RPG Lab Gremlin

The game occasionally took a tragic turn. Rear Admiral William B. Fletcher, long a regular player, lost eight capital ships one night and was so humiliated that he never returned. Another friend, after being court-martialed one evening for losing an entire army, lay on a sofa and cried.

Under the new system, my part in the game changed completely: I was no longer involved as a king, emperor, general etc., instead I became the controller of the game, a sort of combined umpire and god. As the originator and designer of the game, I made the rules by which it was played; the players who took up the characters of various inhabitants of the Hyborian world, made all the moves and directed the affairs of the countries they were involved in.

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!

What makes a successful player of a game like Hyboria? Is it painstaking devotion to detail, military skill, historical knowledge, or just low cunning? All these play their part, but possibly the greatest advantage is the ability to sink into the given character and make it come to life. Most of the players have succeeded in projecting their personalities into the characters they are playing. Each has approached the game in a slightly different fashion and developed skills in different areas.

The two most influential games, both staged on the island of Manhattan, were those of the industrial designer and futurist Norman Bel Geddes and of the science fiction and fantasy author Fletcher Pratt.

The “mythical countries” of the Bel Geddes campaigns were called Yelozand and Redegar, presumably names reflecting the colors of the units deployed by the opposing sides. By 1933, apparently eight campaigns had transpired between those countries. Those units contended on a three-dimensional board—not a sand table, but instead a board molded from layers of cork, which were then covered with colored paper. Rivers, cities, mountains and similar terrain features would be named and labeled, and incredibly, the board featured some nine thousand cities and towns.

As The New Yorker suggested, it was a mass-combat, with fourteen players to a side, though those numbers reflect a hierarchy of generals and subordinate commanders.