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The Origins of ‘Rule Zero’
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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 8175829" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>Not by the fall. I could point to massive chunks of active SF fandom who were playing it who'd never touched a wargame, let alone a miniatures game in their life playing it by then. It was a very well developed subset of fandom. There was some overlap of course, but I'll go as far as to say in some areas wargame players were the <em>minority</em> of D&D players even by then.</p><p></p><p>At the time the three original books dropped, and I'd guess for the first six months you were probably right, but the heavy spread of the game was not through wargamers, even if they were the first ones to see it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think there's issues of scale, however; when you have people doing whole extra subsystems and character classes, I'd be willing to bet that's beyond the degree of houseruling most wargamers were doing (though I can only speak of the hex-and-chit end of it, not the miniatures end of it).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>But the real buildup of the system, the place where most people were encountering it was not at the beginning of that. I also should note that there was already a great degree of third party support for the game by then, so that the upward pressure was reduced; people who found OD&D insufficient could be buying Arduin or a million more obscure add-ons, because the hobby was still small enough for that to propagate around a bit during that period.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 8175829, member: 7026617"] Not by the fall. I could point to massive chunks of active SF fandom who were playing it who'd never touched a wargame, let alone a miniatures game in their life playing it by then. It was a very well developed subset of fandom. There was some overlap of course, but I'll go as far as to say in some areas wargame players were the [I]minority[/I] of D&D players even by then. At the time the three original books dropped, and I'd guess for the first six months you were probably right, but the heavy spread of the game was not through wargamers, even if they were the first ones to see it. I think there's issues of scale, however; when you have people doing whole extra subsystems and character classes, I'd be willing to bet that's beyond the degree of houseruling most wargamers were doing (though I can only speak of the hex-and-chit end of it, not the miniatures end of it). But the real buildup of the system, the place where most people were encountering it was not at the beginning of that. I also should note that there was already a great degree of third party support for the game by then, so that the upward pressure was reduced; people who found OD&D insufficient could be buying Arduin or a million more obscure add-ons, because the hobby was still small enough for that to propagate around a bit during that period. [/QUOTE]
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