Combat -- How did you do it?

[Wothbora]

With some of the original players of the Blackmoor Campaign posting on ODD74 from time-to-time I was wondering if any of you could share with us how you conducted combat back in the day. Did you use the Chainmail Method, the Alternative Method from OD&D or something in-between?

I'm really curious as to how you all did it.

I know I've pulled out Chainmail on numerous occasions and tried to figure out how in the world you all made the jump from battling with a mass of figures down to a single player fighting individually. This was THE evolutionary step that created gaming as we know it today. But still, the question lingers always in the back of my mind: Did you all use 2d6 or 1d20 when you went out and started hacking away in the Dungeons of Blackmoor?

[pjork]

If I may add to the query before it is even answered, was it an evolutionary step from playing Chainmail mass battles to one character per player, or was it playing a Braunstein-like game and using Chainmail to resolve the combats?

[gsvenson]

We used 2d6, but we were doing individual combat on the first adventure and we changed very rapidly to something far more like the alternative combat system within the first month of play (this would be in January of 1971). So, it was something in between. If we needed specific probabilities we used 3d6 (a couple of us were math majors and could figure out the dice rolls needed to get any specific probability). I did not see a d20 before the brown box came out. I actually never played Braunstein.

[robertthebald]

We didn't make "the jump" from Chainmail at all. Chainmail was useful for large groups, or armies, fighting; but it proved to be worthless for what was needed in fighting man to man in Blackmoor. We had experience in man to man combat from other games (like Braunstein). If you look at combat between single planes or ships in games from that era, you will see that Blackmoor had much more in common with them than Chainmail. Chainmail was only used for larger battles between groups of non-player characters for convenience.

[pjork]

robertthebald said:

We didn't make "the jump" from Chainmail at all.

That is exactly what I have suspected and been seeking confirmation of. Thanks for the information; have an exalt.