09-02-2012, 07:51 PM
Havard Wrote:Great having you here Jon!
I am reading your book with great interest. Would you consider making more information from the interviews you made available? Some things that may not have been deemed relevant for the book could be of great interest for us Blackmoor enthusiasts.
Its interesting to hear your theories on where Arneson may have gotten the experience idea from. Of course the idea of "levelling up" would have become somewhat different once you introduce the Braunstein type character rather than the NapSim General would it not?
I agree that 1071 probably isn't a typo. And I would not be surprised if the DA1 author may have had copies of the CoT to fill out the details for the modules.
Anyway, looking forward to hearing more from you!
-Havard
I didn't make recordings of interviews, as really I only used them for background - actually, virtually all of my interview questions related to ways I could identify or find more primary sources. I'm sure I could remember some colorful anecdotes, but there are plenty of people who could recall them better than me (Major Wesely comes to mind).
There is a whole section of my book which covers the concept of progression (experience) - section 3.2.3.1. Of course, progression has been with us ever since a chess pawn could become a queen by reaching the eight rank. There were a variety of morale systems for miniature wargames, common in the late 1950s, that allowed successful troops to gain advantages in later combats. These kinds of systems were prevalent enough that we don't need any special explanation for how they ended up in the NapSim game.
The Braunstein games were one-shots, so they didn't have progression as such. You didn't play the same character twice. The fact that Blackmoor became a campaign, a series of continuous games with persistent characters, naturally encouraged various forms of progression. Chainmail had various different strata of fighters, and famously five hierarchical ranks of wizards, but no specified way to move between the ranks. It seems pretty straightforward, again, that the experience mechanisms that had been in play in NapSim would migrate over to Blackmoor.