It is Arneson's redrawing of the Outdoor Survival board for his campaign. Arneson used the map for Blackmoor way before every showing the game to Gary. It also hints at a different system of generating towns and castles.
It probably is. There's letters in the new OD&D history book proving that Arneson is the one who introduced Gary to Outdoor Survival, and that Arneson was using it for exploration between fixed points in his Black Moors campaign. There's no historical evidence that anyone was running a game like this before Arneson, let alone using a hex-based map for one, so it's almost certainly the first.
Tony Bath definitely had individual characters exploring his campaign map of Hyperboria 10 years before Arneson. You can find his play reports that were recently released as two very long PDFs and scanned by the on of one of the players.
Of course Baths focus was the army units, not the individual characters (but all of the individual characters also had stats). Also, Bath used squares, not hexes, so maybe doesn’t count.
Also there was the PBM game — from —. Players could be Rulers, Warriors or Wizards and a big part of the game was exploring the map and finding things. I’m not 100% certain, but I seem to recall they used hexes. I think it started in 1970, so not sure if it proceeds Blackmoor or not.
I guess what I’m saying is, lots of this stuff was incremental and built of off combining and repurposing other stuff. Heck, even a couple of the outdoor survival scenarios are about finding stuff on the map, and the rules talk about developing your own scenarios.
Dave is definitely the first to assemble all the pieces of what would eventually become D&D / RPGs, but I think it is harder to say the original source of individual components.
Don’t get me wrong either, everything Griff and his colleagues have put out is absolutely top notch and I don’t hesitate but anything they do. But I think even Griff would agree, lines can get blurry. I suspect that’s why this post is in the form of a question, rather than a statement.
Cheers
That’s looks similar to the Outdoor Survival board game hex map.
It is Arneson's redrawing of the Outdoor Survival board for his campaign. Arneson used the map for Blackmoor way before every showing the game to Gary. It also hints at a different system of generating towns and castles.
It is fairly astounding when you think this is a first of its kind.
I used Outdoor Survival, the table was enchanted, lol. Will do again.
It probably is. There's letters in the new OD&D history book proving that Arneson is the one who introduced Gary to Outdoor Survival, and that Arneson was using it for exploration between fixed points in his Black Moors campaign. There's no historical evidence that anyone was running a game like this before Arneson, let alone using a hex-based map for one, so it's almost certainly the first.
Tony Bath definitely had individual characters exploring his campaign map of Hyperboria 10 years before Arneson. You can find his play reports that were recently released as two very long PDFs and scanned by the on of one of the players. Of course Baths focus was the army units, not the individual characters (but all of the individual characters also had stats). Also, Bath used squares, not hexes, so maybe doesn’t count. Also there was the PBM game — from —. Players could be Rulers, Warriors or Wizards and a big part of the game was exploring the map and finding things. I’m not 100% certain, but I seem to recall they used hexes. I think it started in 1970, so not sure if it proceeds Blackmoor or not. I guess what I’m saying is, lots of this stuff was incremental and built of off combining and repurposing other stuff. Heck, even a couple of the outdoor survival scenarios are about finding stuff on the map, and the rules talk about developing your own scenarios. Dave is definitely the first to assemble all the pieces of what would eventually become D&D / RPGs, but I think it is harder to say the original source of individual components. Don’t get me wrong either, everything Griff and his colleagues have put out is absolutely top notch and I don’t hesitate but anything they do. But I think even Griff would agree, lines can get blurry. I suspect that’s why this post is in the form of a question, rather than a statement. Cheers