Chainmail

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One of the earliest mass market wargames.

Chainmail was based on a historical wargame that Gary Gygax decided to alter with fantasy elements. The earliest conversions were simple, wizards had a fireball (That Gary claimed used the same mechanic as a catapult from the historical version] the medics now became magical healers, and so forth. The game was immensely popular (though niche) and very shortly evolved into Dungeons and Dragons.

The rules were published in 1971, and were based on other wargames, though Chainmail had a fantasy bent, removing much of the artillery pieces, but retaining the effects as magic. Chainmail would include rules for dragons and other fantasy creatures, and most of these found their way into D&D. In fact, the original D&D game recommended that you have a copy of Chainmail as well to use it though it did come with a d20 attack matrix that become standard and eventually converted into THac0. But it was based on Chainmail's system of armor reducing the effectiveness of the attack.

Chainmail has been replaced by the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures game.