Wargaming

Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming including Setting Up a Wargames Campaign

This book is amazing

Fuck Dungeons & Dragons and fuck roleplaying games, true tabletop gamers play wargames.  This book contains all the material that's also in the original Dungeons & Dragons LBB, and then some, but written by someone who could actually write a coherent system. The book is divided into three parts, the first section is a straight set of rules for war games set in the ancient era, the second section is the meat of the book and describes the creation of wargame campaigns, and the last section gives a sample setting called Hyboria and discusses fantasy wargaming. In effect, everything that was covered in original D&D is also here, just much more fleshed out, coherent, complete, and sensibly written.

The byline for 0e D&D was also "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures".  Did Gary Gygax read Tony Bath's Ancient Wargaming, and if he did, did he assume that his audience was familiar with the material and so didn't belabor it in his own book?  I think the further that D&D strays from its wargaming roots, the less real appeal it has.

The real bonus in this book for me is the section on creating and traversing a hex map, which is explained in much better terms than in either OD&D or AD&D, and hexcrawling isn't even mentioned in later editions.

Donald Featherstone's Solo Wargaming

Wargaming also lends itself more easily to solo play, and to faciliate that I've also picked up another book.  This one is more focused on playing single battles solo, so is more focused on mechanics. Maybe when I dive into it more fully, I can incorporate more ideas for my own solo play.

A breakdown of Mystara between versions

An interesting comment I found on this Dragonsfoot thread:

I think there are some distinct phases. The world was effectively rewritten four times, and each time marked a change in theme, tone, scope, cosmology, and even geography.

1981 to 1983 -- the Continent. Gods and demons are explicitly mentioned, and religion tends to be dark with a Mythos slant. Modules have elements borrowed from Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. The known world is not yet an official setting, only a sample wilderness. Mapping was exclusively 24-mile and 6-mile B&W. The Moldvay-era world did not have any planes, but did have dimensions, including dimensions of Ice, Nightmare, Arik's prison dimension, and the Dimensional Vortex.

The tone was grim and sorcerous with no humor. The lands were wide open and fairly empty. Many modules featured lovecraftian tentacled nightmare things (B4, X1, X2, X5) or demons and cults (B1, B2, X1, X4, B5) and gods (Expert rules, B1, B4, B5, X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, O1). We have a Sauron-style villain that threatens the known world, and a secret mind-control cult.

Scope: This era included the "Map of the Continent" from X1 plus Sind, Slagovich, Hule, and the Moon. In X4, Sind is included as a part of Darokin rather than a separate kingdom. It is implied that Karameikos is part of Thyatis. Module X1 provides a paragraph on each nation and suggests a RW analogue for some, but does not say how close the parallel is. Module X5 says that the Black Mountains betwen Sind and Hule are part of the "known lands", which implies that the known world of Moldvay includes the Great Waste and Hule.

Canon: B/X, B1-5, X1-5, MSOLO1-2, O1, AC1

1983 to 1987 -- the D&D Game World. Mentzer publicly announced (in early 1984?) that the sample wilderness from X1 is being adopted as an official D&D Game World, and said that the Jurassic world map from the Master Set had already been completed in 1983. He places existing modules to fit into this map. At this time Mentzer begins de-emphasizing gods and replacing religions with philosophy, but this is not yet official and not binding on module writers. However, most writers begin adopting the Mentzerian model. The setting has no official name; X10 refers to The Continent from the Expert Set and also refers to it as "the entire civilized world." Maps continued to be 24-mile and 6-mile (see X6, CM1, X9, X11, etc). While the setting was official, it was only detailed in the core rulebooks and in modules, so canon was limited and sporadic. Demons were renamed Fiends in the Immortals rules. Mentzer adds the concept of planes alongside dimensions. Immortals are explicitly not gods and not to be worshipped, and this is reinforced in module IM2.

The tone seems a little lighter, but still not overtly humorous. Lovecraftian elements disappear. It strikes me as a mix of lighthearted "saturday morning cartoon" feel (esp the black eagle and bargle), and more serious work. We start seeing very high production values like X8 and B10. We still have world threatening mega-villains in X10 and X11. A lot of history and interesting places are established in this era.

Scope and Changes: Adds the Serpent Peninsula, Savage Coast, Norwold, Wendar and Denagoth, the Isle of Dawn, and Blackmoor, as well as the world map in the Master Set and the planes and Immortals. Module X10 expands a bit on each nation and expands on the RW parallels with cultural details and NPCs.

Canon: BECMI, B6-10, X6-12, XS1-2, XL1, CM1-8, M1-4, IM1-2, AC2-9, DA1-4, O2

1987 to 1990 -- the Gazetteer Era. To me this is distinct from the Mentzer era in that the world received a top-to-bottom rewrite in exhaustive detail, and hexmaps were changed to the familiar 8-mile color maps. There were four major changes. First, the new trail maps did not always agree with the older B&W maps. Second, while the nations had a very loose correlation with RW cultures before, they were still generic fantasy realms. The Gazetteers explicitly connected most nations to a RW culture and rewrote them in great detail as a virtual clone of that culture. Third, nations need religions, and the Gazetteers used the immortals for this, so that the immortals started to be treated as gods. There were fewer modules; gazetteers were the main published product. Fourth, the world was much more civilized and populated; cities in Karameikos have a population ten times higher than the Known World versions. Toward the end it starts being referred to as the Known World; Dungeon #26 from 1990 refers to the world as the "known world of the Expert Set and the Gazetteers."

In terms of Tone, we see a clear swing into overt humor (GAZ3, GAZ4, GAZ10, AC11). Previously the setting had a mix of lighthearted and serious tone; the gazetteers firmly established a light tone for the entire setting. Villains were not evil, they just had conflicting cultures and goals. The one overtly villainous nation, the broken lands, was changed to a cartoon comedy land. Dark cults were banished to the distant past of Nithia. War has been abolished by the Darokin diplomats. Instead of murder hobos, you go on a Disneyland safari in Ierendi where nobody gets hurt. While nations are modeled on historic cultures, they are flltered through an enlightened modern lens of tolerance and democratic values. Even the dwarves and elves don't fight, they just play pranks on each other. There are no world-threatening evils, and the events fo X10 are retconned into the distant future.

Scope and Changes: Adds Serraine, Undersea, Alphatia and the Sea of Dawn, planes. Rewrites and remaps the central areas, including detailed treatment of some areas never before done. Thyatis gains a corps of dragon riders, and Alphatia gets flying ships.

Canon: GAZ1-12, DOTE, B11-12, X13, CM9, M5, IM3, AC11 PC2, TM1-2

1990 to 1995 -- Mystara. This is the Allston and Heard era, defined by the Rules Cyclopedia, Wrath of the Immortals, and Almanacs. The world was officially named Mystara. in this era, immortals effectively became gods and were treated identically to gods. At this point, claiming that "mystara doesn't have gods" is reduced to a semantic technicality; they are not "gods" only because that's not their official title. The setting was given ongoing metaplot via the Almanacs, and immortals become very active in the setting. I start this era in 1990 with the publication of the Hollow World. This era saw more changes to established canon via the Hollow World, Champions of Mystara, etc. We start seeing peaceful utopian societies as settings designed for stories rather than adventures. Many new nations are nonhuman.

Scope and Changes: Adds the Shadow Elves and the Hollow World. The almanacs detail places in Skothar and Davania among others. The Heldannic Knights appear as pseudo-nazis. The great waste, serpent peninsula and the savage coast are rewritten almost from scratch, nearly obliterating all previous canon. Heavy metaplot includes gods dying and new gods forming, sweeping changes to politics (NACE, kingdom of karameikos) and even the landscape itself (Alphatia, Alfheim, Great Crater). Some old adventures and materials are rewritten such X2 and GAZ1.

Canon: GAZ13-14, RC, Hollow World, WOTI, Champions of Mystara, PC3-4, DDA1-3, HWA1-3, HRW1-3, HWQ1, KKOA, Red Steel, Almanacs

1995 to present -- Pandius. After Mystara was cancelled, fans took over and the Vaults of Pandius was established as a semi-official repository. This is really a continuation of the Mystara era, with extensive embellishment, alternate-realities, and proposed rewrites and retcons in order to reconcile the different eras that came before. Pandius really embraces and thoroughly studies all the material, not just the most recent, but as a whole the 1995 version is taken as the baseline canon. Everyone approaches it differently, but overall the fans take it much more seriously than TSR did, and Geoff Gander's lovecraftian "outer beings" pull the setting back towards its dark and grim origin.

Fanon: Everything in the Vaults of Pandius. The most widely accepted and polished products are the continuation of the Almanacs, the Fan Gazetteers (GazF), the Threshold magazines, and Thorf's maps, but these only scratch the surface.

There is some bleed-over between eras. Any modules that were in progress when Mentzer took over were building on the foundation Moldvay laid, so I would expect some stuff published in 1984 may fit better into the earlier era. I have not investigated this, its just a hunch. XS1 Lathans Gold for example mentions the temple of the spider goddess (I think).

As RogueAttorney mentioned, I tend to lump Moldvay and Mentzer together as "Known World," and Gazetteer/Mystara together as "Mystara." What is in my mind as the "known world" is actually closer to Moldvay's vision, but there was a lot of great stuff from the BECMI era too, so its mix and match. I really prefer the dark and lovecraftian version of the setting.