Chainmail is a medieval miniature wargame created by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Gygax developed the core medieval system of the game by expanding on rules authored by his fellow Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) member Jeff Perren, a hobby-shop owner with whom he had become friendly. Guidon Games released the first edition of Chainmail in 1971.

Early history

Origins

In 1967, Henry Bodenstedt created the medieval wargame Siege of Bodenburg, which was designed for use with 40mm miniatures. Gary Gygax first encountered Siege of Bodenburg at Gen Con I (1968), and played the game during that convention. The rules for Siege of Bodenburg had been published in Strategy & Tactics magazine, and Jeff Perren developed his own medieval rules based on those and shared them with Gary Gygax. Gygax edited and expanded these rules, which were published as "Geneva Medieval Miniatures", in Panzerfaust magazine (April 1970), using 1:20 figure scale.

1st edition

Gary Gygax met Don Lowry at Gen Con III (1970), and Gygax later signed with Lowry when he founded Guidon Games to produce a series of rules called "Wargaming with Miniatures".

Along with the previous medieval rules, Chainmail included a 14-page "fantasy supplement" including figures such as heroes, super heroes, and wizards. The fantasy supplement also referenced the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Poul Anderson, and Michael Moorcock. The fantasy supplement encouraged players to refight fixed battles based on fantasy fiction by J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other writers.

The Chainmail cover art of a fighting crusader was inspired by a Jack Coggins illustration from his book The Fighting Man: An Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Fighting Forces.

2nd edition

Guidon Games published Chainmail second edition in 1972.

3rd edition

TSR eventually bought the rights to some of the back catalog of Guidon Games. Starting in 1975, they published Chainmail as their own product. It went through eight different printings from 1975 to 1985.

Rule systems

thumb|Chainmail session at [[Gary Con II]]

thumb|Chainmail session at [[Gary Con IV]]

thumb|Moathouse detail and miniatures

Mass combat

A set of mass-combat rules, heavily indebted to the medieval systems of Tony Bath and intended for a 1:20 figure scale. These developed from the Lake Geneva medieval system originally published in Panzerfaust and in Domesday Book #5. In these rules, each figure represents twenty men.

Man-to-man combat

A set of man-to-man combat rules (for 1:1 figure scale), ultimately deriving from a contribution to Domesday Book #7. Gygax lost the name of the contributor, and thus the rules were published anonymously. The core of these rules became the Appendix B chart mapping various weapon types to armor levels, and providing the needed to-hit rolls for a melee round. The man-to-man melee uses two six-sided dice (2d6) to determine whether a kill is made.

Jousting

A set of jousting rules, which derive from the Castle & Crusade Society jousting rules published in Domesday Book #6, and reprinted in Domesday Book #13. These rules were originally designed for postal play; members of the C&CS could participate in jousting tourneys in order to raise their standing in the Society. Dungeons & Dragons refers to jousting matches utilizing the Chainmail rules.

Fantasy supplement

The core of these rules is the Appendix E chart showing the die rolls needed for various fantastic types to defeat one another in battle.

The first edition Chainmail fantasy supplement added such concepts as elementals, magic swords, and several spells including "Fireball" and "Lightning Bolt".

In 1976, Swords & Spells was added as a rules supplement for Dungeons & Dragons, to provide fantasy mass combat rules for the game at 1:10 and 1:1 scale. In the foreword, Tim Kask describes Swords & Spells as the "grandson" of Chainmail. In the introduction to the game, Gary Gygax wrote that the Chainmail fantasy supplement assumed man-to-man combat, and rules for "large-scale" fantasy battles were missing, so Swords & Spells was developed to cover 1:10 and 1:1 ratio fantasy battles:

In 2001, Wizards of the Coast reused the Chainmail name for the Chainmail Miniatures Game, a skirmish game specifically tied to D&D, set in a previously unexplored location in the World of Greyhawk called the Sundered Empire.

References

  • Chainmail: Rules for Medieval Miniatures (product page)
  • The Acaeum: Chainmail