09-05-2019, 01:02 PM
Answering your question could really take pages, but I'll at least start with some observations.
So Arneson wrote a number of games over his career. The first published by an independent publisher was Don't Give up the Ship (a mostly the same version of which existed without the bits contributed by Gygax). He wrote a couple RPGs in the 80's (unpublished) and in the 90's IIRC he wrote Trapmann.
The Trapmann game may be the most "Arsonian" in spirit, or at least feels closest to what one would expect from a "rules light" perspective.
Regarding AiF, despite what Arneson said in the Pegausus interview, the order of the names on the booklets really does tell you who wrote most of it. While it was very definitely a joint project between Snider and Arneson, I'm quite convinced Dave was the primary author only on the first book and the dragons section of the monster book.
AiF really isn't that complicated in most aspects. Sure you have to calculate some stuff at character creation, but most things are adjudicated through a percentile roll against a stat.
However, combat can be fairly complex - especially if you add in a lot of optional factors, Combat was Arneson's attempt to make it more realistic than D&D and scale by level, I suppose. Notice that all those factors are on the GM and Arneson, being good at quick thinking and well accustomed to crunching numbers in combat (hello Strategos N) probably didn't think of that as complicated.
However, I do have to say that Arneson did originally envision a simpler and more elegant combat proceedure - details of which I will put on my blog at some point not too distant (as time permits)
The thing to remember is that his partner on this effort, Richard Snider, went on to craft a similar but much more complicated system Powers and Perils. I'm in the unique position of being able to clearly see the thread of RS influence from his pre-D&D "RSV" rules through AiF and into P&P. It is pretty plain to see that Snider influenced Arneson to create the more complex system in AiF than he originally envisioned. I think, if you look at how wizard combat works, you will be looking at a system mostly written by Richard, and it is one of the more arcane bits of AiF (pardon the pun).
So what am I saying? AiF has the elements Arneson wanted, not always well described, ("Reputation" for example only begins to make sense if you look at Aif material outside the rulebooks.) The education system is really just an expansion of his pre D&D character sheets. So there's a lot there that all about Arneson's style, but the complexity of some of the rules had a lot to do with the influence of his partner, and no doubt, of the perception that gamers wanted games that were more robust than D&D.
So Arneson wrote a number of games over his career. The first published by an independent publisher was Don't Give up the Ship (a mostly the same version of which existed without the bits contributed by Gygax). He wrote a couple RPGs in the 80's (unpublished) and in the 90's IIRC he wrote Trapmann.
The Trapmann game may be the most "Arsonian" in spirit, or at least feels closest to what one would expect from a "rules light" perspective.
Regarding AiF, despite what Arneson said in the Pegausus interview, the order of the names on the booklets really does tell you who wrote most of it. While it was very definitely a joint project between Snider and Arneson, I'm quite convinced Dave was the primary author only on the first book and the dragons section of the monster book.
AiF really isn't that complicated in most aspects. Sure you have to calculate some stuff at character creation, but most things are adjudicated through a percentile roll against a stat.
However, combat can be fairly complex - especially if you add in a lot of optional factors, Combat was Arneson's attempt to make it more realistic than D&D and scale by level, I suppose. Notice that all those factors are on the GM and Arneson, being good at quick thinking and well accustomed to crunching numbers in combat (hello Strategos N) probably didn't think of that as complicated.
However, I do have to say that Arneson did originally envision a simpler and more elegant combat proceedure - details of which I will put on my blog at some point not too distant (as time permits)
The thing to remember is that his partner on this effort, Richard Snider, went on to craft a similar but much more complicated system Powers and Perils. I'm in the unique position of being able to clearly see the thread of RS influence from his pre-D&D "RSV" rules through AiF and into P&P. It is pretty plain to see that Snider influenced Arneson to create the more complex system in AiF than he originally envisioned. I think, if you look at how wizard combat works, you will be looking at a system mostly written by Richard, and it is one of the more arcane bits of AiF (pardon the pun).
So what am I saying? AiF has the elements Arneson wanted, not always well described, ("Reputation" for example only begins to make sense if you look at Aif material outside the rulebooks.) The education system is really just an expansion of his pre D&D character sheets. So there's a lot there that all about Arneson's style, but the complexity of some of the rules had a lot to do with the influence of his partner, and no doubt, of the perception that gamers wanted games that were more robust than D&D.