"The 5 Wargame Rules That Changed the Industry are..." Topic

You were asked – TMP link

Which wargame rules were so groundbreaking that they singlehandedly changed the miniature wargaming industry (for better or worse)?

In the final round of voting:

16% of the votes: "Dungeons and Dragons"
14% – "DBA"
13% – "The Sword and the Flame"
10% – "Warhammer"
9% – "WRG Ancients"

I don't even know where these polls appear but I would have thought WRG's original 1925-50 set would have been in there.

Some Napoleonic rules probably should have been present too, maybe Bruce Quarrie's. They got a lot of people playing as far as I can tell.

These two, plus WRG 3000BC – 1250AD 5th Ed were the first commercially produced rules I was exposed to and used. I never did the Donald Featherstone thing – looked at the books but never used his rules.
Cheers,
John

Much as I loved D&D, I wouldn't describe them as Wargames Rules… I'm surprised there are no skirmish sets, like Saga.

John -- look at the left side of the main TMP page and scroll down to "Current Polls."

I agree with you re. D&D.

If we're talking white box D&D, it was actually much more a Medieval skirmish game with some magic and fantasy races grafted on to it rather than an RPG.

At the time the RPG elements were much less structured in the rules and more left (or practically entirely left) to the discretion of the DM. Race and monster abilities were heavily focused on tactical combat capabilities. Things like temperament, ecology, politics, morals were just assumed to be known since "everyone" read the "same" fantasy books.

Good list. I'd add Fire & Fury, Command Decision, & Shako.

D&D is not a wargame. Should not have been on the poll.

Should have Empire been on the poll?

I agree. Empire was one of those watershed moments in wargaming rules. Not that I would play it anymore but it was game changing!

Empire was a poll selection.

"Dungeons & Dragons: Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures"

It's on the cover folks, granted they weren't exactly sure what it was back in the day, but they were experimenting all over the place, remember Braunstein ?

Tactica wargame rules may have not been groundbreaking but releasing the ruleset in a very slick professional format, heavily illustrated with beautiful color photos changed the way wargaming rulesets were expected to look like forever.

While D&D is not war-game rules per say, its predecessor "Chainmail" was . Maybe Angrif and Johnny Reb ?

D&D is not a wargame. Should not have been on the poll.

True, but I would bet that it greatly influence later game creators.

I miss the rules by Grant, Featherstone etc

This poll is really making me feel my age. The answer should be WRG Ancients hands down. It revolutionised war gaming when it came out. The other rules are great, but in no way were as ground breaking as WRG. You had to be there in the early 70's!

I would second Hagar's comment. The original WRG ancients rules had a major effect on ancient wargaming and by the third and fourth editions were almost universally used for ancient gaming. My introduction to ancients was WRG3 just as WRF4 was published. I also remember the original version of D&D being the expansion of chainmail into fantasy.

But for DnD there would be no games workshop.

"But for DnD there would be no games workshop."

Where are Marty McFly and Doc Brown when we need them???

;-)

B

My recollection of the early versions of WRG Ancients were – "Side A moves. Argument ensues". From my perspective Barker really did not get the rules properly "cleaned up" until 7th Edition.

I was much fonder of his 1925-1950 Infantry-Armour Rules, which went a long way toward ending the curse of "Tractics".

B

"…that changed the industry…"

Read the poll question. D&D changed the industry. Fantasy wargaming, dungeon crawls, RPGs, fantasy miniatures, VSF, Steampunk, horror, pulp, polyhedral dice, character stats, hit points, magic, and the enormous blizzard of competing and/or inspired products all stemming from the creation and success of D&D, not to mention the rise of GenCon as the premier gaming convention and indeed the phenomenal increase in gaming and wargaming in terms of both participants and commercial products in general. Whether or not one argues that D&D is or isn't itself a "wargame," there is no question it massively "changed the industry."

Also note that this is a website dedicated to and dominated by wargamers. If there is a valid poll response on this site, this is it. D&D clearly influenced the most people here enough to win out.

As for WRG, I've heard of it. And that's all. The fact that I've heard of it tells me it clearly had influence on this hobby I participate in, but what that might have been, I don't know. Maybe that says something, too.

Not sure about changing the industry but rules systems that set the standard's for what game design can be and should be:

Johnny Reb up till 3rd edition
Command Decision up till 3rd edition
X-Wing up till they began issuing "upgrade" cards
DBX esp. DBM 2.0 and DBA 3.0

TomT

> Read the poll question. D&D changed the industry.

But it is not a wargame so instant disqualification.

Know your history. D&D originally appeared as a medieval wargame with fantasy elements, played with miniatures. Instant re-qualification.

I know it and D&D is not a wargame. It was spawned from one, not the same thing.

D&D changed everything – there really was such a watershed between wargaming before D&D and wargaming after D&D.

I agree. D&D is not a wargame. And I don't really see its influence directly in wargaming either.

To be fair one of our, in hindsight, advances , was to go to D20. This was accepted on faith as a recommendation by my son based on on his experience of RPG's, where this was becoming a new standard. It proved to be excellent advice and improved the rules by adding enough detail over the D6, while not requiring buckets of die. While dire rolling is a necessary evil, reducing the number of rolls speeds play. So even RPG experience can help in some ways.

D&D could perhaps be described as the first fantasy wargame. It probably owed as much to J R R Tolkien for its success as anything else (by which I mean Jim Arneson's good design work).

Evidently when the folks at Tactical Studies Rules got back the galleys for Chainmail, they found they had several blank pages. So they decided to add rule for Tolkien characters. The rest, as they say, is history.

I was a bit horrified by this topic. Wargames rules that changed the way we play would be of interest. WHO CARES about the industry! It is simply there to cater for us, not we them.

ITS NOT AN INDUSTRY its a hobby, what matters is for the hobby not what impact it has on it. Most of what happens for the best is not down to industry but keen individuals working for the hobby..

For me personally it was Column, Line and Square, D&D and TSATF. I think any answer is going to be dependent on the individual, so polling should take care of individual differences.

X-Wing

From where I'm looking, X-Wing largely took Wings of War and slapped a popular theme on it. It's been quite successful but I'm not sure how it set the bar for game design?

D&D was born out of the tabletop wargaming industry. D&D spun off into its own, separate, industry: role playing games. Frankly, the RPG industry has dwarfed the popularity of the wargaming industry.

The poll asked about the "industry" aspect, not the fan base. So, from that perspective, I think the results of the poll are not too far off.

I joined the RPG hobby in 1980 (Freshman, in High School), but I did not join the wargaming hobby until around 1992 -- not for lack of interest, but rather a lack of hobby funds: had been working after tech school, for six years, finally had disposable funds available! I enjoy both, wholeheartedly, without reservation.

I find it interesting that there is limited crossover between RPG'ers and wargamers. The two are radically different experiences, but both are a blast, for me. YMMV. Cheers!

I was a bit horrified by this topic. Wargames rules that changed the way we play would be of interest. WHO CARES about the industry! It is simply there to cater for us, not we them.

ITS NOT AN INDUSTRY its a hobby, what matters is for the hobby not what impact it has on it. Most of what happens for the best is not down to industry but keen individuals working for the hobby..

UshCha:

I think the question was how particular game rules have changed the hobby…and thus'the industry.' However, I think calling the publishers of rules and manufactures of historical miniatures etc. a collective 'an industry' is quite a stretch. Here is how 'industries' are classified:

There are four types of industry. These are primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary.

Primary industry involves getting raw materials e.g. mining, farming and fishing.

Secondary industry involves manufacturing e.g. making cars and steel.

Tertiary industries provide a service e.g. teaching and nursing.

Quaternary industry involves research and development industries e.g. IT.

*Maybe* the hobby could claim 'secondary industry', but
writ very small.

I would also wonder what kinds of 'change' we are talking about. The size of figures, particular rules sets, their support, subject matter, particular eras or as a total

The use of elements as units of movement etc changed the hobby in my mind. Already thought of by Charles Wessencraft in his book Practical wargaming , but brought to the fore in DBA and it's derivatives this changed traditional Ancient wargaming otherwise I'm not so sure, new rules concepts seem to concentrate on ease of game play and novelty the concept of trying to recreate Ancient/ Medieval Warfare as been relegated to a dispute between gaming and simulation, i.e if the rules are complicated they are a simulation if easy then it's a game it is difficult trying to find the middle ground. In our small group we prefer to play easy rules and it's always a benefit if they appear to me realistic according to our limited knowledge When it comes to world War ;2 rules that's a different matter -Squad Leader changed everything…….

Ditto to Murvihill regarding Column Line and Square. It was the first war-game that took into account historical organization, national differences, and weapons variations. Also specific stand sizes, rather than general ones. For the latter, we need to acknowledge Joseph Morschauser's How to Play War Games in Miniature. Until his book (or seminal article in Wargames Digest) people played with individual figures; he suggested mounting figures on bases for unit moves. Now we are back to the individual figure games :)

These rules were ahead of the times, not mass produced, so of limited exposure with little impact on the hobby industry. However, these rules got Dick Bryant into the hobby so indirectly gave birth to The Courier which kept American wargaming interconnect leading to the formation of the HMGS.

What was unique about D&D as a game (Something of a skirmish game at that.) is the role playing aspect. Players were not just generals ordering troops around, they were the actual figures on the table (if using figures). The biggest contribution this genre made to the war-game hobby is that it saved the figure making industry (or is it a business) by giving them a new market. They could then make historical figures sort of "on the side."

We're taking part in an industry, which supplies our hobby needs. There are hundreds of people employed in the business. GW are a serious international brand. There are people who are paid to analyses their performance: link

And any one who knows anything about the hobby would know that, like them or hate them, the first WRG Ancients were the first set of rules to systematically research and apply that research to a set of wargames rules. Look at what went before. Honestly it's all guess work and Tony Bath's ancient rules don't even stand up as a fantasy game.

It may be better to break it down by period. For example, in Napoleonic's the WRG war gaming rules 1750-1850 and then later the 1685-1845 version was a critical set of rules for this period. In the US Empire, 1-2nd edition and then later 3rd edition were pivotal in the US. Finally we have Napoleon's Battles, which are still used today and may represent the rules which had the largest impact in the US. After these three sets of rules, each of which had a significant impact on the hobby, we have the plethora of rules we see today.

However these three rules probably had no impact on Ancients or WW2/Cold War, although I must admit WRG did exchange some game system ideas between all three periods.

In order to identify true pivotal rules you need to determine how many people has used them. Everyone states WW2 is the most popular figure gaming period by far, yet when it comes to competitions in the UK ancients beats everyone, if we total all the different rules. I would suggest in more recent times War hammer and Flames of wear are pivotal rules, but not because of the rules and instead of the eco-system around the rules. Does this count as a pivotal set of rules, or simply a good eco-system which generates interest and sales.

Hi pfmodel,
Speaking as an older gamer from the northeast US,(70s, 80s), rule sets of English origin generally dominated in the broad sense, but there were some significant exceptions:

American rules seemed to dominate -
> Napoleonics – (""Column, Line & Square"; the "Empire" series)
> American Civil War – ("On to Richmond", "Johnny Reb", "J. E. B.", Stars & Bars", "Fire & Fury")
> Fantasy – ("Dungeons & Dragons")

My short stroll down Memory Lane, FWIW.

B

I have many fond memories of older rules. I even have fond memories of empire 3rd, which I never successfully managed to learn to the point I could have a game. If someone else in my location understood the rules I would have been able to overcome this, but as I did not live in the US back then this was not going to happen.

I suspect a listing a most influence set of rules list is highly subjective, although I suppose you could say that this rules first introduced this concept, such as sequential "Sequences of Play" back in 1971, from memory, and so on.

Surely the obvious answer to the original question is HG Wells "Little Wars"? All the others followed in the footsteps of that….
Phil

Hi pf,
You wrote – "I suspect a listing a most influence set of rules list is highly subjective"

Absolutely no question about it.

B

Warhammer Ancient Battles as for all it's foibles, both good and bad, opened up Ancients wargaming to a much larger number of people then any of the aforementioned rulesets.

In my mind, Ancients would not be as big as it is now without it.

And just to prove that WAB could be played in a none competitive format, here's a few pics of the Battle of Solachon 586AD we put on at Claymore in the early 2000's.

Just Add Water Wargaming and Painting Blog:
link

Nice pictures, i rarely play on a large playing area but i do love the bling of a big playing area.

Atheling – Warhammer Ancients was like a gateway drug for and a few others who were Warhammer players and curious about Ancients- unlike a lot of Ancients rules it was accessible.

No doubt that Warhammer changed the hobby, without it we would not have 40k, which regardless of how you may feel about it ( and I accept that lots of people dislike it which is their right)the game has become a hobby in its own right eclipsing much of the rest of the miniatures hobby

Up until at least 3rd edition (the only one I bought) Warhammer always credited WRG Ancients rules as its inspiration.

Up until at least 3rd edition (the only one I bought) Warhammer always credited WRG Ancients rules as its inspiration.

Wow, I did not realise that. The early WRG rules were very influencial but i had no idea they influenced Warhammer.