Learning How to Read
My misunderstandings of one Tony Bath
I am making this post because I have made a grave mistake in my interpretations of a great man. I have misrepresented his works, and the reasons for why I did it are interesting. I hope this post can help others not make the same misunderstandings I have.
This is sort of a long rant. I am not sorry. I need to get it off my chest.
As I have stated a few times in my last posts, I am attempting to recreate the genesis of the D&D hobby. Dave and Gary were playing different factions in a Medieval Diplomacy game, that turned (with the help of chainmail, strategos, braunsteins, late night horror movie binges, etc etc etc) into the primordial D&D.
D&D was the reach of Dave and Gary towards each other, to find a middle ground, so that their games could be congealed into one meaningful product. Dave and Gary were always playing different games from each other, they were always at odds with how to arrange the pieces. But the curious case is this, we have evidence in the First Fantasy Campaign, and even modern comments from the likes of Rob Kuntz, that these separate people with separate games played wargames together.
These different games with different rules could fight a war.
This concept is fascinating to me.
This is why I launched my currently ongoing Cosmic Campaign to attempt to get this ball rolling. See here! (Please email me to join!)
I recently shared this information with one Alexander Macris, of ACKS fame, trying to see what he thought of such an idea and if these things happen in the ACKS community. What happened was mostly predictable from one angle, and very unexpected from another.
Firstly, he correctly pointed out that having each game faction have their own economic systems is going to make war impossible to scale fairly and reasonably for all sides. This obviously makes sense. If one game is using OD&D and another is using ACKS, and one player can field an army twice the size of the other for half the cost, then there is clear room for issues to arise.
The issue of economic systems is the lack of one. In ACKS we have rules for droughts, or ransacking peasantry, or resupplying in certain places and times, and how much food it takes and how many wagons and etc. Other rules don’t have any of this. So they would need to be added on or hand-waved, and this creates a very poor environment to wargame through. If one side wishes to raise more troops from the peasantry, they can just do it? or not do it? And the other side has rules that damage their economy? The ‘war’ effort would be outside any scope of balance. The ACKS player would have tons of factors in an interconnected world,and the OD&D player would just be doing whatever they want. Obviously not favorable to war.
Where him and I landed on an agreement though, is that if factions are kept to smaller scales, like chainmail and OD&D dictate, a heavily romanticized ideal of medieval warfare with heroes and small forces and limited economic factors, than the games all being different will probably be fine. As there isn’t a ‘greater world’ to need to worry about the economic or demographic implications of. If your barony only has 2000 people, then conscripting or not conscripting peasants doesn’t have an effect on anything outside your little bubble, very different game.
This directly comes back to the idea that OD&D is built on, that every DM’s game is a pocket of light, surrounded by ethereal wilderness, and on the other side could be anything. This scope practically begs to be separated from strict simulationism, as each game and barony is practically isolated for any and all reasonable purposes.
I am very curious to see, as this campaign progresses, and in the future as I attempt to link more disparate games together for various events and reasons, how well different games systems, all built on the bones and chainmail and OD&D, can play together at this ‘barony’ level of scale.
I want the duke, his 120 men, and sir gary to be the army that wins the day. Not fielding 30,000 men from a fully realized country. These are two completely different things, and partially reflect the opposing nature of the Kriegsspiel and free Kriegsspiel debates that have raged since day 1. But it is important to remember that the term ‘wargame’ inherently borrows the notion of historical accuracy and at least some servitude towards reality. This is not Warhammer, that is in reality a boardgame at this point.
This is the point where I think I borderline insulted Mr. Macris. I began to explain that using Tony Bath’s book as a reference would be a better starting point than something like ACKS, as it is too heavy handed for what I am trying to accomplish.
He began to flood me with numerous quotes from Tony’s book, explaining to me the excruciating details that Tony figured out. He was giving me mathematical examples of things that he had calculated to see how accurate Tony’s numbers were, and found them to be exceedingly accurate. He was ranting to me about how much more in depth Tony’s campaign was than ACKS could do.
To quote Alexander Macris himself: “People who thinks ACKS is more complicated or detailed than Tony Bath are wrong about both ACKS and Tony Bath. ACKS was designed with Tony Bath in hand and it is the outcome of my desire to have a game that could go from D&D to Tony Bath, which Chainmail DIDNT do, precisely because it IS designed for that barony-personal-scale that attracts you.”
This greatly confused me. I have read Tony’s book cover to cover multiple times. I actually have a second print on demand copy because the glue in my first one is giving out.
I pushed back on this, saying that I have read the book many times, and that Tony will give an idea or concept, and then NOT supply a procedure for it, therefore I say, he must be hand-waving the implementation and complexity… ?
Needless to say this is completely incorrect.
Tony Bath went into extensive, complex, and practically speaking, still unparalleled detail in his Hyborea Campaign.
So why did I miss this? I can read. I know many other people who can read. I know dozens of BroSr adjacent folks that claim to have read his book just as I have. Why do we all seemingly think Tony was making it up when the book clearly states he was detailing down the last penny and loaf of bread.
I blame myself, for letting another author and progenitor of this current space indirectly cloud my thinking. I allowed other people to tell me what the book said, and then when I read it, I allowed those people to inform what I read. This is very unfortunate. I am very disappointing in myself.
I mean no wrath against these fine gentlemen, but they are responsible for the image of Tony I painted in my head before reading his book, and I was not literate enough to read the page without this foreknowledge coloring my reading.
Mr Henry Hyde, and his monsterous tome ‘Wargame Campaigns”
Mr Wargaming and his very specific flavor of solo wargaming on his youtube channel
I do not mention these people to throw shade, I mean to explain that I let what they said influence my thought process, and then I didn’t take it upon myself to be a good reader and read the actual text of Tony’s book, I allowed these previous notions to steer my brain over the words.
Henry Hydes book is a massive tome. It is 500 pages, and it has chapters for almost every type of concept you need to run a wargame campaign. It references Tony Bath’s book extensively. But what Mr Hyde does not do, is make it obvious that Tony went into extreme simulationist detail.
What Mr Hyde does do, is mention Tony’s book, take a chart or number out of context, and hand-wave the details around those numbers.
Mr Wargaming has a fantastic channel, and is the gateway to many people looking to add the wargame back into their D&D. He is how I found chainmail and dove headfirst into it. I daresay I am unfortunately becoming somewhat of an experienced expert in it, as seemingly most people won’t even attempt to play or read it. But what Jon does, for his entertainment as well as ours, is NOT spend hours on charts and logistics. He cleverly finds the proper scale of resolution that gets things done in a ‘reasonable’ amount of time. He does not go anywhere near the detail of ‘counting broken weapons for a force of 4,500 men after a battle to replenish from their baggage train that they stocked from a specific town that has a specific type of armory that has access to specific materials in specific times of the year… ‘ etc. His videos have been instrumental in driving the Bros and their peers to add the wargame, rightfully, back into the game.
But he doesn’t do it like Tony did. As a matter of fact, he does it on almost the opposite of the free/full kriegsspiel spectrum than Tony did.
These two men are not wrong. They are giving their experience and flavor of wargaming. But they are fundamentally opposing the detail oriented simulation nature of Tony Bath’s work.
I am in the wrong for having poor literacy to let the gateways of wargaming for me, influence my reading of a great man’s book because it was different than what I had experienced.
So in before you fall into the same trap, please read with an open mind. Read the page before you. Read the words. Use your own brain.
And if you are with the old me, that thinks Tony Bath was free kriegsspieling his way through his game, please reread his amazing and timeless book with the understanding it deserves. This man not only started the hobby we know, he did it at a level beyond what most of us are capable of, and only ACKS has even come close.
Again, COME JOIN MY WARGAME, EMAIL ME YOUR DETAILS WE WILL GET YOU IN. CLICK HERE
Learning involves making errors and then learning you made them.
Gonna start a charity in your honor: “Captain Hook’s Center For Kids Who Don't Read Good”