October 1st, 2019 would be Dave Arneson’s 72nd birthday.
Too many D&D players and RPG enthusiasts don’t know the history of D&D.
Dave Arneson and his gaming group, through a well documented iteration of influences, developed their fantasy game that they called Blackmoor after the town and dungeon for Dave’s campaign.
Dave and friends drove from Minnesota to Wisconsin to show Gary Gygax the game. Gary, the co-author of Chainmail, with Jeff Perren, was a prolific player and creator of games. This game lit Gary’s imagination and Gary created his Greyhawk campaign.
Gary asked for rules, and Dave sent him several handwritten pages, as the rules were in his head. Gary typed up the rules and began making his own changes or filling in perceived gaps. Eventually, they formed a company TSR and Gary wrote the rules that would become the three little brown books. Gary made a list of words for possible names, and one of his daughters picked the combination Dungeons & Dragons.
Without Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax would not have had his imagination and life focus re-directed to create D&D, with full credit to Dave Arneson as co-creator. At some point, there was a parting of the ways. While we can speculate and debate and argue the whys, what matters is, they parted ways and did not reconcile until decades later.
The big reason Dave is forgotten is that his name is not prominent on the covers of AD&D, and he left TSR early on.
Just because one does not know the name of the person who invented the role playing game from the influence of many others, does not change the fact that it happened. We all owe Dave Arneson a debt of thanks and gratitude for starting the ball rolling on the concept that has captured our imaginations and continues to capture the imaginations of new players.
Arneson’s name is forgotten because he doesn’t have a convention to remember him. I think he should. I’ve heard rumblings that maybe the Minnesota gaming community might actually do something about that.
It should not lead to heated debate. Dave Arneson was first on the shoulders of giants. Like so many original creators and inventors, he is obscure because someone else did a better job of presenting it and making it happen.
Dave may have been a very creative and entertaining GM, he does not seem to have been able to commit his ideas to a coherent form on paper to get into the hands of others. Had he been so, we may never have heard of Gary Gygax. Gary is the one with the organization and persistence to get a manuscript and get it published. Even that took the help of others for the finances.
It’s hard to talk about D&D and Dave Arneson without mentioning Gary Gygax. They were a productive team who co-wrote other things together and did a lot of play by mail and other in person gaming together before the role playing game.
I just want to say, “Thanks, Dave!” Several others have documented various aspects of Dave’s rightful place in the history of Role Playing Games. I don’t need to regurgitate them here. Read about it. Watch the Blackmoor documentary when it is released. There is a lot of interesting information available.
