The dark
dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts
and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian
psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas
policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far
beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter... the utterly unknown still is
and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever.
Fritz
Lieber
While the sixties saw a
burgeoning of new writing talent in the realms of fantasy such as the
anarchistic Michael Moorcock (in many different guises), the intricate
melancholy of Ursula K. LeGuin, and Anne McCaffrey and the gritty panache of
Fritz Lieber, it was also to the old fantasy staples that the young American
readers and authors turned. They turned to Tolkien, a man who had created a
world so concrete, and so multi-layered that it presented itself as an entirely
plausible alternative mythology. They turned to Robert E. Howard, a man who
chose gunshot suicide at the age of thirty and who never left the town of Cross
Plains, Texas. Yet, Howard had written the pulp treasure trove of stories about
Conan the Cimmerian, so vast in its scope and so untethered to the world Howard
himself inhabited, that cynics still attribute his collection of works more to
schizophrenia than to imaginative genius. Whatever its pathology, the readers
in the sixties did not doubt its genius. They turned to double entendre of the
allegory of C.S. Lewis, the dark, unapologetic gothic of Mervyn Peake and
psychological horror of H.P. Lovecraft. Even when it came to these established
authors, the sixties readers were reading with a new appreciation for the
imaginative and for the sudden legitimacy that the imaginative seemed to have
achieved.
Science Fiction (if it is
possible to distinguish it from fantasy writing) also saw an explosion in its
readership during the sixties. This “new wave” movement had its own impetus
brought by the birth of the idea that technology, was not a taboo field of
exercise for the human imagination, as well as the radical political views of
many of its writers. Writers like Moorcock, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke and
Robert A. Heinlen were consumed by avid fans, and clubs and appreciation
societies began to spring up, many at institutions of higher learning. But
these modern sci-fi writers shared the limelight with the post-war work of
authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack Vance and Ray Bradbury.
While there may have been subtle
differences in the influences that brought them to the fore in the mind of the
consumers of “escapist” literature, it must be remembered that fantasy and
sci-fi, started to enjoy a popularity fuelled by the same passions on the part
of the readers of both types of story. The distinction between the two genres
was a later development, in the minds of readers and in the meeting schedules
of publishing company directors. In 1965 most “fantasy” readers consumed as
much Asimov as they did Tolkien. Indeed, writers in the sixties, like Moorcock
moved without a second thought between what would later be known as the twin
branches of fantasy and sci-fi, in their writing.
With the rise in popularity of
the genre, it began to have cross-appeal in various other areas of society.
Fantasy literature fans were spreading out, and their ideas on the role of the
imagination, were beginning to permeate different social spheres. Much of this
cross-pollination was seamless and natural, but in certain serendipitous cases
it resulted in polarisation between members of different social cliques. In
some extreme cases, the combination of the fantasy literature genre with
another eclectic interest group would have entirely unforeseen creative
results. Some of these results could possibly have been predicted, but still
others were entirely unforeseeable, despite attempts by various individuals in
later years, to claim that they had not only predicted, but planned them.
The social interest group and
hobby that were about to collide with the rise of imaginative literature, was
the rather closed, stuffy, pseudo-academic world of miniature wargaming. The
unexpected by-product of this alchemical commixing would be the first example
of an entirely new form of pastime, the role-playing game. Its name would be
Dungeons & Dragons. While the game’s history is solidly rooted in the world
of wargaming, no investigation of the roots and history of the game, can ignore
the over-arching influence of the new passion for fantasy and science fiction
writing that was sweeping the United States in the mid to late sixties. It was
the rennaissance of fantasy literature that provided the fertile soil in which
the seeds of an brand new idea would germinate.
The Avalon Game Company was a
small entity that began manufacturing boardgames in 1954, with the release of a
game called “Tactics”. The company was the brainchild of Charles S. Roberts. It
had a rocky financial history and went through several name changes eventually
calling itself Avalon Hill until 1998 when it was purchased by Hasbro games.
The company tried to put out a new boardgame every year during the sixties and
seventies. Avalon Hill produced many games, but its first real off-the-shelf
success was “Gettysburg”, a tactical board game which simulated the famous
battle of the American Civil War. It was the first board-based wargame premised
on a historical battle. The effect of the game’s release was to expose young
consumers of fairly simple family board games,
to new world of military simulations. It was by no means an easy game to
pick up and play, but compared to the complex rules for the more traditional
wargames that existed at the time, its sixteen page rule book, was a model of
simplicity. Unfortunately “clarity” was never a tag that could be attached to
the Gettysburg rules.
It is in all likelihood
anecdotal, but the number of pioneers of the D&D game who cite Gettysburg
as the game which started their interest in wargaming, is so significant one
wonders whether Avalon Hill should not feature more centrally as a credited
influence in the creation of what would, fifteen years later emerge as the
first role-playing game.
When Gettysburg was released,
wargames were not unheard of. They had existed for years, and had been written
about by no less than H.G. Wells who had created a whimsical set of game rules
in his “Little Wars” published in 1913. There was “Stratego”, the modern form
of a French game called “L’attaque” which appeared and was sold in France as
early 1910. And of course wargaming was common practice in military forces
around the world, going back centuries. In the years following World War II,
battles of that era were not considered a fitting topic for a family game. By
the sixties, younger enthusiasts, who had not experienced the horrors of the
war first hand, had begun to take an interest in the battles of that war and other
wars, as the subject of games. Prior to this, American table-top wargamers were
generally history scholars whose endeavours were aimed at recapturing famous
military conquests, for purposes of re-enactment and study. Gettysburg went
straight to the growing more prosaic general audience accustomed to simpler
boardgames such as Monopoly and Risk, and showed them that complexity and
greater level of strategic planning didn’t kill boardgames. On the contrary,
they could make them more fun.
After Gettysburg several other
military boardgames were created, several by Avalon Hill. Boardgames needed
game pieces, and when it came to historical wargming, the pieces would become a
hobby in themselves. In 1955 Jack Scruby began making moulds in his shop in
California, casting and selling metal figurines for use in tabletop gaming.
Scruby perceived the growing interest in wargames as a pastime and in the
collection of metal soldiers that could be used to play those games. In 1957 he
convened the first wargming convention in California and began publishing a
quarterly periodical catering for the needs of military miniature gamers,
called “War Game Digest”. The growth of Scruby’s sales and the reach of his
periodicals reflected the steady growth of the industry as military wargaming
adopted its new audience. No longer the sole domain of historians and military
officers, wargaming began to attract gamers of all ages, but it was in schools
and, in particular universities, that the hobby began to catch hold. By 1960
most U.S. universities had wargaming societies and clubs, that were well
attended and well-organised.
Across the United States
wargamers would face each other across makeshift battlefields, with piles of
books representing higher ground, strips of cloth as rivers, and various
coloured pieces of paper, material or scrap to signify different types of
terrain. More ambitious and artistically inclined gamers made lifelike models
of their own, including detailed towns and fortifications. The games they
played were often recreations of famous battles from human history, but the fun
lay in the fact that now, Custer could win, Acre may not fall to the Turks and
the plains of Megiddo may resound to the ringing of a different victory
trumpet. It was a history of which a whole lot of questions could be asked, and
it peaked the imagination. But there had to be a winner. While it was fun,
imaginative and interesting, it was also a contest.
There were a few commercial
ventures in the area of wargaming but the hobby suffered from a serious
drawback (or, from the point of view of Dungeons and Dragons, an advantage) in
that its rules were not codified. The main categories of game were: Ancients,
Napoleonic, American Civil War and World War II. Each of these genres required
different rules systems to run effectively, and a set of rules that worked for
one might be hopelessly inefficient for another. To make matters more
fractured, certain clubs and societies specialised in game play from a certain
era. The result was an extremely haphazard system where new rules were
constantly being tried, exchanged, plagiarised and adapted by gamers across the
country. With companies like Avalon Hill producing only a game a year, gamers
had to take the laws of the game into their own hands. They began to innovate.
They modified, borrowed, and improvised rules, and in some cases, created their
own. Military wargamers were improvisers par excellence.
In 1962 a book was released by
Joseph Morschauser entitled “How to Play Wargames in Miniature”. It claimed to
be a guide for the would-be wargamer and included advice on game play as well
as collecting and painting miniatures. The need to continually strive for a
“more realistic” set of rules to cover a particular genre of gaming, also lead
to much debate and discussion within specific groups, and between groups
themselves.
In a time before cellular phones
and the internet, this meant groups getting in touch with each other by post.
It also meant that gamers needed to physically get together with each other in
order to share ideas and rule sets. Thus, Scruby and others had seen the need
to organise such gatherings.
In 1964, when the Beatles’ “Can’t
Buy Me Love” hit number one on the U.S. music charts, and the Gemini Space
Probe was launched, David Wesely was nineteen years old and already a fan of
wargaming. He was born on 15 March 1945. His first experience of wargaming had
come when he played “Gettysburg” at the age of 13. That year he joined a small
group that was centered in Twin Cities area of Minnesota (encompassing the
cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul). It was called the Midwest Military
Simulation Association (MMSA) and had been founded by Ray Allard, a well-known
amateur historian and historical re-enactor, on 18 April 1964. The first
meeting was attended by Allard, then 54, Dr. William Musing, Loren Johnson, Ron
Lauraunt, Winston Sandeen, all in their thirties, and Allard’s son, Ray Jnr,
and Wesely who were teenagers. The membership of the group grew by word of
mouth, and new members such as Don Nicholson joined. The group soon included several students because, in addition to
advertising for members in “The General” and “Strategy & Tactics”
magazines, they also ran welcome tables at the Universities of Minnesota and
St. Paul. There was some degree of polarisation between the older members who
enjoyed collecting, modelling and painting on the one hand, and the younger
members who preferred the gaming itself.
The group began to get together
in that year and would grow to membership of around thirty by 1968. Wesely was
an improviser who, together with other members of the group, was constantly
trying to write a better set of rules to regulate their historical battles that
would grow continually more complex and ambitious. In 1966 Nicholson discovered
a book in the library of the University of Minnesota entitled “Strategos, the
American Game of War” by Lieutenant C.A.L. Totten. Totten is pictured here.
Published in 1880, it was a thick
three hundred and forty-two page tome which sought to present itself as the
training manual for wargaming for the U.S. Army. When Nicholson revealed this
book to the group, it greatly increased the level of complexity that Wesely and
others added to their games, even though they realised that this complexity was
so unwieldy that they could never incorporate all the rules it suggested.
Still, Wesely and his fellow table-top generals attempted to do it. But, as
many game designers would find in the years that followed, the uncertainty
caused by home-grown and varied rules systems, led to disputes and complicated
debates which would often stop the game in its tracks or cause it to proceed so
slowly that it may as well have stopped.
One of Wesely’s gaming friends,
and part of his inner circle, was a young Dave Arneson. He was still at school
when he joined the MMSA. Arneson was extremely well-read particularly when it
came to fantasy and science-fiction. He became an active member and produced a
newsletter containing the battle reports of the group’s Napoleonic games and games
of the board game, “Diplomacy”. David Lance Arneson was born in Hennepin
County, Minnesota on 1 October 1947. Arneson was eighteen years old when he
joined Wesely’s group. He had been playing wargames since 1958. His first, it should no longer be a surprise
to find out, was Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg. Arneson was a plump young man who
wore glasses. He had a quiet manner and an infectious laugh. He was also an
avid gamer who, like Wesely did not mind the idea that the rules for wargames
should be as realistic as possible, even if that involved high levels of
complexity.
Arnseon had a keen interest in
history and in particular, the history of human conflict. He compiled
incredibly detailed notes, from a historical perspective, of the costs of
military equipment throughout various periods in history. Arneson was known
amongst his friends for being able to determine the cost of building a troop
ship, or any other ship for that matter, in 1887, and to provide the amount in
pounds sterling.
While reading Totten’s book
Wesely noticed that in addition to the standard six-sided dice that was used in
most wargames, the author also called for the used of a twelve sided
“tee-to-tum”. Wesely had no idea what this was but guessed it was an object
that had twelve sides and incorrectly assumed that it resembled one of the five
regular polyhedra that he had learned about in science class when he was at
school and which had been discovered by the Pythagorean School of Alexandria.
So Wesely ordered a set from Edmund Scientific’s school supplies catalogue, for
the whopping sum of $ 6.00, well beyond the budget of most young gamers. The
set he received included plastic polyhedra with four, six, eight, twelve and
twenty facets respectively, each facet numbered. Of these Wesely used the
twelve sided shape as a dice, to use with Totten’s probability tables. He also
found the twenty-sided polyhedra useful for generating percentages. The four,
six and eight sided shapes Wesely opined to be useless. The main dice used in
his wargames continued to be the six-sided standard, available at local stores
for a far more reasonable 5 cents.
By 1966 Wesely and other members
of the group had begun to become concerned with the amount of bickering,
disagreement and unhappiness that a lack of clear rules was beginning to cause
during a night’s gaming which was supposed, after all, to be an evening of fun.
In his book Totten had suggested that a referee be used, preferably of a
superior officer, to regulate the wargame, resolve disputes and make decisions
which would be binding on the players and would keep the game flowing.
This idea struck a chord with
Wesely, Arneson and others in the group and they began to experiment with
referees during their games. Initially there was some confusion as to the
referee’s function. Some group members, of the argumentative type, were not
happy to have referees because they felt they were biased and at the same time
did not want to be the referee because this meant they would not be able to
play the game. A few players left the group rather than submit to the whims of
a referee.
When it came to the role of the
referee Totten once again came to the aid of Wesely’s gaming group. He had
suggested in his book that the referee, in addition to being an impartial
arbitrator to settle disputes between the players and assist them in the
massively complicated calculations that were part and parcel of Totten’s
system, could take on another, far more interesting role. He would also be
responsible for supplying the players with intelligence received by their
armies from civilians and providing random, chance events that would take place
during the game (of which the players were not initially aware). The referee
could create and plan the scenario that would be the context for the battle,
rather than have the players simply recreate a historical scenario. Unlike in
other games the referee would have “knowledge” of the scenario that the players
did not have. He would keep this knowledge secret and divulge it to the players
once their actions were such that their commanders would become privy to that
knowledge. So, if a field seemed perfectly crossable on foot by infantry, it
may be that the referee would keep a note to himself, which stated that the
field was in fact marshy and difficult to cross. A wily commander might receive
the more accurate intelligence when he resolved to question some of the local
farmers whereas a less astute general might find it out for the first time when
his light infantry division attempted to charge across the field and capture
the gun emplacement on the other side.
So, Totten’s referee could add a
level of interest and fun to the battle. Although referees were commonly used,
this extended role was not the norm in wargaming during the sixties. If the
advice in this 1880’s tract were to be followed the imaginative powers of the
referee would become a telling factor in a wargame. Wesely and members of his
group also had the foresight to see just how much fun this could be. As they
began to take it in turns to act as referee, in this sense, they began to find
that the fun elements that Totten’s rules added, offset the frustration of not
being able to play as one of the combatants. A smaller more imaginatively
inclined group of four, which included Wesely himself, found that they enjoyed
the imaginative elements enough that they preferred to referee rather than to
play. Another member of the four was a Dave Arneson.
By 1967 Arneson was refereeing
full-time within the MMSA group. Many of the younger members would collect at
Arneson’s house for evenings of pure wargaming. What is more, he had created
what was described as a “campaign”. This was a linked series of battles and
interposed events over which he presided as referee, in the Totten sense. A
campaign, with the help of the referee, allowed for diplomatic engagement
between players and, in addition, allowed for more than two players to take
part in the game. The referee could therefore present the players with
strategic questions that went far broader than the battlefield decisions they
would make in a single battle scenario.
Another game option that both
Wesley and Arneson began exploring was the idea of multiple player games where
each player had a different set of objectives and some of these were not
mutually exclusive.
In one such example the group
played a campaign, referreed by Arneson, reflecting the entire Napoleonic grand
theatre, with each player representing a different European state. They were
all given budgets based on the cost calculations sourced by Arneson, with which
to construct armies and navies. Then the negotiation started. This process led
the gamers to a realisation concerning the nature of historical events that had
not struck them before. The process taught them that many of the great
decisions made by leaders were made based on the personal relationships between
those leaders, more than simply on factors of political and military
expediency. However, a game of this nature had a drawback that Arneson soon
discovered. The more the game went on the larger the amounts of information
that he would receive from players on an almost daily basis. The game began to
take up all of Arneson’s time. The realisation dawned on him that he had become
a full-time referee.
Wesely too continued to push the
limits of gaming. In 1967 he refereed a game representing the battle of
Bladensburg for Washington D.C. in 1814 between the British forces and the
local American coalition forces. In an effort to reflect that difficulties that
has beset the American forces, and possibly led to their defeat, Wesely allowed
fourteen players into the game, some of them playing a single character such as
a specific commanding officer, who could effectively countermand the orders of
some of the other American commanders. Twelve people ran the American coalition
forces and only two the British forces. The game was a fun experiment and
Wesely felt that it had worked well. His next experiment was even more
ambitious.
Faced with a larger group than
usual that were due to arrive at his parents’ house for their regular gaming
session, Wesely decided to try something that he had wanted to do for a while
to further investigate the idea of multiple players with multiple military
objectives. He called it “Braunstein”. It was a German town commanding a
strategic position at a bridge over the Braunwasser River. He set up a twelve
by six foot tabletop with models, terrain and buildings and waited for people
to arrive. The table that he used is pictured in the magazine photo above. As
people began arriving he briefed them each individually as to their roles
during the upcoming game. The first guest was told that he was a captain in the
French Lancers and that he had been sent to the town in disguise without his
unit, to reconnoitre the area. The next
guest was told he was the head of the Prussian Jaegers unit that would be sent
to reinforce the town of Braunstein, but that he had arrived before the troops.
The next player was the mayor of Braunstein and he was told that there had been
a student riot the night before, which had been harshly put down by the chief
of police. The tavern owners were demanding compensation or the head of the
police chief. The chancellor of the university was demanding the release of the
arrested students. And so it went on. More and more players were given civilian
roles, including the Baron of Braunstein and the chief banker. Wesely also did
something deliberately provocative. He gave roles that would naturally involve
the highest level of cooperation to people whom he knew did not get on well,
and he made sure that the players who were the most friendly with each other
received roles that had mutually exclusive agendas.
Wesely fully expected that the
civilian interaction would continue up until a point and then the players would
go back to “pushing lead around the table”. He also had in mind an intricate
scoring system for the nine or so roles for which he had planned. He decided to
run the game entirely from another room where he had a map of the battlefield.
The idea was that each player would come into the room and communicate their
next move to him. This turned out to be a very naïve and impractical method for
trying to run the game. To make matters worse, he had been expecting and had
arranged roles for about nine people. Cracks began to show when twenty-two
people arrived at the house. He began improvising roles to meet the player
demand, and the mayhem began.
The players ignored the request
to take turns to give their instructions to the referee. They began coming in
to the room where Wesely was sitting, out of turn. A colonel of the Jaegers and
the captain of the university fencing team arrived and informed Wesely that
they wished to fight a duel. They demanded a rule system which would enable
them to do so. Wesely improvised a fighting system allowing the student to roll
2d6 and the soldier 3d6. Unsurprisingly the student fencing champion was
carried out on a slab.
When Wesely went back into the
main room he was amazed to find that all the players were fully, and vocally
interacting with each other in ways he had never contemplated, without giving
their instructions through him as the referee. The university chancellor was
busy sabotaging the old cannon that stood at the entrance to the university.
Wesely had completely lost control of the game, and he saw it as a disaster. At
about two o’clock in the morning Wesely called the players together and
apologised for the fact that the game had become completely out of hand and
that he, as referee, had failed in that he had no idea who had won the game. The
reaction of the players surprised him deeply. They were not upset or angry.
They all claimed to have enjoyed the game. Wesely didn’t realise it but he had
stumbled upon an entirely new form of game, a game where victory or defeat was
not the object nor was it essential to enjoyment. The old adage was indeed true
in this type of game, it was not whether you won or lost, but how you played
the game that mattered.
Wesely had run the Braunstein
game during the holidays because he was then attending graduate school. After
the game he went back to school. When he returned home he was met with requests
as to when the next Braunstein game would be played. When he returned to school
he began planning Braunstein 2. He decided that this time he would not lose
control. None of the players would take even the smallest step without going
through him. He created a list of actions available to the players which they
were going to have to stick to. This game would not result in chaos, he told
himself, and he would, at the end of the game, be able to work out who had won.
Four people played the game. It was dreadful. He made some slight changes and
tried Braunstein 3 with some friends. It too was terrible. Wesely went away and
analysed the games he had run. He came to a fairly startling revelation. “The
key thing was to let them do what they wanted to do. Never mind who wins.”
By 1969 much of Wesely’s time was
taken up by graduate school. Arneson had become a student and history major at
the University of Minnesota, majoring in the subject that was his passion,
Napoleonic History. As a student he had begun to run regular games from his
home. He was an active participant in roleplaying exercises in his history
classes and became the bane of certain lecturers by insisting on altering
historical events, during roleplay, in an effort to add interesting and
sometimes bizarre alterations of history. He was coming to the realisation that
he enjoyed acting, and story telling. These two attributes were never more
vividly demonstrated than during the next game run by David Wesely.
On a holiday break Wesely decided
to run another Braunstein-type game for his friends. This one was set in a
mythical latin American dictatorship on the brink of revolution, and would be
called “Banana Republic”. All the players would be participants in a struggle
for control and had the freedom to influence what the ultimate outcome would
be. Once again, certain players would not have any military units under their
control. They would represent only a single individual. One such player was
Dave Arneson. He had been given the role of a provocateur whose job it was to
distribute pro-revolutionary pamphlets. Wesely had worked out a balanced
scoring system to enable each player to earn points. Arneson’s character would
receive points for every leaflet he handed out. When Arneson arrived for the
game, he was already ahead of it. He had dressed up. He carried a real
briefcase containing real pamphlets. What is more he had created a replica set
of C.I.A credentials, indicating that his character was actually an undercover
agent. Then he set to work. He acted, he cajoled, he spoke in character,
flashing his Agency credentials whenever he got into a tight spot. He became
the star of the game, eventually convincing the Minister of the Treasury to pay
him a million dollars, and arranging for a helicopter to airlift him out of the
city just before the first shots rang out. When he was reminded that he
received points only for every leaflet he distributed Arneson announced that he
was opening his briefcase out of the window of the chopper and letting the
downdraft of the rotors do the rest.
Points or no points, everyone
agreed. Arneson had “won”. Of course he had not won, but he had stuck his neck
out as a roleplayer, and showed his fellow players just how much fun it could
be.
Banana Republic was the last game
of its type that Wesely designed and refereed. Thereafter it was Arneson who
took up the mantle. He ran his own versions of the Banana Republic/Braunstein
game. One of the youngest of the players who had by then gravitated to
Arneson’s group in 1969 was Mike Carr. Carr was from St. Paul and still a
schoolboy, but was fascinated by strategy wargames when he met Arneson. In 1966
he had seen the movie “The Blue Max”, about fighter pilots during World War I,
and it had piqued his interest in that era of warfare. The first historical
wargame that he played was Avalon Hill’s “U-Boat”. Carr had also begun putting
together a boardgame to simulate the aerial combat so dramatically depicted in
The Blue Max, which he called “Fight in the Sky”.
In Arneson’s Banana Republic game
Carr was given the role of Chief of the Airforce in the small South American
dictatorship in which the game was set. The lofty position meant he had under
his command a single helicopter.
After his own version of Banana
Republic Arneson ran another game, with the anglicised title “Brownstone”. This
time the setting was a Wild Western Town during the gold rush, with players
representing, the railway barons, the disaffected sheriff, the native Indians
and many others. Carr himself was given the role of a retired gunslinger who
had found the good book and started a small church in the town of Brownstone.
Carr enjoyed both Braunstein games run by Arneson, and marvelled at the
student’s remarkable ability to add colour and drama in the way he used his
imagination to referee the games.
Carr also played World War II
simulations run by Arneson. For these they used a set of rules called “Modern
War in Miniature” by Michael F. Korns. This book was published in 1966. It
proposed rules for running World War II era battles. It was interesting because
it proposed the use of a referee, in the same mould as recommended by Totten,
but also included rules for single soldier combat. In these rules players each
controlled a single combatant, and gave instructions to the referee as to what
that combatant was doing from one moment to the next.
What impressed Carr the most
about Arneson was his capacity to deal with intimidating volumes of
information. This was nowhere more evident than in the Napoleonic campaign that
Arneson ran, and in which Carr got to play an active role. Over twenty players
took part in the campaign. Each controlled a major political interest in Europe
during the time of Napoleon. Each player was charged with the full gamut of
diplomacy and political grand strategy for their faction. All play resolved
through the referee Arneson who received messages from each player and effected
their orders on maps and detailed notes that he kept. When the interactions
invariably resulted in military engagements, on land or at sea, they were run
as wargames on Arneson’s table at home, using a variety of rules systems, some
borrowed, and some invented. It was a massive and daunting undertaking.
Arneson’s intellectual abilities and vast knowledge of Napoleonic history were
the only things that made it possible.
Carr was the leader of the
Barbary Pirates and also took a role as a commander of a portion of the French
navy. He loved the game, which went on for years, and marvelled at the
referee’s ability to keep control of the participants, their own commands and
their interpretations of the historical events that underpinned the military
engagements of the age.
During the 1960’s David Wesely
had wandered untrod paths in a dark metaphorical forest, and come to a
undiscovered clearing. He had enjoyed its strange beauty for a while but found
it unsettling, and walked back to the parts of the wood he knew better. Wesely
was called up to active military duty in 1970, and began a long and successful
career as a military man, eventually attaining the rank of Major. But when he
left the strange part of the wood, he had left Dave Arneson there. Arneson had
stayed, fascinated by its beauty and its potential to birth something new. In
the years to come Wesely would occasionally return and check in on his friend.
On several occasions in the early 1970’s Wesely would play in games run by
Arneson, but the undiscovered part of the woods had become Dave’s kingdom and
the game they played would be something new.
In Dave Arneson there had emerged
a creative spark which gave him the dual talents of acting and story telling.
But he was soon to meet and ignite a firebrand.
