It had the non-demi-god races required to play the Fellowship. There were only a handful of Half-Elves in all of Tolkien, even given a few more years to get out the Silmarillion, and no Half-Orc heroes.If you mean the elf, dwarf, and halfling, then yes. But not so much the half-elf or half-orc.
Wasn't the basic idea of Chainmail set up to be about armies and not so much individuals in the sense of a PC. For the "one-to-one" rules, is that the "man-to-man" section described before the supplement? It doesn't mention hero or super-hero, does it?Notice that it played up the struggles, and not the races. There's a reason why that book didn't allow you to play as an elf, halfling, etc. Instead, the one-to-one rules allowed for you to play as a wizard, hero, or super-hero. The wizards also were presented as being akin to artillery, which is far from how Gandalf acted during the mass combat scenes in Tolkien's work. So the name-drop doesn't have much follow-through, besides a few monsters.
In the fantasy section a hero is described as having the fighting ability of four figures, but also as being part of a unit. The super-heroes are described as being the same but about twice as powerful. Elves are allowed to use magical weapons (in addition to hero-types and certain magic users). The ability to use magic swords explicitly allows elves to combat fantastic figures, including having how well they do against Hero-types, Super Heroes, and Wizards listed in the table.
[As an aside going back to Tolkien as an influence in general, in Chainmail the Orcs are listed as being one of Orcs of the red eye, Orcs of Mordor, Orcs of the Mountains, Orcs of the White Hand, and Isengarders; the Dragon detailed is explicitly said to be typified by the one in the Hobbit, the Wraiths are parenthetically Nazgul, there are Ents and Balrogs. Other literary references include the The True Trolls being from Andersen's 3H&3L and that Elric is a Hero-type with Wizardry. The Law/Chaos goes to both of those.
You should check out the recent "Secrets of Blackmoor" documentary for a more in-depth analysis of what Arneson's game was really like. While Boggs' timeline is impeccable (I contribute to his Patreon), it's important to note other salient points of Arneson's game. For one thing, it was originally a Napoleonic fantasy game, set on Earth, before being ported over to Blackmoor. The players originally played themselves (though it's iffy if that was before or after the switch-over from Earth to Blackmoor), and it was several years before demihuman PCs were introduced (i.e. they were an afterthought).
The fantasy game started in early 1971 according to the timeline. If they began playing themselves (porting from a Napoleonic game) then it would be hard for them to have started as demi-humans. Some were by 1972. That's not several years after it became fantasy.
If we're playing Gamma World 1e and then shift over to AD&D 1e (using the adjustments in the DMG) and start playing using those rules "with the same characters", is it the same game in a game rules sense or the same campaign in a looser one?
Maybe because D&D was first and had the important races? We know it succeeded with those core races. There is, of course, no evidence it would have without them. It feels like the competition would have been harder if the other offerings had something popular D&D lacked. (Or were the reasons it was called out by Chainmail and by Arneson completely unrelated to popularity?)Again, they weren't there when Arneson started his Blackmoor game. But insofar as published works go, they were there from the beginning. So really, the whole "D&D would have failed if it hadn't had them" is a fairly pointless bit of speculation to begin with. That said, other games had those races and more (T&T) and were more accessible than D&D, and still didn't do as well.
I believe you'd lose that argument. Being present doesn't mean that they were notable or otherwise significant. As noted, they were a late addition to Arneson's game, and weren't options in Chainmail. D&D allowed them, but only in very limited ways (restricting their class options and available levels, which would last for several editions).
It feels like your statement on Arneson's game and Chainmail are both incomplete and/or misleading (as discussed above).
And, based on your earlier arguments (post #176) the level limits apparently aren't even that big of a restriction or limitation. And I'm betting that in many games they were commonly played in spite of the limitations (and would have been moreso without them). My first characters were a B/X Dwarf and Halfling. My longest lived early 1e character was an Elf. (That probably stacks up against 4 or 5 humans made in that time period).
As said above, capturing the LotR is explicitly called out in the Chainmail supplement and in the motivation for Blackmoor. Even more, Tolkienian names, if not idea, seem central to the Fantasy Supplement (with Elric & 3L3H a distant second). The three races are central enough that they appear in Chainmail (one of them inspite of not being useful in combat), Blackmoor, and Greyhawk, and the original published rules. And in 1e, and B/X, 2e, 3e, 4e PhB1, and 5e. That all feels like at least some evidence that they are pretty central to what the game aims to be as a default in the eyes of its makers.
The other side seems to consist of Gary not liking that Tolkien was such a big part of fantasy and some what-ifs.
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