Realms & Conquests Society

Purpose of the Order

"A project of gaming anthropology and the preservation of Fantastic Medieval Wargame Campaigns — returning to the source, stripping away fifty years of accumulated assumption, and asking: what was actually there?"

The Realms & Conquests Society exists for a single, urgent purpose: to play the Original Game as it was played, at a table, in person, with real dice, real rulings, and real consequence. Not a reconstruction. Not a retroclone. Not an homage. The thing itself — or as close to it as living, breathing human beings can manage.

The game that emerged between 1974 and 1981 was not a finished product awaiting later correction. It was a living inquiry — a set of creative provocations scrawled in the margins of wargaming, full of gaps that were never bugs but invitations. The referees and players of that era did not wait for official answers. They ruled. They invented. They contradicted one another gloriously. That instinct — to trust the table over the text — is what this Society seeks to recover.

Too much of what calls itself old-school gaming has quietly re-anchored itself to a particular stratum of rules — a specific revision, a specific edition — as if that moment were the true and natural equilibrium. It is not. The Society begins earlier, and goes further. We strip back to the foundations not out of nostalgia, but out of genuine curiosity: what grows from those roots, untrimmed by later consensus, when given light and a table full of imaginative people?

⚔ In-Person First

The soul of the game lives at the table. Online sessions are accepted, but in-person play is the beating heart of the Society.

📜 Open Table

Anyone is welcome at any session. The Original Game was never a closed guild. Pull up a chair. The dungeon does not require credentials.

🗺 Living World

Characters may adventure across referee regions. Deeds, deaths, and discoveries ripple outward into a shared and breathing campaign world.

⚄ 1:1 Time

One real-world day equals one campaign day. Time is not paused between sessions. The world does not wait. Consequences are real and permanent.

The Origins: Where We Begin

The Society begins with the texts of 1974 and their immediate companions — not as museum pieces, but as live documents under active scrutiny at the table.

I

The Three Little Brown Books — Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. Sparse. Ambiguous. Generative. The experiment begins here, exactly as it began in 1974.

II

Chainmail — The wargaming substrate from which the roleplaying game emerged. Mass combat, man-to-man resolution, the fantasy supplement. Played alongside the Brown Books, not shelved beside them.

III

Greyhawk (Supplement I) — Included from the outset, because Gygax and Kuntz were already playing with it before the ink on the Brown Books was dry. Thieves, variable weapon damage, higher level spells: the first great elaboration, present from day one of the Society's campaign.

IV

What Comes Next is Earned — Further supplements, rulings, and innovations are introduced only as the Society's own lived play demands them. Nothing is assumed. Everything is tested. The ruleset evolves from the table, not from the shelf.

The Society's Principles

These are not house rules. They are the operating assumptions of the Society — the commitments that make a shared, living campaign world possible across multiple referees and regions.

I

The Referee Rules. The text is a starting point, not a ceiling. Where the rules are silent, the referee speaks. Rulings are recorded and shared so the world remains coherent across regions.

II

The World Does Not Pause. One real-world day equals one campaign day. Characters age, heal, train, and suffer in real time. Strict time records are kept. The campaign clock does not stop because you are not at the table.

III

Death is Meaningful. Characters die. This is not a failure state — it is part of the texture of a world that takes itself seriously. Play accordingly.

IV

The Table is Open. Experienced Grognard or first-time player — the table turns no one away. The Original Game was always a game of invitation. So is this Society.

V

Report Your Play. Referees document their sessions, map their regions, and share their rulings on Discord. The Society is a collective record of actual play — not theory, not argument, not retrospective. Play, reported.

Building Your Region

Referees are the world-builders. Each referee domain is a distinct territory within the shared campaign world — mapped, populated, and reported. Follow these steps to establish your region:

I

Gather your sources — history, myth, folklore, the strange corners of the imagination. The Original Game was always a collage. Make yours deliberately.

II

Map a 9×11 area of 5-mile hexes. Hex paper or digital — the format matters less than the commitment to actual geography. The world must be traversable.

III

Create a starting dungeon — the first place adventurers will descend. It need not be vast. It must be dangerous, surprising, and worth returning to.

IV

Establish a starting settlement — the hearth between expeditions. Give it texture: factions, rumours, prices, faces. The town is as important as the dungeon.

V

Share your maps on the Discord server. The shared world requires shared geography. Players plan across regions. Make yours visible.

VI

Post rumours regularly. The living world breathes through its rumours — hooks, half-truths, portents, lies. Update them. Keep the world in motion.