Castle Blackmoor Wrote:“... Refereeing a game of "Battle in the Skies" at Gary Con - based on some reference material and rules by Dave Arneson from 1973 we discovered along the way. These are a more complex, earlier version of the aerial combat rules published in "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures".
...” - Secrets of Blackmoor

Quote:BATTLE IN THE SKIES - RELATIVE MOVEMENT
7/22/2019 2 Comments

Picture
(Image ​Courtesy the Dave Arneson Collection)
When Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax worked on the drafts for Dungeons and Dragons in 1973, they were exchanging sections of the rules for commentary and play testing.

There is plenty of evidence that this was how they collaborated.

During this time Arneson created an aerial combat system for D&D. In its original form it is a self contained game which he called Battle in the Skies, or B.I.T.S. Much of this game was redacted from the published version of D&D.

B.I.T.S. is heavily derived from Mike Carr's game Fight in the Skies, yet it also contains one truly novel idea. Within the explanation for movement are 3 options. Arneson's "Mode III" appears to be a novelty.

Instead of having everyone make their moves, either in sequence, or as written simultaneous moves, Arneson implements a system that models the distance moved by a unit as a relative property between the distance moved by all moving units. Thus a unit moving one square will not complete their one move until a unit moving 9 squares has already moved 4 squares, and then both units will move into their next square.

Here is the chart from Arneson's relative movement system:
Picture
(Image from the Movie Secrets of Blackmoor
​Courtesy the Dave Arneson Collection)
In B.I.T.S., units can move up to 18 inches. Arneson has chosen to divide each turn into 2 parts, with each unit moving half their movement per half turn. He then applies a chart that indicates who can move during each of 9 phases of the half turn.

It has taken me about a year of looking at this chart to truly understand it. As is typical for Arneson, his ideas are True Genius, but his writing is unclear.

Using the chart is simple, yet he designed it in a way that runs counter to how most people would understand it. The number headings for each line are a unit's speed. The numbers after the words "Move phase" are the movement phases in which that the unit is allowed to move.

Thus a unit moving a speed of 3 can move in phases: 2, 5, and 8.

In my game experience this kind of Relative Movement System does not appear in a published game until Star Fleet Battles (Stephan V. Cole, Task Force Games, 1979) is published, and then it is also used in the game Car Wars (Chad Irby and Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson Games, 1980).

My question to readers is whether this is an Arneson creation, or if there was a game published before 1973 that used this kind of movement system?

gsvenson Wrote:The movement rules sound to me like the Trireme game we used to play sometimes. I don't recall when it was introduced, but I recall playing it in 1973 with Bob Meyer and the Sniders and several other players. It was fun. You could even ram friendly ships with the written orders and multiple commanders on each team.