Article on Dave Arnesonn at MinnPost Newssite

[Havard]

David Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, developed the game in Minnesota

By Jonah Lemkins | 05/13/2019

David Lance Arneson was a game designer from St. Paul who collaborated with Ernest Gary Gygax to publish the famous tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. Although the D&D property changed hands in 1997, and the game’s mechanics have evolved, the game’s core wouldn’t be what it is today without Dave Arneson.

Arneson was born on October 1, 1947, in Hennepin County. His parents bought him the Gettysburg board game in the early 1960s, and he became entranced with historical wargames.

While attending Highland Park Senior High School in St. Paul, Arneson joined the Midwest Military Simulation Association (MMSA). The MMSA’s members were high school and college-age wargame fans in the Twin Cities who gathered to play historical military simulation games. Some of them, including Arneson, were more interested in the game itself than in historical accuracy. This group, in Arneson’s parents’ basement, began playing individual character roles instead of controlling large armies.

Due to his interest in historical wargames, Arneson pursued a history degree at the University of Minnesota. He particularly liked the Napoleonic era. The organizer of the Lake Geneva Wargames Convention, Ernest Gary Gygax, also loved Napoleonic-era naval battles. When Arneson met Gygax at Gen Con (a tabletop games convention) in August 1969, Gygax gave him a draft of his medieval wargame, Chainmail.


Arneson brought Chainmail back to the Twin Cities and introduced it to his MMSA group. He modified the game to allow players to act as individual characters rather than large armies. These characters had backstories and motivations which the players would roleplay. To Arneson, what the characters did outside of combat was just as important as the combat itself. He also introduced fantasy creatures and magic, largely inspired by J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian series.
In 1971, after a year of playtesting (testing for design flaws) with his Twin Cities group, Arneson brought the game he now called Blackmoor back to Lake Geneva to introduce it to Gygax and his group of gamers. They loved the roleplaying Arneson had mixed with fantasy combat.

Over the next two years, Arneson and Gygax mailed their playtesting notes back and forth. It was difficult to iron out the Twin Cities group’s notes, since Arneson preferred improvisational rulings over codified rules. He found that these slowed down the game and the fun. Gygax compiled the original version of Dungeons & Dragons, and with financial help from his friend Don Kaye, he formed the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in October 1973. Dave Arneson was not asked to join the company, in part because Gygax saw Arneson as a designer, not a businessman. Arneson received royalties from TSR until 1977.

In 1976, Arneson moved to Lake Geneva and briefly worked at TSR as a creative director. He was forced out of the company that same year, after he refused to lower his royalties. In 1977, TSR released a new version of D&D called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). Thematically it was the same game, but rules were now more codified and less freeform, as Gygax preferred. TSR refused to pay Arneson royalties for AD&D, citing significant differences from the original version.

Arneson didn’t pursue legal action until 1979. After helping found two companies, 4D Interactive Studios and Adventure Games, and publishing Adventures in Fantasy, Arneson sued TSR for royalties. The lawsuit was settled out of court on March 6, 1981. Neither party was allowed to discuss legally the terms of the settlement. It is public knowledge that Arneson was paid his royalties for AD&D and is credited in all editions of D&D as a co-creator.

In 1984, Arneson was elected into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame. Gygax contracted him to write adventures for TSR based on his original Blackmoor setting in 1986. During the 1990s, Arneson worked in California, using games to teach special-needs kids. In 2000, he moved to Florida and taught game design at Full Sail University. He later suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with cancer. He retired in 2008 and moved back to Minnesota to be with his family and old MMSA friends.

Arneson died on April 7, 2009, in St. Paul. The surviving members of his original Blackmoor playtesting group still get together every year to play the same characters they’ve portrayed for almost fifty years.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

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Source: https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2019/ ... minnesota/

Thanks to Big Mac for pointing me to this article.



-Havard

[Havard]

Overall, I think this is a nice article. It is great seeing more attention given to Dave Arneson now, 10 years after his passing. I'm guessing the recent release of the documentary Secrets of Blackmoor may have contributed to this revival.

The article sadly makes the classic mistake of putting too much emphasis on the role of Chainmail in the development of Blackmoor, which I have written about here.

Dave Arneson was not asked to join the company, in part because Gygax saw Arneson as a designer, not a businessman.

This is an interesting observation, that I believe came to light in one of the recent books on Gygax. It was previously assumed that Arneson showed little interest in helping fund a company, mainly because he was in his early 20s, still a student and probably did not have the kind of money Gygax needed from partners. The lack of financing was what lead Gygax to partner up with people who would eventually force him out of the company.

In 1984, Arneson was elected into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame. Gygax contracted him to write adventures for TSR based on his original Blackmoor setting in 1986.

This was quite a curious turn of events that gave us the DA modules. It seems that TSR's serious financial crisis at the time was what may have spurred Gygax to contact Arneson about the Blackmoor modules. This, in addition to various other moves by Gary helped save the company, but resulted in Lorraine Williams taking control of TSR forcing Gary out. Apparently Williams was set to undo these moves by Gary, resulting in the DA module line being cut short. Various people have tried to portray either Gygax, Williams or Arneson as villains in the story of TSR, but I try to avoid that type of discussion. Still, the dynamics between them and the decisions made are interesting to a Blackmoor fan. I'm glad we finally got the Blackmoor modules, but it is a shame that Dave wasn't consulted for DA4 and that DA5 was cancelled even thought he script was completed.

It is a a shame that the article doesnt go into Dave's role in co-founding Zeitgeist Games and releasing the D20 Blackmoor line as well as him being involved with WotC under Peter Adkinson as a playtester of D&D, being allowed to write articles on WotC's website, being invited to the set of the D&D movie etc. I think that these were things that were important to Dave.

-Havard