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TTRPG Roots in the Game Battleship
Before any daring cartographer mapped underground dungeons in pursuit of fantastic adventure, Chainmail described a system for subterrane...
Crucially, Scruby expected that opposing players would secretly record their mining efforts on paper and reveal the results to one another to determine the success of countermines, a clear antecedent to the system shown in Chainmail. "Following Chainmail’s advice to use paper and pencil for underground activity such as mining during campaign game sieges, taking a page out of the works of Howard and Burroughs et al, he brought the focus of fantasy miniatures play to the dungeon setting.” Although designed for waterline ship model play on a large table or even a cleared floor, the game assigns its referee to manage underwater activities through paper and pencil for one problematic class of vessel: submarines.
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