The Evolution of RPGs: Little Wars
Ever since toy soldiers have been widely available, a common way of playing with them is to line them up and fire toy projectiles at them. In 1913, science fiction novelist H. G. Wells published Little Wars, a codified set of rules for a wargame based on this toy-soldier-projectile concept. Wells' rules were highly anachronistic in terms of simulation, and were chiefly concerned with keeping the game light and easy for its presumed target audience of young children. Though Little Wars was not the first set of rules for a toy-soldier-projectile wargame, it was the seed from which decades of similar wargames emerged. This lineage of wargames bears significance to the later design culture of RPGs in only one key respect: the wide use of "folk" and DIY rules. The wargamers of this niche did not really play any one consistent or standardized "game" (except, perhaps, in tournament contexts). Rather, they developed a shared pool of common practices and rule-sets from which they would construct new games on an ad-hoc basis. Especially through the 1950's and 60's, it would not have been terribly unusual for a given wargamer club to locally design a completely unique game for every new scenario they wished to play. Wargamers meeting new opponents from outside their local circle might need to do some negotiation to settle on a balanced design before playing. Occasionally, popular clusters of rules would see publication in the enthusiast zines (the typical pre-internet method for communication between isolated gaming groups), and it's through those that we can trace their evolution back to Little Wars – but it's better to understand them as a continuous, collective trend, rather than as a succession of discrete titles.
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