Help Me Grok Chainmail

[chronoplasm]

OK, so I recently got a copy of the Chainmail rules in pdf along with the OD&D booklets.
I appreciate the fact that the games are rules-lite, but I don't really understand the rules that are there.
Chainmail seems to jump straight from the Foreword right into terrain rules with no basic overview that I can find.
How do I figure out what I'm supposed to do? I have a feeling that I'm supposed to kill people, and these charts and matrices really make me want to kill people, but I can't seem to figure out how I'm supposed to do that.
Also, the whole idea that AC needs to be as low as possible is very counter-intuitive to me.

Can somebody help me with this?

 

[RFisher]

Despite the fact that the oD&D rules tell you to use Chainmail for combat... Dave Arneson has said that he abandoned Chainmail for the Blackmoor campaign early on, and Gary Gygax said that he always used the alternate combat system instead of Chainmail when playing D&D.

Among those people who have actually used Chainmail with D&D, there are many interpretations of how to do it. Dragonsfoot, the Knights & Knaves Alehouse, or the oD&D forums might be better places to inquire about how some people have done it.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Well...

Chainmail is a miniatures wargame. It includes three different systems of combat: standard (i.e. mass combat), man-to-man, and fantasy. All are slightly different. OD&D refers you to Chainmail, but doesn't really explain how you're supposed to use it. OD&D also present the "Alternate" combat to-hit system, but even if you choose to use the Alternate system, you'll find that it lacks some information (e.g. the order of the combat turn), and Chainmail can be used to fill in those gaps.

Your first choice is whether to use the Alternate system or the Chainmail system for rolling "to hit." The Alternate system is the familiar "roll a d20" system, and models increasing skill by lowering the target number. Chainmail uses 6-sided dice, and typically models increasing skill by increasing the number of 6-siders (an exception is the fantasy table).

If using Chainmail to determine "to hit," you'll use the "Fighting Capability" that is listed in the OD&D books. For example, if you're a Level 2 Fighting Man, your Fighting Capability is "2 Men + 1," which means you'll roll 2d6, adding +1 to one of those dice. The dice are considered individually against the Chainmail table (either the standard or man-to-man table, in this case). In Chainmail, a hit is a kill, but in OD&D, a hit means 1d6 hit points of damage to the enemy.

Whether you use Chainmail or the alternate system for determining "to hit," it is still useful to reference Chainmail for the rest of the combat rules (e.g. moving, order of combat, initiative and melee first strike, morale, etc).

Personally, I use the alternate system along with a combat sequence derived from Chainmail and Swords & Spells. You can find a description of the full combat sequence, here. There is also a simplified version of the sequence on my site. The full sequence is nice if you're using minis and want some detail, and the simpler version is good for streamlined or mini-less play. I started off using the full sequence, but now that I've absorbed it, I find myself running combat more like the simple sequence, which judgments and rulings informed by the details from the full sequence. (You might also want to take a look at the multiple attacks musing on my site.)

 

[Mark]

While most miniatures games actually begin with setting up the board, laying out the terrain, they don't always put those rules right in the front of the book.