Chainmail

Chainmail is a medieval miniature wargame written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, best remembered as the immediate progenitor of Dungeons & Dragons through its “Fantasy Supplement”.² Ostensibly a straightforward set of rules for staging battles with miniature figures, the booklet attached a supplement of fantasy rules whose influence on the development of role-playing games proved out of all proportion to its size.²

The rules first appeared in rough form in an article titled “Geneva Medieval Miniatures,” published in the April 1970 issue of Panzerfaust.² An edited version of this draft appeared three months later in Domesday Book issue #5 in July 1970, and the same version was published in the Spartan International Monthly of August 1970, having been bumped from the July issue for lack of space.²

Publication history

The first two stand-alone editions were published by Guidon Games with a yellow-orange cover.² The first edition of 1971 ran to 62 total pages (47 numbered), was stapled, and listed no company address.² Contrary to later rumour, the fifteen-page Fantasy Supplement was present in this first printing, though it contained only six spells, a number expanded to twenty in later prints; the additional pages of the first edition relative to later versions were almost entirely a consequence of the larger font size and formatting.²

The second edition of 1972 was reset in a smaller, easier-to-read font, reducing it to 48 total pages (35 numbered), and incorporated rule changes first published in the Domesday newsletter #13.² Its two printings carried the Guidon Games addresses of Evansville, Indiana, and Belfast, Maine, respectively; the two printings could also be distinguished by their cover stock, the first being a heavier, parchment-like stock and the second comparatively flimsy.²

Soon after, Gygax and Don Kaye formed Tactical Studies Rules, and subsequent printings fell under that imprint.² The third edition, published first by Tactical Studies Rules and later by TSR, ran to 44 pages and bore a light-silver cover with the GK (Gygax/Kaye) logo and a price of $5.00.² Its printings span the First through at least a Seventh of April 1979, the bindings shifting from staples to black-plastic spiral and the cover logo changing from the GK mark to the Lizard logo; the imprint statement on the cover correspondingly changed from “Tactical Studies Rules” to “TSR Rules”.² The third printing of June 1976 was the first to carry the Lizard logo, and with the fifth printing of January 1978 the references to Hobbits and Ents were changed to Halflings and Treants and a product code (6002) was added to the lower left of the cover.²

The Fantasy Supplement and Dungeons & Dragons

Whether the Fantasy Supplement formed the basis of Dungeons & Dragons became a matter of disagreement between that game’s co-creators, Dave Arneson and Gygax.² Arneson claimed in Heroic Worlds that Chainmail’s influence on the original D&D rules lay only in the Combat Matrix — the giving of “hard statistics” to characters and monsters — and that the game otherwise bore little resemblance to D&D, with “not a hit point, character class, level, or armor class” anywhere.² He held instead that a series of naval combat scenarios, “The Braunsteins,” were the critical foundation of his Blackmoor campaign and, later, of D&D.²

Gygax disagreed.² In Best of Dragon Volume 1 he recalled that after the fantasy rules appeared in Chainmail, Arneson began using them for his campaign and reported a number of actions to the Castle & Crusade Society through articles.² Gygax found this usage interesting, and after Arneson visited and the two played a game of his amended Chainmail fantasy campaign, Gygax received some eighteen handwritten pages of rules and notes; he immediately began a brand-new manuscript, producing roughly 100 typewritten pages within about three weeks, and concluded that “Dungeons & Dragons had been born”.² Gygax went on to say that Arneson was given co-authorship of D&D only for his “valuable idea kernels,” and that D&D bore little resemblance to the Blackmoor campaign.²

A contrary reading is offered by the observation that the 1971 edition already contained “fireball,” “lightning bolt,” “conjure elemental,” “phantasmal force,” and the core monsters, along with an armour sequence that exactly matches the one in D&D.² The dispute is believed to have stemmed from a 1979 lawsuit Arneson brought against TSR demanding royalties from the AD&D line of products; listed as co-author of the original D&D rules, Arneson held that he was owed a portion of the proceeds from works derived from it, and it was therefore not advantageous for him to credit inspiration to Chainmail, a product authored by Gygax.² The outcome of the lawsuit was never made public, though by report Arneson received a lump sum in exchange for ceasing legal action.² Regardless of the degree to which Chainmail guided Arneson, the influence of the booklet on the eventual development of D&D is held to be undeniable.²

Later revival

The Chainmail name was revived by Wizards of the Coast in 2001 as the Chainmail Miniatures Game, a fantasy skirmish game set in the Sundered Empire and tied to the d20 system.³ Its starter set was authored by Rob Heinsoo, Chris Pramas, and Jonathan Tweet and released as a boxed set carrying the stock number 883390000.³