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)
7 comments:
There is a strong argument that OD&D characteristics are divided into two types - the three class abilities and three secondary abilities that describe the innate "other" characteristics of the figure. After all the only things these first three abilities affected was the ability to advance your figure faster. Capabilities were all focused on level.
[A lot of the early LBB text was still heavily focused on the idea that these were really figures (for example even rating them as Chainmail figures rather than making the cognitive jump that considered them characters in their own right rather than "things" manipulated by the player).]
You can see the transition in the thinking though - the "figures" were already "characters" in the author's minds, but it was being written up as a set of rules for describing the actions of the figures themselves.
[Another reason was that the "character" domain was considered to be the "player" rather than the figure being manipulated. It was the player that faced the challenges presented by the gamemaster, not the character. Which is why the OD&D character interaction was very stunted.]
YMMV of course.
Hmmm. I can agree with some of what you say to some extent, but I'm seeing an awful lot of assumption and guesswork in your argument too. I would not agree that there is a "strong" argument that there was an intentional or meaningful difference between the prime requisites and the remaining ability scores. I don't see any evidence for that in any historical material - it was simply a function of the number of classes. Sure a prime requisite has some bearing on how fast one levels, but they otherwise function just the same as the other scores when used for such things a saving throws or other in play applications.
As for "figures" and "players" being abstractions from immersive play - I would agree that Gygax wrote the 3lbb's in a fashion that seems abstract at times, but when you look at the historical records or have any converse with original Blackmoor or Greyhawk players, it is abundantly clear that they were very often quite deeply immersed in character during play. I can tell you, for example, that to this day, Dave Megarry still mourns the loss of his Scholaress character. In the twin cities, this kind of immersion begins even before they developed their Blackmoor characters, such as the in character correspondence in the earlier Napoleonics Campaigns.
As far as players, not characters being the focus of the DM's challenges - I fail to see how that has changed. The game is played by players making decisions for the characters.
It's also simply false to say "OD&D character interaction was very stunted". It was and is possible to play characters with very stunted interactions, no matter your ruleset, but it is not even remotely true to say that is how everyone played OD&D or EPT back in the day, or even that they were intended to.
What do you believe was the purpose behind the Sex stat? Fertility or something? I've never played a family member of one of my characters, but I know that this was a thing. My father-in-law's old character sheets had Wills attached. I've seen some with short family trees. I never got to talk to him about them, he passed away, but there was definitely some very advanced backstory going on.
When we were kids we found some strange Sex Table which determined how good you were in bed, we thought that it was hilarious and naughty, so it was fun but abandoned as we matured; but maybe that old table wasn't too far from the mark?
My sense is that it was a gauge of sex appeal, but would likely also be used as a gauge of virility in general. I'll see what I can find out.
I need to read this more closely, but do realize Tony Bath started publishing a lot information about his campaign in the 1960s. His book didn't come out until the early 1970's, but many zine articles were published before that.
I believe Arneson originated a lot of concepts, but I also think quite a few were an evolution of what Bath was doing.
I have a 1960 Wargames Digest article by Bath that talks about characterization. He wrote about it many times before he finally published his book.
The card methodology was from the late 1950's. By sometime in the 1960's one of his assistant umpires came up with a dice based method.
People who ran the characters were called controllers.
Bath was big on keeping track of age, sons & daughters, health (annual check for death), 'attractiveness' (marriages), and intelligence (commanding troops), loyalty, etc.
They actually could improve in certain areas by being involved in political and military actions or going to university.
He characterized all leaders of countries first, later regional leaders, finally individual commanders down to regimental commanders.
I really wish some of the folks such as yourself who know so much about the Blackmoor/D&D side would look into the Batch connection.
I started playing Avalon Hill in the late 1960s, then moved to military miniatures (ancients, couldn't afford Civil War or Napolionics) in the early 1970s, and finally D&D about 1973.
I knew of Bath. Some of the folks I was playing with knew Arneson. So it is possible they knew also. Not saying he was a main source like Totten, but could definitely be in the campaign sauce.
Thanks Akwaberb for the thoughtful comments. I agree that the post would benefit from some updating and perhaps a bit more on Bath. Bath and his articles were fairly well known among the more dedicated Twin Cities gamers and I totally agree that Arneson was influenced by Bath but I also think Arneson was expanding and applying the Characteristic concept in a novel way. It is definitely an interesting line to explore in any case.
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