By the late 1960s the miniature wargaming hobby had grown large enough that there was a demand for rulebooks dedicated to a single historical period.
Don Featherstone of the UK produced booklets for eight different periods in 1966. A few years later the
Wargames Research Group began producing rulesets with an emphasis on historical accuracy. In 1970,
Don Lowry and his wife Julie opened Lowry Hobbies in
Belleville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis. It started as a mail-order business selling military miniatures to wargamers and wargame modelers. However, after some success selling
Fast Rules, a set of WWII tank combat rules designed by Leon Tucker, Mike Reese and Gary Gygax of the
LGTSA, Lowry founded Guidon Games Lowry hired Gygax in 1970 to develop the "Wargaming with Miniatures" series of games. Gygax also co-authored the first title in the series,
Chainmail, which became Guidon's best seller. The series came to include games and books by
Lou Zocchi,
Tom Wham, and
Dave Arneson. When Gygax reached out to Lowry shortly after the move with an idea for a new type of game called
Dungeons & Dragons, Lowry was not in any position to publish it, prompting Gygax to found
TSR with
Don Kaye in order to sell his new game. which was published by Avalon Hill in 1974. Gygax's new company TSR acquired Guidon's remaindered stock of board games and rules, and offered them for sale. ==Products==