medieval miniatures rules for a ratio of 1:20 to play on the sand table in my basement with his 40mm Hauser Elastolin figurines. I so loved the game that I acquired the figures, expanded his 1:20 medieval rules to about 16 pages, and these were published in the IFW's magazine, The International Wargamer sometime in 1969 as the Castle & Crusades Society Medieval Miniatures Rules. In 1970 Don Lowry of Lowry's Hobbies and Guidon Games wished to publish the rules, so I added the Man-to-Man, Jousting, and Fantasy Supplement portions, and the whole was published as Chainmail by Gygax and Perren in 1971.

About the only involvement of gamers at the U. of Minnesota was playing the rules after they were published Laughing

Cheers, Gary

[edit] Which magazine was CCSMMR published in?

There seems to be a contradiction between what Gygax says in his correspondence with Grubbiv, and what The Acaeum says, about which magazine the rules were printed in before they were published by Guidon Games.

In Gygax's correspndence with Grubbiv, above, he says that they were published in IFW's magazine, The International Wargamer. However, The Acaeum quotes an article by Gygax in Dragon magazine, where he says that the rules were first published in the Castle & Crusade Society's own newsletter, Domesday Book.

So, which is it? Or was it published in both? Or have I missed something? James Richardson 20:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like you're a little off. Arcaeum says proto-Chainmail was published in Domesday, but the quote from Best of Dragon is talking about Areneson's reports on his Blackmoor campaign when it mentions Domesday (unless I missed something). So likely, the Arcaeum made a mistaken assumption. Also note this quote from RPGNet in a 2000 interview of Gygax:

"With [Jeff Perren's] permission, I expanded his two pages to a longer treatment, and those were published around 1969 in the IFW's monthly magazine as the 'LGTSA Medieval Military Miniatures Rules.'"

Different name, so it might have even seen publication in both as different drafts. And note that according to Arcaeum's page on Domesday Book, the C&CS was a effectively a branch of the IFW, so it's possibly just all muddled....

--Rindis 23:56, 15 March 2007 (UTC)