Hyboria: article by Tony Bath (1974)

Thanks to Zhu Bajiee (Realm of Zhu blog), we acquired a scan from an article written by Tony Bath about his legendary Hyboria campaign. The article appeared in the magazine "Games and Puzzles", No.23 of March/April 1974. Realm of Zhu has discussed Hyboria before, but you can also find a lot of information regarding Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign on our pages dedicated to this early instance of imaginations and wargaming.

Click here for the full scan of the article.

The possible influence, or at least the similarity, of the ideas developed by Bath and original Dungeons&Dragons as published in 1974 has been well researched, most notably by Jon Peterson in his book "Playing at the World".

This specific article is interesting, since it was published in March/April 1974 (Original D&D was published in January 1974). That means this article was written *before* Tony bath could have known about D&D, and so it gives us some insights into the mindset of how "roleplaying" was already part of the wargaming community.

The article references many of the things that are familiar to fans of Bathian wargaming: the campaign chronicle, the personalization,  tracking everything on a large map ...

I will delve deeper into some aspects in later posts, but are some quotes I found enlightening:

The participants in the world of Hyboria, however, are enabled to project themselves far deeper into their roles, and the game goes on and on, each session leading automatically to the next, and affecting what happens in that next session. Because more time is involved, much more personality and reality can be introduced.

Players are of course required to act within the limits of their Hyborian characters. If they are given the character of an upright honest man they are not allowed to play dirty tricks or behave treacherously; should they attempt to do so they would be heavily penalized. Chance can always take a hand in their affairs, and from time to time I introduce a new element, just to complicate things, such as an embezzling treasurer, or an earthquake or a civil revolt I try to be as unbiased as possible in this - or, as one player puts it, hostile to everyone!

As a relatively new player in Hyboria, I have been particularly concerned with two aspects of the game system, 'The umpire as God' and 'the player in character'. In Hyboria, everything is controlled by Tony, who makes rules so that he can take consistent decisions and we players can _plan on the basis of past history. This very flexible system can open up entirely new facets of the campaign with very little difficulty. It does have its drawbacks, since no one can be absolutely impartial. As Warlord of the Varnar Confederation, I have to remember that God is an Aquilonian!

This doesn't sound like roleplaying, it IS roleplaying!

So, perhaps Tony Bath is the true inventor of the roleplaying game after all! :-)

Original Manuscript of "A History of Hyboria (Vol 2)" by Tony Bath

Thanks to Frederik Geudens (see also this earlier post), here's volume 2 of the original "History of Hyboria", the original wargaming campaign run by Tony Bath.

A History of Hyboria, Volume 2.

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

Missing Hyboria articles

The last two missing Hyboria articles (Military Modeling, Dec 1978 and Jan 1979) can be found here:

https://onesidedminiaturewargamingdiscourse.blogspot.com/2020/07/hyboria-articles-that-appeared-in.html

The series is now complete!

Hyboria (13)

With the help of Mike Garrett (see his wargaming blog here, although it could use an update :-)), I received scans from Tony Bath's Hyboria articles, published in Military Modelling February and March 1979. That leaves only the December 1978 and January 1979 articles missing.

You can find the other parts in the series (10 parts in Battle for Wargamers Jan-Oct 1978; 1 article from Military Modeling November 1978,  1 article published in a very early White Dwarf)  on the Hyboria page.

Hyboria (12)

Thanks to Wim VdB (see his blog here), I received a scan of the next installment in Tony Bath's Hyboria series that was published in Military Modelling magazine, November 1978. You can find it on the Hyboria page of this blog.

So, how to run an Hyboria-styled campaign?

My recent entries on Tony Bath's Hyboria have started me thinking about running something similar. Mind you, this does not mean there will be an Hyboria-style campaign. Especially with my current workload at the university, it's not something for the immediate future, but it's always nice to think about future projects.

Back in 2000 I participated in a campaign called Hyperborea, run by long-time wargaming friend Alan Huyton. The whole thing was run in the philosophy of matrix-gaming, with players submitting orders on anything each campaign turn. I was living in the USA at the time, so I never participated in any of the miniatures battles that resulted, but maybe other participants did, I'm not sure.
Our internet records in 2000 were not as good as they were today, so I don't have lots of archives left, but I still have the map Alan made, along with some maps I made myself (I played Laconica). I still remember that near the end of the campaign, I struck at Bartaventumnium, the capital of Latini, run by co-author of this blog Bart Vetters. That event might have well ended the campaign, I don;t remember exactly. It has been 20 years ;-)

The campaign map

My own rendering of LAconica

A fun map, outlining the voyages of Thales, but it was really a spying mission.

In 2006, Alan tried to set up a similar campaign, again called Hyperborea (with a handful of posts on this blog). But this time we never got far. The campaign sizzled out after 1 or 2 turns ... I played Kemet in this one.

So suppose I would run such a campaign. What map would I use?

There are of course many possibilities .. there are plenty of imaginary continents from (fantasy) games or literature one can use. One of the maps that I always found attractive is the old map from Wizard's Quest:

It has a nice subdivision in regions, but perhaps the whole affair would become more a RISK-like game rather than a proper wargaming campaign. The lack of cities, roads and other points of interest make it less suitable.

A better idea might be to use the map of the imaginary fantasy world Dor, designed for the roleplaying game Schimmmen & Schaduwen, which I co-authored back in the early nineties.

The continent has many different countires, each with their own geography and culture. See also these blogposts (written in Dutch) on my Schimmen & Schaduwen blog:  Kaarten Van Dor en De Grote Atlas van Dor. Perhaps I should consider using this setting?

Hyboria (11)

Another article about Hyboria, penned by Tony Bath, but this time from White Dwarf #4, December1977/January1978. In publication date, it precedes the series of articles in Battle For Wargamers by one month or so. It is well known that Tony Bath kept extensive chronicles of his campaign, so these articles were probably summaries or compilations of what he had written already.

Hyboria (10)

The last article in the Hyboria series as pubished in Battle For Wargamers in 1978. The articles about Hyboria continued in Military Modelling magazine, but sadly, I do not have those issues. I tried a web search for scanned content, but no luck so far. If someone can help me out, I would greatly appreciate it!

What's still to come? The article written by Tony Bath about Hyboria, published in White Dwarf #4.

See also the page I made about Hyboria.

Hyboria (9)

Part 9 of the history of Hyboria. See also the Hyboria page for other resources regarding Hyboria.

Hyboria (8)

Without further comments. here's part 8. See also the general Hyboria page.

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Now with the venerable Charles Grant on the cover ...
I also started a Hyboria page to collect all sorts of information Hyboria.

Mighty Empires

Reading up on Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign (I should start a separate page and collect all sorts of resources there), I started wondering what game might come close to recreate such a campaign.

Then I remembered Mighty Empires.

Back in the late 80s,early 90s I was a hardcore Games Workshop fanboy. To be honest, I wasn't even aware other miniature wargames did exist outside of Games Workshop, that realization only came later. So naturally I also bought Mighty Empires when it was first published. I do not recall we ever played it completely or used it as a campaign engine for our regular Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition battles, but I do recall I owned some of the metal miniatures as well, and most likely some of the White Dwarf stuff (I was a subscriber).

Then somewhere during the early 2000s I had a major clean-out of my games collection, and Mighty Empires was sold. Last year, an old gaming buddy donated some of his old gaming stuff to me, and suddenly, I had a box of Mighty Empires again. Everything was still there, except the rulebook (but that can be found online).

So, I couldn't resist and generated 2 maps according to the rules in the rulebook, the result of which you see below.

I also browsed through the rulebook again, and there are some good ideas in there. I am almost sure the designers were heavily influenced by Bath's Hyboria, some of the similarities are too strong. But there's probably a reason we never finished a game 30 years ago. The game is not so much game, but indeed, a campaign engine. Lots of rolling on random tables etc. Fun as a way to generate an imaginary world, but perhaps not so fun to use on a game.

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The 6th part in the series ...

Hyboria (5)

Part 5 of the series written by Tony Bath about his legendary Byboria campaign. This article appeared in the May 1978 issue of Battle For Wargamers.

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A new episode on the famous Hyboria campaign.

Hyboria (3)

The next article in the series, from March 1978.

Hyboria (2)

Here's the 2nd installment of Tony Bath's series of articles on his Hyboria campaign that were published in Battle for Wargamers (see here for an index).

This article contains a description of the character generation system, something that was a precursor to character generation in later roleplaying games, and is again testimony of the many radical ideas that Tony Bath pioneered.

Hyboria

I recently received a large donation of Battle for Wargamers for my indexing project. All magazine shave been entered some time ago, so maybe now it's time to provide the discerning connaisseur wargamer with some selected content.

The first article is from Tony Bath, and describes his classic Hyboria campaign, from the January 1978 issue. I've always been an admirer of how Bath managed to pull this off and setting the scene for what was to come hobby wargaming. In a sense, he has been a more influential figure on the hobby than Don Featherstone, but perhaps we should discuss that over a pint of (Belgian) beer ...