The Proteus Paradox Read Free

abstraction, the Prussians developed
Kriegsspiel
to be a realistic war simulation. Miniature figures represented infantry and cavalry armies; square terrain tiles, laid out on the table, created a grid-based map; and dice determined individual combat outcomes. Rules governed how far each unit could move each turn, how much damage each unit could inflict, and how terrain modified movement and combat. A neutral umpire would assess and resolve the players’ actions. In the 1880s, the United States imported
Kriegspiel,
again for military training purposes. Miniature wargames first became commercially available in 1913, when the writer H. G. Wells simplified the rules, added a mechanical cannon, and sold the toy soldier package as
Little Wars
. 1
    In addition to simulating contemporary warfare, miniature wargaming branched into other time periods, such as the medieval era. In 1968, Gary Gygax developed a medieval wargaming ruleset for his local gaming group. He extended an existing ruleset and added such features as jousting and one-on-one duels. As he later said in an interview,
    Not long after that, as the members began to get tired of medieval games, and I wasn’t, I decided to add fantasy elements to the mix, such as a dragon that had a fire-breath weapon, a “hero” that was worth four normal warriors, a wizard who could cast fireballs (the range and hit diameter of a large catapult) and lightning bolts (the range and hit area of a cannon), and so forth. I converted a plastic stegosaurus into a pretty fair dragon, as there were no models of them around in those days.
    This new game, published and sold in 1972 as
Chainmail,
was novel for two reasons. First, it shifted the focus from army squadrons to individuals. Players no longer controlled an army; they controlled one character, a heroic figure. And second, the game retained combat realism but moved away from modeling physical reality and historical warfare. Dragons were now fair game. 2
    Of course, these fantasy elements were popular with Gygax’s wargaming group in the late 1960s largely because of J. R. R. Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
trilogy, published in Britain between 1954 and 1955 and in the United States in 1966. Fantasy creatures had existed in literature long before Tolkien, but
The Lord of the Rings
wasn’t simply a story with fantasy creatures; it was an epic fantasy with unique races, centuries of fascinating history, and a varied set of political factions vying for power. Tolkien didn’t merely write about characters; he created a parallel world. In a sense, Gygax’s
Chainmail
was an initial answer to the hypothetical question: What if you wanted to be aheroic character in Middle Earth rather than just reading about Legolas, Gimli, or Aragorn in a book?
    Shortly after
Chainmail,
Gygax began working with game designer Dave Arneson to develop a more elaborate and self-contained ruleset because
Chainmail,
though popular among wargaming enthusiasts, assumed extensive prior knowledge of wargaming conventions. This new ruleset shifted the focus of battle location from outdoor terrain to monster-infested dungeons. The resulting stand-alone game, published in 1974, was
Dungeons and Dragons
. It created a new gaming genre: role-playing games. The popularity of Tolkien’s epic fantasy left a clear mark on this new game genre. As Gygax put it, “Just about all the players were huge JRRT [Tolkien] fans, and so they insisted that I put as much Tolkien-influence material into the game as possible. Anyone reading this that recalls the original D&D game will know that there were Balrogs, Ents, and Hobbits in it.” At the same time, he has stated that Tolkien was only one of many sources of inspiration. Thus,
Dungeons and Dragons
clearly borrowed Hobbits and Ents from Tolkien, but the game also welcomed Medusa and vampires from Greek mythology and medieval lore. 3
    In role-playing games, players first create their characters based