Game Historian: Gygax Swiped Fantasy Rules From a Forgotten 1970 Wargame (blogspot.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According to game historian Jon Peterson, Gary Gygax's Chainmail fantasy wargame (which became the basis for Dave Arneson's Blackmoor and later Dungeons & Dragons) borrowed heavily from an earlier set of rules published by Leonard Patt, a long-forgotten member of the New England Wargamers Association. Among the appropriations were rules for heroes and wizards including the iconic fireball spell, which ended up in everything from Magic: the Gathering to World of Warcraft, as well as monster rules for dragons, orcs, ents, and other Tolkien creations. Gygax had something of a reputation for borrowing things without giving proper credit, and this latest revelation shows how the open and collaborative environment of early gaming was quickly exploited for commercial purposes.

Comments

And that guy

[Anonymous Coward]

... And that guy stole it from something else, which got it from some other dude, who took it from the Bible, which stole it from the pagans, who got it from Ancient Aliens.

We get it

[JackieBrown]

Gygax had something of a reputation for borrowing things without giving proper credit, and this latest revelation shows how the open and collaborative environment of early gaming was quickly exploited for commercial purposes.

We get it. Commercial is bad. Everything should be non-profit. We should all make the same wage. We should all have the same stuff.

Re:And...

[mujadaddy]

Headline is pure bait: the blog poster makes no generalization such as "swiping", as wargaming rules were in constant flux, even from session to session.

Doesn't matter anyway

[Forgefather]

This is ridiculous. You can't patent game mechanics and you can't get copyright on something as general as 'Fireball'. This is how the sharing of ideas was intended to work not some illicit theft of ideas.