Wight-Box is Not Chainmail

(This was the Point)

Wight-box is not CHAINMAIL. In the past, from various people, I received constructive criticism or disappointment that Wight-Box did not utilize the 2d6 man-to-man tables found in the CHAINMAIL rules. Instead, I went the route of the d20 and the Alternative Combat Method. In the introduction to Wight-Box, I clearly state the goal of the project:

“What I've done to make weapons feel different is affect a weapon's to-hit chances on d20 attack rolls via weapon vs. armor attack matrices. These tables are not my own invention, but a reinterpretation. I looked at the man-to-man attack matrix tables in Chainmail, which are rolled on 2d6, and applied them to a d20 roll. The method for doing this is simple. 2d6 averages 7. The target numbers in the man-to-man tables are either above, below, or at 7. I merely looked at those target numbers in Chainmail and made the modifier to-hit on a d20 based on how much higher or lower the target number in Chainmail is from 7.”

Whether you like the d20 or not, D&D is a d20 game and is synonymous with it. D&D without the d20 is not D&D. I think this is a fact. Had I gone the route of 2d6 with it, it would have been extremely niche and would not have the broad appeal of drawing more people into a more authentic way to play 0e.

So when I, with the help of friends on the Guilded server, was talking about this clone (which I was somewhat coerced into doing), using the D20 “Alternative Combat System” was a must for several reasons.

Less Homebrew

If the goal was to deliver an “authentic” 0e + CHAINMAIL experience, the route that we thought would be best would be the route of the d20 system. CHAINMAIL has two methods of resolving combat via dice. One is a dice pool system with a range on the die that causes a “kill” on the battlefield. The other is the 2d6 man-to-man tables. The 2d6 tables can somewhat map onto Armor Class found in the 3LBBs, but it is not perfect when you get to monsters that are not wearing armor. The d6 dice pool style system works well for mass combat (which can very well happen in 0e), but ultimately, these do not feel like D&D, and the 2d6 rolls are broken up into man-to-man and the “Fantasy Combat” table for powerful characters, and creatures.

The Fantasy Combat table presents another problem. Not all the monsters in the 3LBBs are on that table, and not all of them map very well onto the creatures on there. Not every creature is on the Fantasy Table, but every creature in the 3LBBs is given an Armor Class score. Looking at this, I concluded that maintaining the Fantasy Combat table from Chainmail would require a lot of guessing and homebrewing to make it work. This is fine for a home game, but the point of Wight-Box was that of an authentic 0e D&D experience. This meant installing less of me and more of the rules and tools available to someone in 1974 trying to figure out how to make this game work.

The concepts of weapon class from Chainmail and Fighting-Capability from the 3LBBs bolt onto the d20 alternative system without much issue. Having played and run several sessions in Wight-Box at this point, I’ve concluded that it is indeed seamless, and I think Gary, based on this design, intended and foresaw the alternative system being used in this way.

Again, in the 3LBBs, every creature has Hit Dice and Armor Class, with explanations of how hit dice correlate to the Fighting Capabilities of Player Characters. The seamless nature of overlaying the CHAINMAIL ideas on the d20 requires much less guesswork than applying the monsters in the 3LBBs to the 2d6 man-to-man tables or the dice pool system. Thus, in my humble opinion, it is much closer to an authentic experience with less of what I THINK it should be and more of what it WOULD be if you overlay these ideas.

I don’t think this explanation will appease the diehard CHAINMAIL fans, but they must understand that the goal was never to figure out how to play CHAINMAIL. It was to figure out how to play 0e with the ideas of CHAINMAIL to fill in the gaps of the 3LBBs. It is a matter of deciding which book takes precedence over the other. Do the 3LBBs have primacy, or does CHAINMAIL?

Since we are playing D&D, it seemed an obvious choice to have the 3LBBs have primacy in applying the ideas from CHAINMAIL. Of course, the other ways are valid. In my recent Zine, I explained how I would handle 2d6 Wight-Box and applied these ideas to mass combat while retaining the alternative combat system.

It comes down to the fact that 0e is a “mysterious” system. It is not the GM fiat rules light game the Grogs often paint it as (if you read the books closely). But there are areas that make you scratch your head in multiple places. There are two or more valid interpretations of what is meant and how a rule will be used and applied in those places. Such ambiguity and mystery are, of course, ample fuel to make nerds argue with each other endlessly. Personally, I don’t care. I made a thing and did so to the best of my ability based on months of deep study into 0e with the help of friends. And it is not like what has been made is entirely incompatible with what the hardcore CHAINMAIL people want anyway.