Saturday 10 December 2022

Original Manuscript of "A History of Hyboria (Vol 1)" by Tony Bath

 

Over the years, I have developed an interest in the work of pioneering wargamer Tony Bath, and more specifically, his famous Hyboria campaign.

It was well-known that Rudi Geudens, who passed away last year, was the proud owner of part of the original Hyboria documents, as written up by Tony Bath himself. Rudi had long intended to make the manuscript fully available on his website, but for some reason, never came around scanning in all the pages.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I received a mail earlier today from Frederik Geudens, Rudi's son, asking whether I could help in distributing the scanned pages of "A History of Hyboria (Vol 1)", in honour of both Tony and Rudi, who have inspired so many wargamers over the years.

As far as I know, this is the first time this document in its original form is now again available for all wargamers to enjoy.

So, without much further ado, here's an important piece of wargaming history:

A History of Hyboria (Vol 1), by Tony Bath

19 comments:

  1. Great news, thanks for posting and thanks to the Geudens family

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  2. Thank you , I look forward to reading it.

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  3. Great read! Wasn't John Curry of the History of Wargaming going to publish some previously unseen Hyborian material?
    Neil

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    1. Could be, not sure. He has of course reprinted other texts by Tony Bath.

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    2. I emailed Mr. Curry last year about the missing Hyboria stuff (which might have started the ball rolling with the recent developments?) and a while later he had gotten ahold of a few items including the Guide to Hyboria and issues of the Shadizar Herald he was looking to upload. So I think that's most of the Hyboria material accounted for unless I'm blanking on something, except the player turns and character index cards but I'm not sure they were saved.

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  4. Should you ever get sick of owning the manuscript, I would be very happy to take it off your hands.

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    1. Sorry, ain't gonna happen. And you're not the first to ask. 😉

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  5. Wow - just wow - thanks to all involved for preserving and publishing this

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  6. Thanks for publishing the history, I’m hoping you’ll be able to post volume 2 at some time. I think Rudi also had some copies of the Shadizar Herald and I’d dearly love to be able to read one or two of those. I edited a version myself for a while and have always wondered what the original was like. Thank you all again.

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    1. Not to worry, I'm working on it 😉

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    2. Thank you, I’ve just been reading the second volume.

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  7. Where did you find the second volumn?

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    1. It was in the possession of Rudi Geudens as explained in the post, and made available by his son, Frederik.

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  8. Thank you for posting this and Part Two. A great addition to the history of Hyboria and the work of a true pioneer of wargaming.

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  9. So glad you got this up here!!! Been waiting decades to finally read it, much appreciated!

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