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Thanks to Jason Compton for suggestions.
Anyone who knows the history of Dungeons & Dragons knows it was born out of Chainmail. While elements of Chainmail live on in D&D to the present day, the miniature rules are quite different.
This reviewer owns a copy of the 7th printing of the 3rd edition of Chainmail. This is the printing that was available for sale in .pdf format from www.svgames.com when I bought it (yes, I paid for my copy, file-sharers!), though it looks like an earlier printing may be available there now. The differences between editions and printings of Chainmail is enticing reading to the gaming history buff, but will not be dealt with here. Instead, that information can be found at http://www.acaeum.com.
Chainmail is broken into four sections -- rules for medieval miniatures, man-to-man combat, fantasy supplement, and tables. The introduction for the rules offers an extremely brief history of wargames that jumps to a few paragraphs on simulating terrain for wargaming, then jumps into a short synopsis of how this particular game is played. The meandering nature of the text here anticipates the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (itself infamous for its random structure).
The rules section covers turn sequence, terrain effects upon movement, terrain selection, movement (in inches), formation and facing, fatigue, missile fire, gunpowder weapons, melees, melee options for added realism, morale, historical characteristics, weather, and sieges. The text is heavy reading but not insurmountable to someone without wargaming experience. The rules are at their best when broken down into numbered instruction and at their worst when dealing with cannons (I still don’t understand why one should construct a “firing dowel” out of a cardboard tube instead of just using a ruler).
In terms of relevance to D&D, the movement system was transported whole into D&D (including the measuring in inches for miniatures). The combat system here is vastly different. For missile fire, one simply rolls one six-sided die and compares it to a chart to determine number of kills per round (arguably, a more realistic treatment of missile fire than received in D&D). For melees, the chance of killing a “man” (which, since this is a wargame, really means a unit of varying size) ranges from one in six to three in six, with other factors being number and quality of attackers and defenders. Quality (my word) is expressed by six ranks, from light foot to heavy horse. Peasants, levies, mercenaries, and assorted cultural groups have some special rules, but otherwise conform to this rule of six. Despite how muddled this may sound condensed into a single paragraph, the combat mechanics are elegantly simple -- in that way again anticipating D&D.
The man-to-man combat section is a meager two pages and incomplete without the tables in the back section, yet presents the strongest features of the whole book. The man-to-man melee table is the prototype of D&D’s “to hit” system, where better armor can be “hit” by a higher die roll. The table of suggested tournament point values anticipates D&D’s Experience Point system. Best of all are the rules on jousting. Curiously missing from all future versions of D&D, the jousting rules presented here go far beyond rolling “to hit” and require strategy as opponents try to guess each other’s aiming point and position in the saddle.
The big draw to the old Chainmail rules for the history buff, of course, is the fantasy supplement. This section bears the closest resemblance to the D&D rules to come. There are just over eight pages of monsters and other fantastic beings drawn from folklore, J.R.R. Tolkein, Poul Anderson (specifically cited for his trolls), and...well, no one is really sure where the wizards came from. They seem to exist to be useful to wargame scenarios as opposed to resembling any wizards of folklore or literature. Indeed, none of the Jack Vance-inspired mechanics of spell-casting found in D&D can be found here. Although not refered to yet as Alignment, the monsters are divided into law, neutral, and chaos, reflecting the law vs. chaos theme prevalent in the works of Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock. Perhaps most important in the fantasy supplement, however, is the hero (and superhero). Although just a man, the hero has the “fighting ability of four figures” -- anticipating both the level and hit point system of D&D.
After finally acquiring the Chainmail rules last year, I studied them with the intention of running the game. I extracted the rules that I anticipated being relevant to a first-time scenario and rewrote them to make sure I understood them. I luckily had a small collection of miniatures already. Rather than invest in terrain features, I followed the -- quite useful and inexpensive -- suggestion from pg. 10 and drew terrain on index cards to cover the tabletop. I informed my gaming group that we were trying the Chainmail rules. Our gaming group is composed of experienced role-players with little wargaming experience between us.
I showed everyone the abbreviated rules I had written out and let everyone build a small army by buying units at the cost of their tournament values. Movement phases went smoothly. Combat started out all right, but we quickly ran into a serious problem with the rules for morale. Because our armies were relatively small, it was too easy for a unit to suffer enough casualties in a turn to warrant a roll on the morale charts. The other players had invested in "cheap" units that suffered from low morale (levies, mercenaries) and were losing men faster from failed morale checks than from losses in battle. Our group's best tactician, because of a string of bad rolls, was losing his army of mercenaries to desertion even though they were winning every fight! As role-players, we were all used to having complete control over the action of our Player Characters and could not adjust to such a heavy-handed morale system controlling the outcome.
Although my players refuse to give Chainmail another try now, I remain convinced that our next effort would have gone better if we had toned down or abandoned the morale system. The majority of the rules work. They may not be as polished as most wargaming rules currently in print, but anyone looking to wargame like they did in the "good old days" would be advised to try Chainmail. In this context, I give Chainmail 3 out of 5 stars.
Of course, from a strictly role-playing standpoint, Chainmail has little use to the modern consumer. I highly recommend its jousting system and cannot imagine how it has languished in obscurity for so long. True, it would need modification to fit D&D or any system where combatants may be at different levels (such modifications were done long ago in DRAGON #17). The other mechanics have long ago had all their freshness squeezed out of them by D&D. In this context, I would reluctantly give Chainmail 1 out of 5 stars.
However, Chainmail has historical significance to the gaming history buffs. Read for insights into how Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson gamed before D&D, Chainmail is suddenly useful again. As a study aid in how various D&D game mechanics came about, Chainmail becomes indispensable. In this context, I would be hard-pressed to rate Chainmail as anything less than a 5!
