Dave Arneson post: What's this?

[Havard]

Dave Arneson
Post: 1
Posted Jun 18, 2002 by Online NowDave Arneson
OK. There are a LOT of mistakes in the above article.

Some changes are;

I did not 'switch' from Napoleonics to Medieval. I simply used CHAINMAIL for the early magic section in the first month we played BLACKMOOR.

I was given equal billing in the original D&D game with Gary. The first lawsuit stemmed from calling the game ADVANCED D&D. Then TSR claimed that it was a whole new game.

It was during Gary's brief tenure as president of TSR that he invited me to do the Blackmoor series. That ended when he was ousted.

Before founding Adventure Games, Inc., I helped found a computer game company called 4D Interactive Systems, Inc.

In the mid 80's on I have worked on over a dozen game projects for computers as well as role playing. I have also been awarded several life time achievment awards for game designs.

DRAGONS IN THE BASEMENT is presently being shpown, in an unedited form, at ORIGINS, GENCON and DRAGONCON. As well as smaller shows. The edited version should be done by 2003.

I teach COMPUTER GAME DESIGN and COMPUTER GAME DOCUMENTATION at a private university in Orlando FL. The name of the school is FULL SAIL. I do not teach sailing. Although I like it a lot!

You may visit my website at castleblackmoor.com for some more details'

From: http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/F82749?thread=190258

There is something fishy going on here. What is h2g2.com? Looks like this was copied and pasted from somewhere else...

-Havard

[aldarron]

Huh, nice find! This h2g2 or whatever looks like a pre-wikipedia kind of thing. The post has a key at the bottom that shows it is a reply to a parent post that no longer exists, but I'll bet it was along the same lines as this post http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/A683688

Dave's comment (assuming it was Dave) that he only "used CHAINMAIL for the early magic section in the first month we played BLACKMOOR" is interesting since he usually only mention using CM for combat and there doesn't seem to be any hint he ever used the spell complexity thing - at least no hint of it in later writings.

[Havard]

When I google for specific sentences in the quoted sections above, google suggests links to the BBC, but when I click on those, they lead me right back to h2g2.

The style of writing looks very much like Dave's style when posting on Finarvyn's forum to the point that I almost thought I had read this before...

-Havard

[aldarron]

The style of writing looks very much like Dave's style when posting on Finarvyn's forum to the point that I almost thought I had read this before...

-Havard

Yeah, me too. I'm sure it was Dave, but since there's no way to prove it...

[TheMystic]

I can say with high confidence that this post is from Dave.

[Big Mac]

I did not 'switch' from Napoleonics to Medieval. I simply used CHAINMAIL for the early magic section in the first month we played BLACKMOOR.

I wonder how the new (WotC) Chainmail would play with Blackmoor.

I know that the new Chainmail was tied to Oerth, giving it a Greyhawk connection. It is kind of poetic that the old Chainmail has a Blackmoor connection.

[RobJN]

"h2g2" commonly refers back to Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," (which describes Earth, or instance, as "mostly harmless.")

The h2g2.com project is something along the lines of the British third-cousin to wikipedia.

h2g2 is a British-based collaborative online encyclopedia project engaged in the construction of, in its own words, "an unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything", in the spirit of the fictional publication The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the science fiction comedy series of the same name by Douglas Adams.[1] It was founded by Adams in 1999 and was run by the BBC between 2001 and 2011.[2][3][4] It is often compared to Wikipedia but there are differences between the sites.

The intent was to create an Earth-focused guide that would allow members to share information about their geographic area and the local sites, activities and businesses, to help people decide where they want to go and what they may find when they get there. It has grown to contain subjects from restaurants and recipes, to quantum theory and history.

[Havard]

"h2g2" commonly refers back to Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," (which describes Earth, or instance, as "mostly harmless.")

The h2g2.com project is something along the lines of the British third-cousin to wikipedia.

Aha,
I guess this is the article Arneson commented on and felt was flawed:

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/A683949

Dave Arneson is officially credited with co-creating the original Dungeons & Dragons. There's much debate as to how much he created (Gary Gygax seems to take the lion's share of the credit) but it's certainly true role playing would not exist as we know it today if it were not for Arneson.

Genesis in the Twin Cities
In the '60s Arneson staged Civil War reenactments in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He belonged to a group called the Midwest Military Simulation Association (MMSA). The MMSA was a counterpart to the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association which had Gary Gygax as a member. As a member of the MMSA, Dave Arneson enjoyed playing Napoleonic miniature games. He wrote Napoleonic ship combat rules called Don't Give Up The Ship!. It was published by Guidon Games in 1971, which also published Gary Gygax's Chainmail rules. Arneson and Gygax made contact with each other as game authors through Guidon.

Role Playing Takes Form
While the miniature games were fun, such straight out games became boring after a while and began to take on more role playing aspects (e.g., people played individual officers with personal missions). Arneson participated in a Napoleonic role playingesque game set in Germany. Arneson eventually switched from Napoleonic miniatures to Medieval combat. He used Gygax's Chainmail rules as well as the fantasy supplement. Arneson began to add new features to the game such as rewards and treasures for the players. He borrowed some rules from an American Civil War game that used hit points and armor class. Accustomed to games being set in a given location, he began creating a game based around the mythical Blackmoor castle.

Arneson and Gygax Meet
Arneson's Blackmoor campaign was very popular with the MMSA gamers in the Twin Cities. Soon Lake Geneva gamers began to hear of Arneson's Blackmoor game. Gygax invited Arneson to Lake Geneva to give a demonstration of his game to the Tactical Studies Association. Gygax was impressed with Arneson's modifications to his Chainmail system and soon they began re-working the game. Gygax eventually released his reworked Chainmail game as Dungeons & Dragons. Initially Gygax did not give Arneson any credit. Arneson took Gygax to court and won a judgment in his favor that Arneson was a co-creator of D & D.

Putting their differences behind them, Arneson created a Blackmoor supplement for D& D in the fall of 1975.

Arneson on His Own
In the '80s, Arneson formed his own game company called Adventure Games. He returned to producing miniature war games, including the modern naval warfare game Harpoon. Arneson also contributed to some computer games, including the ill fated Bard's Tale IV, which never saw the light of day.

In 2000, Arneson completed work on a documentary called Dragons In The Basement. The documentary is about the genesis of role playing, and includes interviews with Gygax and other early founders. It's uncertain if it's aired (beyond a showing at Gen Con 2000), although Arneson is looking to sell it to PBS or Sci Fi.

He generally occupies his time these days lecturing at role playing conventions and teaching sailing at a private university in Florida. To this day Arneson still runs his original Blackmoor campaign.

Teaching sailing, lol

-HAVARD