Chainmail

History

A precursor to Dungeons & Dragons, Chainmail was first published by Guidon Games in 1971 as a medieval miniature wargame. Gary Gygax was one of the authors, along with Jeff Perren. Later, TSR bought the rights to the game and published a third edition. All told, there were at least 12 printings over 3 editions.

Rules

While the later Dungeons & Dragons had it's own rudimentary combat system, Chainmail provided a combat system for man-to-man combat for miniatures, along with a fantasy supplement. Many players preferred the Chainmail combat system over the system provided by D&D, and Chainmail is specifically referenced by the books. However, Gary and other early designers and players at TSR did not use it, so it should really be assumed to be optional rules.

At a high level, there are 4 rule sections in the book:

• Mass combat, where each miniature figure represents 20 men, and are divided into 6 types: light foot, heavy foot, armored foot, light horse, medium horse, and heavy horse. 6-sided dice are used. Additional rules exists for missile and artillery fire, movement and terrain, charging, fatigue, morale, and the taking of prisoners
• Man-to-man combat, where each miniature figure represents 1 man. Provides mapping of various weapons to armor levels, and provides to-hit rolls, 2d6 are used to determine a kill.
• Jousting, originally designed for play-by-post. D&D specifically references these for jousting
• Fantasy Supplement, where some of the D&D-style monsters and combat rules first appear. These include: elementals, magic swords, Fireball spell, Lightning Bolt spell, saving throws to resist spells, and alignment with  Law vs. Chaos.

In 1976, the D&D supplement Swords & Spells was released, and was described as the "grandson" of Chainmail.

Printings

Full details are available at The Acaeum. 

• First Edition: Yellow-Orange cover, 62 pages, no address for Guidon Games - worth $1,900-$7,700
• Second Edition: Yellow-Orange cover, 48 pages, address for Guidon Games - worth $350-$1600
• Third Edition (TSR): Grey cover, TSR logo - worth $40-$175

Reprints & Retroclones

You can download a pdf and/or buy an official reprint at: DriveThruRPG.

• The Old Lords of Wonder and Ruin: a faithful, clean layout retroclone of the core Chainmail rules and fantasy supplement, specifically structured to be played alongside OD&D.
• Book of War: a widely respected tactical wargame heavily inspired by and derived from Chainmail to run mass battles in old-school D&D campaigns.
• Aketon: A minimalist system found on itch.io focusing closely on man-to-man combat and 2d6-style spellcasting faithful to the blended Chainmail and OD&D era.

My Memories

I have no specific memories about Chainmail as a pre-teen or teen. I'm not convinced that my brother's friend had a copy, and we were likely just playing from the three core OD&D books.

My Copy

I purchased Chainmail along with my White Box OD&D set, which also included the Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes supplements from an eBay seller on May 21, 2023, for $893. It's a 3rd Edition, 8th Print (with the TSR wizard logo), from November 1979. It's in decent shape, nothing exceptional.