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Battle In the Skies - Relative Movement

7/22/2019

3 Comments

 
Picture

(Image ​Courtesy the Dave Arneson Collection)

When Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax worked on the drafts for Dungeons and Dragons in 1973, they were exchanging sections of the rules for commentary and play testing.

There is plenty of evidence that this was how they collaborated.

During this time Arneson created an aerial combat system for D&D. In its original form it is a self contained game which he called Battle in the Skies, or B.I.T.S. Much of this game was redacted from the published version of D&D.

B.I.T.S. is heavily derived from Mike Carr's game Fight in the Skies, yet it also contains one truly novel idea. Within the explanation for movement are 3 options. Arneson's "Mode III" appears to be a novelty.
 
Instead of having everyone make their moves, either in sequence, or as written simultaneous moves, Arneson implements a system that models the distance moved by a unit as a relative property between the distance moved by all moving units. Thus a unit moving one square will not complete their one move until a unit moving 9 squares has already moved 4 squares, and then both units will move into their next square.

Here is the chart from Arneson's relative movement system:

Picture

(Image from the Movie Secrets of Blackmoor
​Courtesy the Dave Arneson Collection)

In B.I.T.S., units can move up to 18 inches. Arneson has chosen to divide each turn into 2 parts, with each unit moving half their movement per half turn. He then applies a chart that indicates who can move during each of 9 phases of the half turn.

It has taken me about a year of looking at this chart to truly understand it. As is typical for Arneson, his ideas are True Genius, but his writing is unclear.

Using the chart is simple, yet he designed it in a way that runs counter to how most people would understand it. The number headings for each line are a unit's speed. The numbers after the words "Move phase" are the movement phases in which that the unit is allowed to move.

Thus a unit moving a speed of 3 can move in phases: 2, 5, and 8.

In my game experience this kind of Relative Movement System does not appear in a published game until Star Fleet Battles (Stephan V. Cole, Task Force Games, 1979) is published, and then it is also used in the game Car Wars (Chad Irby and Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson Games, 1980).

My question to readers is whether this is an Arneson creation, or if there was a game published before 1973 that used this kind of movement system?

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3 Comments
Phil Dutré
7/24/2019 04:54:18 am

Subdividing a turn in various phases, and have units move/fire/... in each of these phases (or not), is an idea that was around in the 60s in miniature wargaming. E.g. in Don Featherstone's "Advanced Wargaming", such a system is described, in which the turn is divided in 4 phases, and different types of units can do different things in each of the phases. However, it still subdivides movement mostly uniformly over the different phases. E.g. a unit that moves 4" will move 1" in each phase (barring other constraints such as having fired etc), not 4" in one phase and none in the others.
It's not exactly the same as the system you describe here, but I would say subdividing a turn in various phases or impulses or whatever is something that people are already were aware of.

Reply
griff
7/24/2019 10:59:59 am

This is the kind of response II love to see.

Thanks for the info. I;m so busy editing that checking out references can be a real distraction unless tightly related to the movie narrative.

Someone else has also mentioned Trireme.

I will be curious to look up featherstone as well as Trireme.

Reply
Starbeard
8/12/2019 11:14:53 am

I can't think of any explicit "impulse charts" that were printed for games by '73, but I'm not well played enough for that to mean anything. Unfortunately (and weirdly), BoardGameGeek doesn't have "Impulse Movement" as a mechanics tag, otherwise it'd be fairly straightforward to search there for a list of games that use it.

Star Fleet Battles, which I think may have coined the term "impulse," was based on/inspired by Jutland (1967)—but I can't find a review that specifically states whether movement in Jutland used impulse phases.

Otherwise, I'd look specifically at air combat games, of which there were plenty put out 1940–73, mostly of WW1 dogfighting. I just did a quick perusal through BGG with about half a dozen game listings there, but so far couldn't find any that specifically mention an Impulse movement option in the printed rules.

And of course, there's the quagmire of zines and newsletters.

It's also important to keep in mind that this system never saw the light of day as a published rule, so we can't credit Arneson's influence for its existence in SFB, for example. What it does show is that Arneson was clearly tapped into current trends in aviation wargaming, either coming up with similar ideas independently of others or else being well-versed and "in the know" about the vogue systems.

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