Melee (game terminology)

The early tabletop war game, Kriegsspiel, created in 1812, contained rules for a "hand-fight" or hand-to-hand combat. In some translations, this stage of the game was referred to in passing as a melée.[1]

H.G. Wells' 1913 Little Wars was the first to specifically outline a "melee" rule in his eponymous war game.[2] Many later wargames (and video games) can trace their origins to the rulesets first laid out in Little Wars.[3][4]

In 1968, Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren adopted and modified the rules for Siege of Bodenburg, a medieval war game, and expanded on rules for one-on-one melee combat and specific melee weapon rules.[5][6] This modified ruleset was published as Chainmail and included a fantasy supplement which would later be known as Dungeons & Dragons. The popularity of Dungeons and Dragons, which featured a "melee phase" to represent the fighting of characters outside of bows and magic, would help spread the use of "melee" as a phrase for other table-top and video games.

This term still applies to most role-playing games, but is often used in the context of first-person shooter video games to specify a non-ranged attack. This began with the 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D, which featured a knife that could be selected from the inventory, just like a gun. Because of the risk involved in using a melee weapon, they were typically the most powerful weapons available, in terms of damage. Later, Duke Nukem 3D would include a button that allowed the character to kick enemies while still wielding a gun. A Nintendo franchise called Super Smash Bros. had its second game released in 2001 for the GameCube and used the term "melee" in the title.

In strategy games, especially real-time strategy, infantry units that do not use ranged weapons are often called melee units.

• Melee weapon
• Melee (warfare)