Arnesonian Games

[finarvyn]

This brings up an interesting point.
I tend to consider RPGs as a separate hobby from Board and Miniatures Games. To Arneson and the other early pioneers of the hobby it was of course much more natural to look at other types of games for rules.

You're spot on with this observation. When I started playing OD&D in '75 I'd been playing Chainmail for a couple of years already and OD&D was a natural step from miniatures to near-miniatures play. (We used dice and coins and pawns as minis in our D&D games rather than the real thing because all of the minis we owned were human soldiers. Actually, I still use dice for monsters so that I can let the number of pips showing represent the hit points remaining.)

And the rulebooks do call themselves "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniatures Figures" after all! 8)