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Chainmail (game): the story on HearLore | HearLore
Common questions
Who created the original medieval wargame Siege of Bodenburg in 1967?
Henry Bodenstedt created the medieval wargame Siege of Bodenburg in 1967. This game was designed for use with 40mm miniatures and served as the foundation for later developments in the genre.
When was the first edition of Chainmail published by Guidon Games?
First edition Chainmail saw print in March 1971. It quickly became Guidon Games' biggest hit, selling one hundred copies per month.
What fantasy creatures and concepts were included in the Chainmail fantasy supplement?
The fantasy supplement included mythical creatures such as elves, orcs, and dragons along with heroes, superheroes, and wizards. It also added concepts like elementals, magic swords, and spells including Fireball and Lightning Bolt.
Which artist provided the artwork for the Chainmail cover and fantasy supplement illustrations?
The Chainmail cover art was inspired by a Jack Coggins illustration from his book The Fighting Man: An Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Fighting Forces. The fantasy supplement illustration of a mounted knight charging towards a dragon was drawn by Don Lowry based on an illustration by Pauline Baynes.
How did Chainmail influence the development of Dungeons and Dragons?
The game served as the foundational rulebook for Dungeons and Dragons which eventually surpassed its parent in popularity. Gary Gygax wrote in the June 1978 issue of The Dragon that players played primarily without miniatures for the first two years before Swords and Spells was added as a rules supplement in 1976.
Chainmail (game)
A single sheet of paper containing only four pages of text would eventually ignite a global phenomenon that redefined entertainment for generations. In 1967, Henry Bodenstedt created the medieval wargame Siege of Bodenburg, which was designed for use with 40mm miniatures. Gary Gygax first encountered Siege of Bodenburg at Gen Con I in 1968, and played the game during that convention. The rules for Siege of Bodenburg had been published in Strategy & Tactics magazine, and Jeff Perren developed his own medieval rules based on those and shared them with Gary Gygax. The original set of medieval miniatures rules by Jeff Perren were just four pages. Gygax edited and expanded these rules, which were published as Geneva Medieval Miniatures, in Panzerfaust magazine in April 1970, using 1:20 figure scale. The rules were again revised, and then self-published in the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society, The Domesday Book, as the LGTSA Miniatures Rules, in issue number 5 in July 1970, using 1:10 figure scale. Later issues of The Domesday Book introduce a rule system for man-to-man combat at 1:1 figure scale and a rule system for jousting. This humble beginning laid the groundwork for a system that would eventually spawn an entirely new genre of gaming.
The Fantasy Supplement
The true revolution occurred when a medieval wargame suddenly decided to include wizards and dragons. Along with the previous medieval rules, Chainmail included a 14-page fantasy supplement including figures such as heroes, superheroes, and wizards. The fantasy supplement also included mythical creatures such as elves, orcs, and dragons. The fantasy supplement also referenced the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Poul Anderson, and Michael Moorcock. The fantasy supplement encouraged players to refight fixed battles based on fantasy fiction by J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other writers. The first edition Chainmail fantasy supplement added such concepts as elementals, magic swords, and several spells including Fireball and Lightning Bolt. Borrowing a concept from Tony Bath, some figure types may make saving throws to resist spell effects; a stronger wizard can cancel the spell of a weaker wizard by rolling a seven or higher with two six-sided dice. Creatures were divided between Law and Chaos, drawing on the alignment philosophies of Poul Anderson, as popularized by Michael Moorcock's Elric series. When fighting mundane units, each of the fantasy creatures is treated as one of the six basic troop types. For example, hobbits are treated as light foot and elves are treated as heavy foot. Heroes are treated as four heavy footmen, and require four simultaneous hits to kill; Super-Heroes are twice as powerful.
What figure scales were used for the different Chainmail rule systems?
The mass-combat rules were intended for a 1:20 figure scale where each figure represents twenty men. The man-to-man combat rules utilized a 1:1 figure scale while the fantasy supplement also included rules for 1:10 figure scale battles.
The visual identity of the game was built on artwork that was borrowed from other sources to create a cohesive aesthetic. The Chainmail cover art of a fighting crusader was inspired by a Jack Coggins illustration from his book The Fighting Man: An Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Fighting Forces. Both Perrin and Gygax swiped Coggins' artwork to illustrate their preliminary articles about Chainmail that appeared in Panzerfaust and The Domesday Book. When Don Lowry of Guidon Games agreed to publish Chainmail, Lowry swiped the same Coggins illustration for the cover. For the fantasy supplement, the illustration of a mounted knight charging towards a dragon, was drawn by Don Lowry, based heavily on an illustration by Pauline Baynes for J. R. R. Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham in 1949. First edition Chainmail saw print in March 1971. It quickly became Guidon Games' biggest hit, selling one hundred copies per month. This commercial success proved that there was a hungry market for a game that combined historical accuracy with fantastical elements.
The Evolution of Rules
The game underwent significant changes as it moved through different publishers and editions. Guidon Games published Chainmail second edition in 1972. TSR eventually bought the rights to some of the back catalog of Guidon Games. Starting in 1975, they published Chainmail as their own product. It went through eight different printings from 1975 to 1985. A set of mass-combat rules, heavily indebted to the medieval systems of Tony Bath and intended for a 1:20 figure scale. These developed from the Lake Geneva medieval system originally published in Panzerfaust and in Domesday Book number 5. In these rules, each figure represents twenty men. Troops are divided into six basic types: light foot, heavy foot, armored foot, light horse, medium horse, and heavy horse. Melee is resolved by rolling six-sided dice: for example, when heavy horse is attacking light foot, the attacker is allowed to roll four dice per figure, with each five or six denoting a kill. On the other hand, when light foot is attacking heavy horse, the attacker is allowed only one die per four figures, with a six denoting a kill. Additional rules govern missile and artillery fire, movement and terrain, charging, fatigue, morale, and the taking of prisoners.
The Man to Man System
A parallel system emerged to handle individual combat scenarios with greater precision. A set of man-to-man combat rules for 1:1 figure scale, ultimately deriving from a contribution to Domesday Book number 7. Gygax lost the name of the contributor, and thus the rules were published anonymously. The core of these rules became the Appendix B chart mapping various weapon types to armor levels, and providing the needed to-hit rolls for a melee round. The man-to-man melee uses two six-sided dice to determine whether a kill is made. A set of jousting rules, which derive from the Castle & Crusade Society jousting rules published in Domesday Book number 6, and reprinted in Domesday Book number 13. These rules were originally designed for postal play; members of the C&CS could participate in jousting tourneys in order to raise their standing in the Society. Dungeons & Dragons refers to jousting matches utilizing the Chainmail rules. The core of these rules is the Appendix E chart showing the die rolls needed for various fantastic types to defeat one another in battle.
The D&D Connection
The game served as the foundational rulebook for a new role-playing game that would eventually surpass its parent in popularity. In the June 1978 issue of The Dragon, Gary Gygax wrote that for the first two years of Dungeons & Dragons, players played primarily without the use of any miniature figures. If visual aids were needed, then the players would draw pictures, or use dice or tokens as placeholders. By 1976, there was a movement among players to add the use of miniatures to represent individual player characters. In 1976, Swords & Spells was added as a rules supplement for Dungeons & Dragons, to provide fantasy mass combat rules for the game at 1:10 and 1:1 scale. In the foreword, Tim Kask describes Swords & Spells as the grandson of Chainmail. In the introduction to the game, Gary Gygax wrote that the Chainmail fantasy supplement assumed man-to-man combat, and rules for large-scale fantasy battles were missing, so Swords & Spells was developed to cover 1:10 and 1:1 ratio fantasy battles. In 2001, Wizards of the Coast reused the Chainmail name for the Chainmail Miniatures Game, a skirmish game specifically tied to D&D, set in a previously unexplored location in the World of Greyhawk called the Sundered Empire.