Fantasy wargame

A fantasy wargame is a wargame set in a fantastical world, using rules that let armies field magic and non-human intelligent creatures such as elves, dwarves and orcs alongside or instead of historical troop types. The genre grew alongside the postwar popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, as wargaming clubs of the 1950s through 1970s began building battle systems around wizards and dragons. The New England Wargamers Association staged an early fantasy battle game called Middle Earth in 1970, and in 1971 a fantasy supplement to the historical rules Chainmail helped inspire Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson to create Dungeons & Dragons. Greg Stafford's White Bear and Red Moon, set in his Glorantha world, followed in 1974. In 1983 Bryan Ansell, Richard Halliwell and Rick Priestley launched Warhammer, pitting armies of elves, ogres, orcs, dwarves, Skaven ratmen and lizardmen against each other with dice-roll combat resolution, and Warhammer quickly became the genre's best known example; a 1987 spin-off, Warhammer 40,000, moved some of the same races into a science fiction setting.