◆ SpookStack

RPGnet: The Inside Scoop on Gaming Page 4 of 8 deal of work do do in a relatively short time, to start playing an electronic game is to kiss that responsibility goodbye. | really do fovegames of this sort, and if | begin, | won't stop playing until | have exhausted the potential of the offering. | have no games at all on my computer, even Solitaire has been trashed from memory. All that would just have to go by the boards if a game such as | described above were available. That would be just too much to resist. In fact, the very thought is what keeps me working so hard now- get the creative stuff out, and then | can "retire" and play games instead of designing and developing them. "| converted a plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no models of them around in those days.” RPGNet: Let's chat a bit about that little fantasy RPG you were involved with. Dungeons & Dragonsis said to have evolved from a set of medieval miniature rules called Chainmail.What, exacily, was Chainmail?Was it a commercial project that enjoyed a fair print run, or was ita hobby project that evolved around a local audience? Gary: Back in around 1968, Jeff Perren became a member of the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association. He brought his 1:20 (ohe figure on the table equals 20 men) medieval military miniatures rules to us, rules he had written mainly for use with his Hauser Elastolin 40 mm figurines. As | happened to be a fan of the period and the figures, what a boon that was! It didn't hurt that I really liked Jeff's rules too. With his permission, | expanded his two pages to a longer treatment, and those were published around 1969 in the IFWs monthly magazine as the "LGTSA Medieval Military Miniatures Rules." That was just the beginning of things, of course. Because | was, and am stili, a great medieval history and gaming buff, | added more to the original base. First | did a little “Jousting” rules set, next added a "Man-for-Man" section to the work, that being a new rules treatment for when one figure on the table represented one man in combat, not 20. The LGTSA then played a lot of such games on the weekend-long game sessions held in my basement where the big sand table stood. Not long after that, as the members began to get tired of medieval games, and | wasn't, | decided to add fantasy elements to the mix, such as a dragon that had a fire-breath weapon, a “hero” that was worth four normal warriors, a wizard who could cast fireballs (the range and hit diameter of a large catapult) and lightning bolts (the range and hit area of a cannon), and so forth. | converted a plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no madels of them around in those days. A 70 mm Elastolin Viking figure, with doll's hair glued to its head, and a club made from a kitchen match and auto body putty, and painted in shades of blue for skin color made a fearsome giant figure. | haunted the dime stores looking for potential additions and eventually found figures to represent ogres, elementais, etc. The players fovedthe new game, and soon we had twenty or more players showing up for every session. Guidon Games hired me as its Editor-in-Chief for a new game rules and games line it was about to publish. | put all of the rules mentioned above together into a single book, named it Chainmail,and it was published by Guidon in 1971. As far as | know, Chainmailwas the best- selling product that Guidon had. Guidon went out of business in 1974, and at that time TSR acquired the rights ta Chainmail. TSR published it for several years, from around 1974 through 1978 or so. "When my youngest daughter, Cindy, added her FBI(19-cv-1495)-2280