Quote:“Who in the World is Dave Arneson?”

A Dave Arneson Homage, Part 1 of 2

by James Maliszewski

David Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, was born on October 1, 1947 and passed away in 2009. This year would mark his 71st birthday. In honor of his contributions to the hobby, we present this two-part essay. Here is the first part, and the second part will appear on October 1.

basic setLike many my age, I was introduced to roleplaying games through the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set whose rulebook was edited by Dr. J. Eric Holmes. Upon reading it, I was immediately enthralled and soon acquired the Monster Manual, the first of many TSR products that I would seek out over the weeks and months to come.

What most of these later purchases had in common is that they proudly bore the byline of Gary Gygax on their covers, their spines, and/or their title pages. Being young and wholly ignorant of the history of this strange new hobby I was undertaking, I subconsciously started to associate Gygax’s name with Dungeons & Dragons, to the point that I could scarcely think of one without the other.

This habit of thought only became more pronounced as I began to read Dragon regularly, since Mr. Gygax usually had one or more columns or articles in each issue. Through the pages of the magazine, he was the game’s greatest advocate and promoter – and why not? He was the creator of D&D, after all, and, by extension, of the very concept of roleplaying games, this remarkable new form of entertainment to which I devoted so much of my free time.

Dragon_magazine_75Perhaps unsurprisingly, I hung on every word that Gygax penned in Dragon and looked forward to reading them each month. I very distinctly recall receiving issue #75 in the mail in July 1983 and tore into it with vigor, for it contained a lengthy preview of the forthcoming Monster Manual II. As I read the issue, I came across a – to my mind anyway – very strange advertisement announcing the Special Guest of Honor at that year’s Origins game convention. Accompanying the ad was the black and white photograph of a smiling, bearded man apparently named David L. Arneson and whose claim to fame was that he was the “co-author of Dungeons & Dragons games.”

“Co-author of Dungeons & Dragons games?” What did that mean, I asked myself. I could not recall ever hearing of this David L. Arneson before and now, suddenly, here he was before my eyes, being touted as having had a hand in the creation of my beloved D&D. How was this possible? How had I never come across him before? I quickly consulted the rulebook of the Basic Set and, lo and behold, there was his name on the title page: “By Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.”

I could hardly believe that I had somehow overlooked the very existence of Dave Arneson for all these years. By the time I came across that advertisement in Dragon, I had been playing D&D and other RPGs for almost three years. Yet, in all that time, I could not remember a single occasion when I was aware of Arneson’s name, let alone his contribution to the creation of D&D. Confused by this, I consulted my other rulebooks, to see if I could solve this mystery. To my surprise, I found a reference to him in the preface to the AD&D Players Handbook, but nowhere else. I looked in both the Monster Manual and Dungeon Masters Guide and found no further evidence of his involvement with D&D.

DragonLordsNot long thereafter, I was at my local game store and saw several boxes of new miniature figures released by Grenadier Models. I owned quite a few Grenadier miniatures, owing to the fact that, for many years, they were officially licensed for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. For reasons I did not know at the time, Grenadier had lost the license and therefore had to re-brand their figures as “Dragon Lords” and “Fantasy Lords.”

I picked up one of the “Dragon Lords” boxes and flipped to the back, where there was a photograph of the miniature figures it included. Off to the right hand side, there was another photo, one of that a familiar smiling, bearded face – Dave Arneson! Above his photo was a quote, in which Arneson endorsed the figures, while below it was a caption that, once again, identified him as the “co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons.” I found this reminder of the existence of Dave Arneson a little less baffling than I had the advertisement in Dragon, if only because I had already been made aware of him, but I still knew next to nothing about him or his role in the creation of the game and the hobby that I so adored. I soon decided that I needed to rectify this situation.

I started by seeking out the older role-players and wargamers whom I knew through hobby shops and local games days, hoping that they could fill me in on Dave Arneson and his role in the creation of D&D. These efforts were only partially successful, however. What I gathered was that Arneson and Gygax had once been friends and colleagues, working on Dungeons & Dragons together in the early 1970s before having some kind of falling out that resulted in Arneson’s disappearance from the gaming scene. Some of the people I consulted even spoke vaguely about there having been a lawsuit regarding copyrights or ownership of the game – no one was at all clear on the specifics and, this being the era before the Internet, there was no easy way to get to the bottom of it all.

A couple more years passed, during which time I learned a few additional details about Dave Arneson. I learned, for example, that his original campaign was called Blackmoor, a name that immediately caught my attention because of its appearance in Gygax’s own World of Greyhawk setting. I also learned that he lived in the Twin Cities, which surprised me, as I had come to think of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and the surrounding areas as Ground Zero for the establishment of the hobby of roleplaying. Though I was still very interested in the subject of Arneson, the slow pace at which I was able to learn more discouraged me somewhat.

White BoxMy father, who had inadvertently introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons through his following of the famous disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III in 1979, told me that a game store near his workplace was clearing out its back stock at discounted prices and that he thought there might have been some D&D products amongst them. He asked if I wanted him to pick up anything for me. I replied that I was only interested in “old stuff,” explaining that I meant anything published before 1980. My Dad, bless him, went to the store and asked the clerk if they had anything like this and he came home with a little white box and a handful of tiny books.

The white box, I soon discovered, was the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons (or, rather, a later printing of it) and the tiny books were its first supplements. I dimly knew of the existence of this white box, but little of its actual contents. The forward [sic] to Volume 1, written by Gary Gygax, on November 1, 1973, however, offered up some useful historical tidbits:

“Once upon a time, long, long ago there was a little group known as the Castle and Crusade Society. Their fantasy rules were published, and to this writer’s knowledge, brought about much of the current interest in fantasy wargaming. For a time the group grew and prospered, and Dave Arneson decided to begin a medieval fantasy campaign for his active Twin Cities club. From the map of the “land” of the “Great Kingdom” and environs – the territory of the C&C Society – Dave located a nice bog wherein to nest the weird enclave of “Blackmoor,” a spot between the “Great Kingdom” and the fearsome “Egg of Coot.” From the CHAINMAIL fantasy rules he drew ideas for a far more complex and exciting game, and thus began a campaign which still thrives as of this writing! In due course the news reached my ears, and the result is what you have in your hands at this moment.”

What a revelation! Here, in just a few sentences. Gary Gygax had given not just a capsule summary of the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, but, perhaps more importantly to me, he had made clear that it was Dave Arneson, not himself, who had pioneered the concept of a roleplaying game and laid the groundwork for the rules of D&D. It was becoming ever more clear to me that the history of the game I loved was much more complicated than I had imagined and that Dave Arneson, a man of whom I had not heard until a few years previously, had played a huge role in that history – a role that, for whatever reason, had become obscured.

Blackmoor BookOne of the aforementioned tiny books was Supplement II to the original Dungeons & Dragons, bearing the title of Blackmoor and the byline of Dave Arneson. Its foreword – correctly spelled this time – by Gary Gygax was dated September 1, 1975 and speaks of Arneson thusly:

“Dave Arneson … Is there really such a creature? Yes, Gentle Readers, there is, and shudder when the name is spoken. Although he is a man of many talents who has authored many historic rules sets and games (which TSR will be publishing periodically), Dave is also the innovator of the “dungeon adventure” concept, creator of ghastly monsters, and inscrutable dungeon master par excellence.”

Gygax later states outright that he “co-authored the original work with Dave” and that he “would rather play in his campaign than any other.” This is high praise indeed and once again confirms that Dave Arneson was once an important person in the history of RPGs.

By the time I had read this (1986), Gary Gygax himself had left TSR and a new edition of Advanced D&D was in the works under the direction of David Cook. Among the other products TSR was publishing at that time was a series of adventure modules set in the Blackmoor setting of Dave Arneson. I grabbed them all with excitement, hoping they might offer further insights into the mysterious man who had helped to give birth to D&D. Whatever their other merits, I learned little of Arneson from those modules.

My quest to learn more about David L. Arneson was, in those days, only a limited success. I still had a lot of questions about his involvement in the creation of both Dungeons & Dragons and, more broadly, roleplaying games. I also remained intensely curious about why he had been, for so many years, a figure whose profile was so comparatively low. As I had learned, Arneson was, in a very real sense, one of the “founding fathers” of roleplaying games. Given that, why was he not more well known?

It would not be until the 21st century that I began to find answers to this and other questions I had about the man. One of the ways I did this was becoming more familiar with the games, RPG and otherwise, that he had designed during the 1970s and ’80s. The other way was, thanks to the Internet, to learn from people who knew more about both Arneson and the early history of the hobby than I could have discovered on my own.

What I learned was remarkable.

Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the story!

Quote:Learning from Dave Arneson’s Published Works

A Dave Arneson Homage, Part 2 of 2

by James Maliszewski

David Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, was born on October 1, 1947 and passed away in 2009. This year would mark his 71st birthday. In honor of his contributions to the hobby, we present this two-part essay. The first part can be found here, and here is the second and concluding part.

Blackmoor BookAside from Dungeons & Dragons itself, the first work I ever owned with Dave Arneson’s name on its cover was Supplement II: Blackmoor. As I mentioned in my previous essay, I acquired a copy of Blackmoor in 1986 and read it with great interest. From the foreword to OD&D, I had gleaned that Arneson’s home campaign setting was called Blackmoor – a name shared by a locale within Gary Gygax’s World of Greyhawk setting – so it was my hope that Supplement II would provide me with some details of what that setting was like, at least in broad terms.

Instead, I was disappointed by what I found. Supplement II is a bit of a mess, in my opinion: a mishmash of topics without much cohesion, especially when compared to Gygax’s own Supplement I. When I first read it, however, there was one portion of the book that nevertheless caught my attention. Located about halfway through the supplement was a 20-page section entitled “The Temple of the Frog.” Here is presented one of the earliest published adventure scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons, including five maps. In addition, the scenario provides several paragraphs of background information about the temple, its founding and purpose, and its current state of affairs.

While this background provides no real details about the Blackmoor setting itself, it does explain that the high priest of the Temple of the Frog, an individual known as Stephen the Rock, is “an intelligent humanoid from another world/dimension.” Furthermore, Stephen possesses several mysterious devices, such as an anti-gravity unit and an interstellar communicator. I found this information intriguing. I was of course already familiar with Gary Gygax’s Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, as well as the “Mutants & Magic” section of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, which provide guidelines for mixing science fiction and fantasy. But Supplement II was published in 1975, before any of this, which suggested to me that perhaps Arneson was perhaps the originator of this kind of “mixed genre” gaming.

Temple of the Frog1986 also saw TSR publish Adventures in Blackmoor by Dave L. Arneson and David J. Ritchie, a 64-page module that provides lots of setting details about Blackmoor. Following this release was an expanded version of The Temple of the Frog. Together, these two products filled in some details about Blackmoor as a setting, most notably the strong presence of science fictional elements – not only the aforementioned items belonging to Stephen the Rock but also blaster pistols and rifles, among others. A third Blackmoor module, City of the Gods, was published in 1987, which upped the SF ante even more by presenting an entire downed starship filled with technological marvels as the site for an adventure.

Initially, I wasn’t sure what to make of all of this. By now, I had a better sense of who Dave Arneson was and that he had been there, from the very beginning of Dungeons & Dragons. I also knew that Gary Gygax had spoken highly of him and his skills as an “inscrutable dungeonmaster par excellence” in the foreword to Supplement II. Unfortunately, what I’d seen in both versions of the Temple of the Frog, never mind City of the Gods, didn’t sit well with me. I was still very much of the opinion that the peanut butter of science fiction should rarely be allowed near the chocolate of fantasy. That Arneson seemed to gleefully blend the two struck me, in those days, as somehow wrong, or at least something I didn’t much care for.

And so I largely gave up on seeking out more information about Dave Arneson and his Blackmoor campaign. At the time, I was a little disappointed and concluded – mistakenly – that perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t exert much influence on my beloved game after his early contributions. Even so, I still had a nagging feeling that I was missing pieces in the story. In those pre-Internet days, though, it wasn’t easy to seek out such things and I let the matter rest for quite a long time.

After Gary Gygax’s death in 2008, I started to think about the history of D&D again and, by extension, the entire hobby of roleplaying. I tried to read as many early RPG products as I could and, in so doing, I came across a couple of other works by Arneson I’d never before encountered. One was The First Fantasy Campaign, published by Judges Guild in 1980. The other was Adventures in Fantasy, an edition of which was published in 1979 by Adventures Unlimited (with a subsequent edition in 1981 by Adventure Games).

FirstFantasyOf the two, The First Fantasy Campaign is the more interesting, though also the less polished. In his forward [sic], Bob Bledsaw states:

“Dave has attempted to show the development and growth of his campaign as it was originally conceived. I’m sure that he was tempted to update the work to match pace with new trends but he presented the unpolished gem while preserving the feel and wonder of its unveiling much to our benefit as Fantasy Game Judges.”

Essentially, The First Fantasy Campaign is a collection of notes on the Blackmoor campaign but without any clear organizing principle – much like Supplement II. Thus, there are army lists, NPC descriptions, castle construction costs, snippets of history, Gypsy sayings, wilderness encounter tables, an alternate magic system, and a very rough outline of the dungeons beneath Castle Blackmoor – to name but some of its contents. Reading it, I was immediately struck by the scope of the Blackmoor campaign, as well as Arneson’s wild, even chaotic, inventiveness. He was clearly a referee with a lot of ideas and he wanted to try them all, which is only fitting given how new the very idea of roleplaying games was at the time. Bob Bledsaw was right to use the phrase “unpolished gem” in describing the contents of this book, as it was a seemingly random jumble of descriptions and rules with no central theme.

Adventures in Fantasy, meanwhile, is a complete RPG, which Arneson co-wrote with Richard Snider, one of the original players in the Blackmoor campaign (whose primary character was a cleric known as the Flying Monk). Though intended as something wholly new, Adventures in Fantasy reads more like someone’s heavily house-ruled version of D&D, which “fixes” or emphasizes certain elements according to its creators’ interests – magic, for example, which is quite different than it is in Dungeons & Dragons. On some level, I don’t think that’s an inaccurate feeling, although I suspect that many of the game’s differences from D&D don’t so much fix D&D as precede them, which is to say, they’re reflective of the idiosyncrasies of Arneson’s own approach, much of which either didn’t make it into OD&D or were instead filtered through Gygax’s own ideas.

Taken together, though, these two writings served as a useful corrective to the impression of Dave Arneson I had formed from reading Supplement II and the TSR modules of the late 1980s. Previously, I had taken issue with the presence of science fiction elements in a fantasy setting, seeing this as an inappropriate “intrusion” rather than simply being reflective of a more expansive notion of what constitutes the fantasy genre. I began to wonder if this was one of the reasons why Dave Arneson was not as well known to me as he ought to have been: his approach both to gaming and to fantasy more generally ran counter to prevailing tastes, tastes that were, to a great degree, formed as a result of D&D‘s success.

DaveArnesonI think there is some truth to this. Prior to the success of Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy was a very broad genre, encompassing everything from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to A Princess of Mars to Howard’s Conan stories and more. The earliest players and designers of fantasy roleplaying games understood and accepted this, but, as these games gained popularity and moved beyond their original audience, they became much more self-referential and self-contained – a genre unto themselves – rather than drawing on the anarchic literature that inspired them. Based on the books he wrote or to which he contributed, it seems to me that Dave Arneson never fully adopted this new paradigm, preferring to stick to the older, broader “anything goes” conception of fantasy that no longer held as much sway in the market for RPGs.

Even more significant to Arneson’s relative obscurity was probably exacerbated by the poor relationship between him and TSR Hobbies after he left the company in 1977. In a series of lawsuits, Arneson contended that he had not been paid the royalties owed him for his contributions to Dungeons & Dragons. Ultimately, TSR would opt to settle these suits out of court, granting Arneson both the royalties he sought and credit as the game’s co-creator. Thus his name would appear prominently on the credits page of many TSR products, but he himself would not be much talked about until the late ’80s, when TSR decided to bring him on board once again in the wake of Gary Gygax’s departure from the company.

As interest in older RPGs grew, many of the first generation of gamers and designers began to share their memories online and it was through them that I came to learn more about the origins of Blackmoor and D&D. The picture that emerged from these reminiscences matched, to some degree, my own guesses. The early days of Blackmoor, a campaign that began play in 1971, was wild and improvisational, as Arneson drew on many different sources to create the core of what would later be disseminated to the world as Dungeons & Dragons. Arneson himself recalled, in a 1998 interview:

“I had spent the previous two days watching about five monster movies on channel 5’s ‘Creature Feature’ weekend, reading several Conan books (I cannot recall which ones, but I always thought they were all pretty much the same), and stuffing myself with popcorn, doodling on a piece of graph paper.”

He then borrowed rules from Chainmail and a naval wargame, combined them with his own ideas to create a rough-and-ready system that he continued to modify in response to play. Arneson was willing to test and experiment in pursuit of creating a new kind of game, one that was at once similar to but quite different from the miniatures wargames with which he and his fellow gamers were familiar.

In the end, Dave Arneson succeeded more wildly than I suspect he ever imagined. The fact that, more than forty years later, we continue to play roleplaying games is proof of that. Sadly, for a long time, his contributions were not as widely known as they ought to have been. There are many reasons for this relative obscurity, some of them understandable in retrospect, some of them not. Now, though, there is no excuse not to celebrate Dave Arneson as the foundational figure in the history of roleplaying games that he truly was. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for his imagination and creativity. May he be long remembered!