Battlesystem

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Battlesystem arrived in 1985 as something the world of tabletop gaming had rarely seen: a bridge between the intimate storytelling of Dungeons and Dragons and the sweeping spectacle of mass-scale fantasy warfare. Over 800 counters came packed into its box, along with cardboard figures, metal miniature generals, and a rulebook split into layers of complexity from beginner to advanced. The questions it raised were real ones. Could the same game system that let a single adventurer slay a dragon also handle the chaos of an entire army? Could role-playing and wargaming share the same table? Battlesystem staked its reputation on an answer of yes. Its journey from that first 1985 box set to a second edition in 1989 tells a story about ambition, the limits of crossover design, and what players actually want when they sit down at a battlefield strewn with painted miniatures.

• 2. Rules From the Roleplaying World

  ›

  Douglas Niles and Steve Winter designed the first edition of Battlesystem with a clever shortcut at its core. No separate statistics existed for any troop type in the game. Every stat was pulled directly from existing Dungeons and Dragons publications. A creature's point cost on the battlefield, for instance, was derived from the XP reward listed in the Monster Manual for killing it. That meant any creature from the Monster Manual could, in theory, be fielded as a unit. The connection to the parent game ran deeper than convenience. Each miniature on the table represented a hero, a commander, or a group of ordinary troops, scaled according to their level or hit dice. The fourth and most complex layer of the rulebook introduced magic, flying creatures, weather, night battles, and special monsters. It also allowed players to connect Battlesystem engagements directly into their ongoing roleplaying campaigns. The game did not require a Dungeon Master, though the rulebook recommended using a referee for situations involving invisibility or illusions.

• 3. What Was in the Box

  ›

  Jeff Easley painted the cover of the first edition box set, which TSR published in 1985. Inside, the contents were substantial. A 32-page rulebook, a 24-page scenario book, a 16-page guide to miniatures, two player aid cards, two metal miniature generals, three-dimensional foldup figures, army roster sheets, and 801 die-cut counters all came packed together. The scenario book contained four separate scenarios; three of them formed a linked campaign in a generic fantasy setting, one scenario for each of the three levels of play. The fourth was an advanced game scenario tied to the Dragonlance setting, specifically the Battle of Qualinost. That scenario took place during the same period as the published module DL2 Dragons of Flame, while the heroes were in Pax Tharkas. The game was designed for use with either 25 mm or 15 mm miniatures, though it did not demand any particular size. The official Battlesystem miniatures sold alongside the game, apart from the two included in the box, were all 15 mm scale. Many companies at the time were producing figures marketed as "Heroic 25 mm" or 28 mm, and those proved awkward or impossible to fit on the official Battlesystem base sizes.

• 4. Critical Reception

  ›

  Roger Musson reviewed the original boxed set in Imagine magazine and came away largely positive. He found the rules fairly easy to use but noticed "some omissions and rules buried in odd places." His conclusion was that "no self-respecting DM will want to be without the Battlesystem rules," even if the other box contents were of mixed value. He called the package something "to be welcomed" and suggested it could introduce many players to fantasy wargaming. Graeme Davis reviewed the same set for White Dwarf and gave it an overall rating of 8 out of 10, calling the rules "concise and well-written." Davis felt the game did what it set out to do and did it well, though he noted it was not as detailed as some dedicated fantasy wargame systems. He concluded with a pointed concern: that Battlesystem "may have priced itself out the market from the start." Scott Dollinger, reviewing for Different Worlds magazine, credited Battlesystem with pushing TSR toward producing modules built for large-scale combat, regardless of whether players used the system itself. The original Battlesystem set also won the H.G. Wells award.

• 5. Rebuilding for Second Edition

  ›

  The 1989 second edition arrived as a 128-page softcover book, redesigned for the AD&D 2nd Edition rules. Douglas Niles returned as designer, with a cover by Glen Taranowski. Kim Mohan, Jon Pickens, and Dave Sutherland handled editing and development. Michael Weaver and Ral Partha Enterprises provided photography for battle scenes, while Dick Kahn Studio shot the rules diagrams. Dave Sutherland also painted figures; interior art came from Jeff Easley and Keith Parkinson. The overhaul was substantial. Counters were dropped entirely. The game now focused purely on miniatures, with a single figure representing either ten infantrymen or cavalry, or one individual hero. Five statistics replaced the dozen-plus from the first edition: Attack Dice, Armor Rating, Hits, Morale, and Movement. A character's THAC0 and maximum damage determined their Attack Dice; armor class became Armor Rating. The combat system worked through opposed dice rolls, with each figure in an attacking group rolling its assigned die type, and the defending player rolling to cancel successful hits. The second edition also expanded into a companion volume called Battlesystem Skirmishes, published in 1991, which handled smaller engagements with a different approach. The game won the 1989 Origins Award for Best Miniatures Rules.

• 6. What Rick Swan Thought

  ›

  In Dragon magazine issue 178, dated February 1992, reviewer Rick Swan called both Battlesystem and Battlesystem Skirmishes "flat-out gorgeous, two of the best-looking products TSR, Inc. has ever published." The books featured glossy full-color photos of painted miniatures arranged in elaborate battlefield dioramas, and Swan suggested they served as excellent guides to figure painting even for readers with only a passing interest in miniatures games. He described the second edition as a complete overhaul, comparing the jump in quality to the transformation between 1st and 2nd Edition versions of the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. Gone, he wrote, were the "math-heavy combat tables, the awkward base sizes, and the quarter-page unit rosters," replaced by streamlined bookkeeping and what he called "a plethora of clever options." Swan admired the reduction to five core statistics and found the basic rules elegant and satisfying for players willing to accept the system's inherent compromises. His main criticism fell on the magic system. He found it translated poorly from the AD&D game, calling spell descriptions "sketchy" and the spell list "woefully incomplete" with fewer than 20 wizard spells covered. The magic chapter ran about seven pages, most of it description rather than mechanics.

• 7. Sales and Afterlife

  ›

  Despite winning awards and earning strong critical notices, sales for the second edition were disappointing. The shortfall meant the system lost active support sooner than its designers likely hoped. The Dark Sun campaign setting had actually been developed with large-scale battles in mind, making Battlesystem a natural fit, but the game was not actively used in that setting for very long. The 1992 Dragon Kings hardcover for Dark Sun did include Battlesystem options. Rick Swan, reviewing that same year, considered those options useful but nonessential. The second edition's companion, Battlesystem Skirmishes, worked well for smaller engagements but ran into trouble as battle sizes grew. Swan noted that once the number of figures per side approached several dozen, the Skirmishes rules reached a point of diminishing returns and players might as well have switched to the main Battlesystem rules. The game's fate illustrated a persistent tension in the hobby: a product that bridged two audiences, roleplayers and wargamers, sometimes found it had satisfied neither fully enough to sustain the numbers needed to keep it alive.