The Twin Cities had an incredibly large number of gamers, even back in the 60's and 70's. I am sitting here looking at a poster made by Kevin McColl that lists fifty names of people involved with Blackmoor. I personally know more people from back then that are not on that list. The MMSA proved to be a magnet for gamers and ended up being the largest group at that time. The group that I started with was in the Minnetonka School system through high school. They included myself, my brother Mike, Fred Funk, Greg Svenson, the Belfry brothers, and a couple other kids who went on to other things after graduation. We played a lot of board games (Avalon Hill mostly, but also Parker Bros, Milton Bradley, and really just about any game we could find). A local game shop called La Belle Alliance was a big draw for those of us in the western suburbs. We found Korns rules there, along with some of the miniatures game rules like Fletcher Pratt and some of the tank battle rules. When we discovered the MMSA they were playing a Napoleonic campaign with rules adapted from an United States army officer that were meant to teach army officers. The gamers were enthusiastic about running the countries and fighting the battles. It did not take long for them to start adopting the personalities of the rulers and the generals involved. The Braunstein games were a natural extension of this, just on an even more personal level. We were very primed for this when Arneson came up with Blackmoor. These were not the only campaigns that we ran. Off the top of my head, I remember: WW II, WW I naval, North Africa WW II, John Snider's Space Campaign, American Revolution naval, American Revolution, Civil War (army miniatures and naval miniatures), and others I do not remember right now. In addition, we played several monster games that covered ping pong size tables and would take days or weeks to play. These included Drang Each Osten, La Bataille de la Moscowa, and Terrible Swift Sword. All this is just in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.
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