Recently, one of the Grand Masters of the tabletop role playing games hobby took aim at those of us who have been promoting a second look at Gary Gygax’s Chainmail. In this case, it was Sandy Peterson, author of the highly regarded Call of Cthulhu RPG, and of late a professional engagement-bait shop on X.
This was in response to my – and a handful of other, smarter, gamers analyzing the many delightful intricacies of the old girl. My contribution largely consisted of performing a survey of blog posts about Chainmail, which culminated in the observation that all of the positive reviews of the game were posted by people that had actually played it. In contrast, all of the generally negative reviews came from people who had merely read it.
Bear in mind posting a review of a game having only read the is a lot like posting a review of a movie having only read the script. Without the visuals, the soundtrack, the performances, the cinematography, and the director’s touch, you’re only getting a small fraction of the experience. Your evaluation of the finished product should rightfully be regarded as highly suspect.
Fortunately for the negative Nancy’s out there, the negative reviews also share another distasteful aspect; the reviewers adopt a thoroughly undeserved attitude of intellectual superiority and invite the reader to adopt the same smug self-satisfaction. This shared delusion has hampered a better understanding of CHAINMAIL, and the roots of the hobby for decades. The people who think they know it all have no reason to innovate, and the result is a stagnant hobby in which no real advances have been made in a long, long time.
Luckily for the hobby, the Hashtag BROSR showed up to unite the clans and blend miniature wargamers, kreigspielers, LARPers, and TRRPG together in a way that reinvigorates the hobby by adding abandonware techniques to the usual narrative styles, but that’s not the point of this post.
The real point of this post is to note the complete lack of receipts shown by the nay-sayers. GrimTokens*, Sandy, and half the guys on X. The best they can do is strawman the game, and strawman the arguments in favor of playing the game.
It’s this, but for CHAINMAIL:
It says a lot about the hobby that it is dominated by these kinds of people. A lot, and nothing good.
* That’s an interesting thesis there, and worthy of more analysis. Maybe some other time.