This experience at a private faire in Chatsworth hosted by my good friend Ron Garst, reminded me of the many board games I'd played with friends during the 1940's and 50's, games which suggested Medieval battle, such as chess, parcheesi, kalah, bridge (my grandfather helped found the New York Bridge Club) and of course, Monopoly, Go Fish and the round-the-clock neighborhood game of Capture the Flag, which is about all we ever did in summer camp except eat and sleep.

Since childhood, I've dreamt of producing a true Medieval combat game in a Capture-The-Flag game environment resembling that atmosphere I encountered as a child.

Drawing from my childhood experiences in summer camps and even in regional chess tourneys, I began to, in drawings and short stories, construct the world in which an endless series of battles over flags could take place, never once imagining that it would findexpression on the internet--a concept far-removed from reality in those days.

Games such as chess, Go and Ringaleevio are very much like the historical Capture-The-Flag scenario of the ancient world--there are two or more teams of various classes each with its own moves and idiosyncrasies... In chess, however, each piece actually stands for an entire regiment, battle-group or division, but expressed in ancient terms.

In SWORDZ, the characters each stand as individual soldiers.

Just as 3-D action games are being used in virtual reality environments today to train the Soldier of Tomorrow, the Romans used chess to train their officers, and so did the Egyptians, who got the game from the early settlers coming out of the Hindu Kush, where the game probably originated as a variant of Kalah, whose origins are steeped in stone-age antiquity.

In this cyberspace version of that endless game of combat over flags, kings or territories, care is taken to follow the principles of castle-building--the background for which I am deeply indebted to Macaulay for his castle book and especially to the collection of castle technology and architecture assembled for me several years ago by William Dailey, who currently runs a rare book shop in Los Angeles.

The map was built alternately by Grishy and myself, kind of like two surgeons working together at an operating table. I'd lay in the basics rather roughly, leaving mistakes for Grishy to iron out, and this worked well...we finished the map from scratch to this first point-release in less than a week, working about sixteen hours a day.

Most of what we put in won't show until the fourth or fifth point-release, such as the ai and advanced magic, but it's there...