Chainmail (game)

Chainmail was created by miniatures gaming enthusiasts in the late 60's at the University of Minnesota. These friends, led by Gary Gygax & Jeff Perren, codified a set of rules that they'd been using for miniatures battles; their rules were similar to the ones that would later be used in Warhammer. Gary co-published these rules with Don Kaye, eventually co-founding the company Tactical Studies Rules.

Dave Arneson created a Chainmail scenario involving individual heroes, instead of groups in formation, moving through an underground "dungeon". This became so popular, that the group developed a set of rules for these characters that allowed them to evolve from session to session. This led Gary and Dave to develop what was to become Dungeons & Dragons and is credited with the creation of Role-playing gamess.

Early versions of Dungeons & Dragons refered the players back to Chainmail for rules and advice on miniatures. This was particularly useful, as most players use(d) the same figurines for help keep track of their characters in the imaginary environment they've created. This lent itself so well to computing, that computer role-playing games were some of the first popular successes in the software industry.