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Published in 1913, "Little Wars", based on a system created by the Prussian military for simulating battlefield scenarios for training officers in military tactics, was a set of rules created by H.G. Wells for playing with toy soldiers in mock battles and wars, and is considered by some to be the first table top war game. It proved popular and spread around the world. Among its players decades later were Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who would take the basic rules and ideas, and transport them from real war settings to a Tolkein-like land of fantasy, creating Dungeons and Dragons.
So what if this occurred sooner, where someone took the base ideas of "Little Wars" and turned it into a game of adventuring and questing like Gygax and Arneson did? It doesn't necessarily need to be in a realm of fantasy; it could even be into the wilds of Africa and Asia and the unknown world, or something properly Victorian like that.