In
their continuing documentary research work (Posted Here), the Secrets of Blackmoor filmakers have found yet another tantalizing
clue to Blackmoor history, a character sheet or matrix, if you prefer, for the
royal family of Spain, prepared for one of Arneson's iterations of his Napoleonic
campaign. In this instance, Spain was under the control of
Dan Nicholson, and the artifact was found among his papers.
You
might well wonder why a royal family in a Napoleonics game has a character
sheet. It is obviously not necessary for
even soldiers to have character sheets in a wargame, let alone the heads of
state, but the gaming going on in Arneson's Twin Cities group wasn't wargaming
of the usual sort. They were developing
characters, and developing ways for those characters to be modeled by game
statistics.
The
idea of assigning characteristic and
related statistics to leadership figures wasn't novel. One could argue even chess does that. Perhaps a better example from the 1960's is
that of well known British wargamer Tony Bath, who developed a system for his
Hyborian campaign and made mention of the idea in wargaming publications of the
era.
The details
of Bath's system weren't published until 2 years after the date of the Spanish
Royals sheet, but more significantly, they also functioned in a very different
way. Using a deck of cards. Bath
randomly generated different characteristics for different characters, and
these he would use in a descriptive fashion to decide how an event might turn
out. For example a character who is the
possible suitor of a widowed queen might be described as ugly and jealous among
other things, causing his marriage proposal to be rejected. The whole scheme functioned as a descriptive aid for Bath to decide how his
characters would behave.
The Spanish Royals
in Arneson's scheme are delineated very differently. There is a fixed set of 5 characteristics
each adult character shares (Looks, Brains, Sex, Guts, Health) and a sixth, catch-all Miscellaneous category. Each of
these characteristics is defined by a numerical value generated by a 2d6 roll. That last bit can be determined mathematically. The 42 entries sum to 289, giving an average
of 6.88 - consistent as expected with the average of a 2d6 roll (7).
Let's take note of
this: Arneson has created actual game mechanics applied to personality traits
for gaming purposes. We are used to that for D&D games, but
for a Napoleonic campaign in 1971 that's something different indeed.
Some
observations:
·
I
noted before, HERE when discussing Pete Gaylord's sheet, how the arrangement seems to separate in
to three categories - "ability scores", "skills", and
"weapons skills. Ability scores
meaning, not actual abilities, but personal characteristics of the sort usual
referred to as ability scores in D&D - Intelligence, Wisdom etc. The Spanish Royals share most of the
"abilities" found on Pete Gaylord and Dave Megarry's character
sheets.
·
Moreover,
the scores for these characters are generated exactly the same way, with the
well familiar 2d6 roll.
·
The
second (learned skills) and third (weapons) categories aren't present at
all. There's no horsemanship,
leadership, or woodcraft, etc., nor are
their sword and battleaxe, etc. categories.
·
Order
- If we compare the Spanish Royals trait list with that written on the Wizard Gaylord's
sheet, the order of the characteristics given to the Spanish Royals is very
close to that of Gaylord's character. The
first two characteristics are brains and looks, as on Gaylord's sheet, though
the order is reversed, "credibilty
" and "strength" are missing but then we have sex, health and
"guts" in exactly the same order.
-
If
we compare the Spanish Royals trait list to Dave Megarry's character lists, (Here) we
see the traits are organized entirely differently. There is no correlation to the order the way
there is with Gaylord's.
·
I'd
also note that "courage" on Gaylord and Megarry's sheet appears to be
a terminology upgrade over "guts" on the Spanish Royals sheet.
These points
further support the idea that Pete Gaylords Sheet pre-dates Dave Megarry's.
However.
we also see the "Miscellaneous" category again. Miscellaneous, as we noted before, was
clearly a later addition to Megarry's character sheet and not found on Gaylord's
at all. I presume a likely
explanation is that Arneson at first thought that with all the additional
categories found on Megarry and Gaylord's character sheets there was no longer a
need for a miscellaneous category, but later decided otherwise.
DATING
On page 4 of The Corner of the Table newsleter, Vol III
no. 5, we are told about several upcoming events. Included is this,
"On Saturday
May 22, 1971 at 1300 hrs (1 PM) there will be a meeting of the Napoleonic War
simulation commanders ALL of whom have been sent invitations for this
meeting. Interested parties are asked
not to attend, unless they have been invited, due to space limitations. Please bring your cards so that we can check
off your attendance when you pick up your Campaign Suppliment put out by C.O.T.T.
On Saturday May
22, 1971 a Brown Stein-type game set in the Middle ages will be hold at Dave
Arneson's home after the Napoleonic Campaign meeting is completed. All those attending the Napoleonic meeting
are invited to stay for this game."
On the top right
hand corner of the Spanish Royals sheet is written: "received May 22,
1971".
We can confidently conclude then, that Dan
Nicholson received his Spanish Royals character sheet at that May 22nd meeting
- the very same day Arneson ran what appears to be his second medieval Braunstein. The previous issue of C.O.T.T. had announced
plans for a Medieval Braunstein on April 17 involving a poker game under the
troll bridge. These medieval Braunsteins were, of course, nascent
manifestation of the game we have come to know as Blackmoor.
Given that
Arneson's first known medieval Braunstein occurred a month earlier in April of
'71 (shown above, Vol III no. 4), we are faced with the question of whether Arneson first developed similar
character sheets for his medieval games, and then transferred the idea to the
Napoleonic campaign, or vice versa. As
it stands, the current evidence points to the Napoleonics campaign as the
birthplace of the concept. In either case, this character sheet lies at the root of the D&D character ancestry. The 2d6 fixed trait scores of Spansih Royals sheet is clearly directly related, and almost certainly directly ancestral to the Blackmoor PC 2d6 fixed "personality" scores which are themselves the direct ancestors of the D&D 3d6 fixed ability scores.
In the long run,
what may prove most important about the Spanish Royals sheet is that it is
indicative of both growth and continuity in character focused game play within Dave Arneson's circle of gamers. The
fantasy content was novel in Blackmoor, but the style of character based play
in Blackmoor, and even D&D were not new.
Dave Arneson had said several times that "the Role Playing" came
first and a number of the original players had expressed identical
sentiments, such as when Greg Svenson discussed the transition between
Blackmoor and D&D, "I thought it was one and the same thing with what
we had already been doing for several years. So, I didn’t really see much of a
difference." (source)
