Tales from Dragon Magazine: The Malding of Kadesh
One of the great joys of reading old Dragon Magazine is that it offers a perhaps-unintended amount of insight into the gamer mind, and nowhere is this more true than the letters pages. In these, Dungeons and Dragons players from across the world compared notes, bitched about movies, and called each other idiots. I would like to share with you all a story that unfolded around the time I was born, which I am calling The Malding of Kadesh . First, however, some background: What's a Kadesh? Via Wikipedia, an Egyptian depiction of the battle of Kadesh. Note how Ramesses II is larger than the figures he is fighting. That's some grade-A propaganda. The battle of Kadesh was a battle fought between the Egyptians and the Hittites in the 1200s BCE. One of the reasons it stands out is because it is the first major battle where we have enough records to make out invididual tactics, and it led to what is possibly the oldest surviving written peace treaty....
