Dave Arneson: The Soul Of D&D – PRIME
Dave Arneson helped make D&D what it is today. From DMs to campaign worlds, Arneson’s legacy is clear, despite a bitter feud between the founders.
Dungeons & Dragons wouldn’t be half the game it is without Dave Arneson. Literally. Arneson is credited with inventing “dungeons” so without him, the game would just be “& Dragons.” From his early days working on the game/setting known as Blackmoor, to the co-creation of D&D with E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson left a big mark on the RPG industry. But for all that, he was almost ousted from the game he helped create, leading to one of the many lawsuits that cast a pallor over the early days of D&D. But legal disputes aside, Arneson’s design gave D&D it’s personality. If you’ve ever adventured in a dungeon, found a magic item, or experienced the boundless immersion that a good game of D&D can build, you’ve experienced Arneson’s work. So where does it all begin?
As with most of the stories in the early days of RPGs, it all comes back to Wargaming in the early 60s. Arneson got his start with Gettysburg by Avalon Hill–a company, ironically, owned by Hasbro/WotC to this day–a classic Civil War board game that enthralled Arneson and his friends. As Arneson puts it, the game was fascinating, but Avalon Hill’s release schedule meant that it’d be another year, so they started doing their own design:
My parents bought me a wargame by the Avalon Hill company called Gettysburg. I thought there were a lot of possibilities there and I liked it a lot. I even talked my friends into learning how to play it. There was only one game a year that came out from Avalon Hill, though, so we started to design our own games.
And it’s here in this first brush with designing their own battles that Arneson and his friends sort of stumbled into role-playing. In looking for ways to make their games a little more interesting, they started coming up with new objectives beyond just capturing reinforcement centers. This in turn, led them to role-playing.
Around 1968 I got in touch with some gamers in the Twin Cities that were playing with military miniatures and thought that was interesting and exciting. I played games with them for a couple of years and we started to make our own battles. That ended up leading to something a little bit closer to true role-playing when we started to set objectives for different generals that weren’t necessarily military in nature. At that point I guess we started role-playing.
We started setting different objectives for the players. It wasn’t just about fighting; we started stealing things: bombs, guns, food supplies, that sort of thing. Players could negotiate with each other for who captured the goal, and then had to figure out how they were going to slip the products past a blockade and sell them on the black market. Things like that.
And while it would be a while yet before the leap from Civil War scenarios to the more recognizable roots of early RPGs, the seeds had been sown. Which meant that later, when the proto-RPG/wargame hybrid known as a Braunstein came to grace the newly christened wargames convention in Lake Geneva, aka Gen Con, Arneson found his footing and pushed the bounds of what a player might want to do.
As Major David Wesley, the mind behind the Braunstein concept puts it, Arneson was the ur-player–coming to the table with shenanigans. For instance, in one memorable scenario, Arneson came to the game with a fake CIA ID that he could unveil when “captured” by other players who were still playing the game like it was a wargame. While other players tried to accomplish blowing up bridges, Arneson was out there starting riots and distributing propaganda:
“You’re the student revolutionary leader,” Wesely says “You get victory points for distributing revolutionary leaflets. You’ve got a whole briefcase full of them.”
Much later, having convinced his fellow players that he is really, perhaps, an undercover CIA operative, and that the entire nation’s treasury is really much safer in his hands, Dave Arneson’s character is politely ushered aboard a helicopter to whisk him to safety.
Far below the streets are still churning with fighting, plastic soldiers colliding with innocent citizens and angry rioters. In his lap sits the forgotten briefcase of revolutionary leaflets. “I get points for distributing these right?” And with a sweep of his arm he adds insult to injury, hurling reams of pages into the downdraft of the helicopter where they scatter and float lazily down upon the entire town…
Final score: Dave Arneson, plus several thousand points
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Not long after that, Wesley went off to the army, and Arneson took over running Braunsteins, using the same sort of “referee” approach he and his own personal gaming group had for running weird scenarios and rules interactions, where one player would act as an adjudicator to make on the fly rules calls without being invested in winning or losing.
Arneson had a knack for creating scenarios inspired by the motivation of his character, and then trying to figure out rules around it. In one of the early Braunsteins, Arneson and a teammate held an improptu duel. Arneson’s crew became enamored of the Braunstein format. His own local gaming group took the format and ran with it. But Arneson turned the idea on its head, coming up with a little game called Blackmoor.
Blackmoor started off as a fantasy/medieval version of Braunstein. Arneson had previously engaged with Chainmail, Gygax’ fantasy wargame that focused on 1:1 combat, which are the rules prototype for D&D… but in Arneson’s Blackmoor, the soul of D&D was born. As the legend goes, Arneson ran Chainmail and sought to create a more expansive, ongoing version of the game into something more like the iterations of the Braunsteins that Arneson and his gaming group had been devouring. And so, one fateful day in mid-april, 1971, Arneson circulates a letter announcing a new game in his own gaming newsletter:
“There will be a medieval ‘Braunstein’ April 17, 1971, at the home of Dave Arneson from 1300 hrs to 2400 hrs with refreshments being available on the usual basis. It will feature mythical creatures and a Poker game under the Troll’s bridge between sunup and sundown.
Players took novice characters—“flunkies” in their terms—and implanted them in Blackmoor, a medieval setting of Arneson’s own invention. Arneson’s map of the town perfectly resembles an early Dungeons & Dragons map, with roads and wilderness that eventually give way to a central, barricaded town. Giants roaming the land would send the players scrambling for the safety of the town. Later, there would be evil wizards and castles and gold, dungeon exploration mechanics.
Arneson reportedly had converted his ping-pong table into a whole other world. He taped down a layer of brown paper maps, drew out different areas on his table, and had no armies of miniatures or rulers for measuring movement, just dice and imagination. Arneson was the “referee”, but took up more of a narratorial role, describing for players what their characters saw.
In addition to the vivid descriptions, Arneson wrote up a one-sheet newspaper, the Blackmoor Gazette and Rumormonger to keep players and hangers-on up to date on the latest happenings in the game. And this early game has so much of D&D’s DNA in it. Arneson wrote about his campaign to the Castle & Crusade Society’s newsletter, offering up an overview of Blackmoor and the details of its world: underground caves, elves, dwarves, dramatic personae and events… pretty much everything you’ve come to expect from an RPG.
And as gaming communities were small and mostly communicated via newsletter in those days, Arneson and Gygax who had previously met at prior Gen Cons were in excited communication and Arneson invites Gygax and the Tactical Studies Association over in 1972 for a game of Blackmoor.
And here we get the first real look at what an RPG session is like. As Rob Kuntz, one of the early D&D designers and the player behind the famous “Robilar” puts it:
Gary, myself and a few other local wargamers were the first “lucky” fellows from Lake Geneva to experience the rigors of Blackmoor. This idea caught on deeply with Gary after an exciting adventure in which our party of heroes fought a troll, were fireballed by a magic-user, then fled to the outdoors (being chased by the Magic-user and his minions), fought four (gulp!) Balrogs, followed a map to sixteen ogres and destroyed them with a wish from a sword we had procured from the hapless troll earlier.
Arneson set up his 3-ring binder as a screen between us and him. He noted that Dave Megarry, a regular in his game, would be our guide for the adventure. Megarry did most of the interfacing and explaining what it was we were about to do with imaginary characters. Arneson noted that we could be either heroes or wizards. Gary chose to be a wizard and the rest of us heroes.
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According to Kuntz, the players received neither rules nor maps, just Arneson describing what they saw. It’s all there. The adventure starting in a tavern, and immediately a magical mystery about it all. As Kuntz describes it:
We all had drinks and checked out the surroundings. A little into this I informed Arneson that my character (we had no names, so it was Garyʼs character, Robʼs, etc.) was stepping outside to get some air.
Arneson said, ‘Okay. You come back in.’ I was confused while thinking that he had understood that I stepped out and got air and then, later, came back in. I questioned this and he clarified by noting that when I stepped through the entryway that I indeed found myself walking back into the inn. Magic! I had never exited the inn. We all caught onto the problem at once. We were trapped! Megarry and Arneson either smiled or snickered as we realized what ‘Come Back Inn’ really meant.
From there the session descended into the group figuring out how to escape the Come Back Inn, started looking for treasure, and Arneson coming up with rules on the fly for a magic sword. And from that day on, Gygax was hooked–Arneson’s Blackmoor and Gygax Chainmail came together to create the first draft of D&D.
It featured four races, (humans, dwarves, elves, and hobbits) and just three classes (fighting-men, magic-users, and clerics). It also introduced individual statistics that had never existed before: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. This was a quantum leap from wargames of the past, as the statistics described an individual person, not a unit.
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But the fledgling TSR didn’t have the capital they needed to order the first 1,000 copies of D&D like they wanted. And so TSR made a quick publication to try and raise the money they needed to publish the first thousand copies of D&D. When that didn’t happen, Brian Blume, another gamer from the early Gen Con era, joined the partnership–and out of these three people, TSR begins, with Kaye taking on the role of President and Treasurer, Blume as Vice President and Sales Manager, and Gygax taking on Editor and Advertising Manager. Though Arneson was one of the co-creators of D&D, he wouldn’t join the company until 1976.
But Arneson’s work is all over the first edition of D&D. Ideas like adventuring in dungeons and using a different ground scale for play inside of a building vs. traveling in the world. So it seems fitting that Arneson would join up as the company’s research director. Though he only held the position for a year.
The very next year, TSR publishes “Advanced D&D” which is colloquially known as 1st Edition. The launch of this edition changed the industry, with a huge revision of the original game. The rules were updated and collected in three easy books. But it was different enough that Gygax considered AD&D his own property and tried to cut Arneson–who had up til now been receiving royalties from the considerable success of D&D–out of the loop.
This resulted in a lawsuit filed in 1979 that would drag on for two years, eventually being settled in 1981 with Arneson getting a 2.5% share of the royalties from all D&D products sold–royalties that he would keep receiving right up until the publication of 3rd Edition under WotC’s purview. But what did Arneson do after he left TSR?
After I left TSR I went back home to Minnesota and wrote the Dungeon Master Index®. Then a friend and I tried working for Heritage Models for about a year and a half. That’s when I finished the Dungeon Masters Index®. I also did a set of fantasy rules and a fantasy printing guide for them which they never published.
I was doing a lot of work for them but they weren’t doing anything with it. I got tired of waiting a year and a half to get something published so we parted. Then I did First Fantasy Campaign for Bob, which was exciting because I was able to gather all of my old records into one place. After that I got involved with programming computers for which I was being paid every day instead of some time in the future.
At about that same time Chaosium asked me to do a set of Samurai rules and since that has been one of my favorite topics in previous years I said yes. Since then, two other people have beaten me to being published. But, time will tell which one is best.
Arneson would continue to develop Blackmoor, writing it up as a setting for the Judges Guild and then later even working once again with TSR in the post-lawsuit days while Gygax was president. But after D&D Arneson found work in the digital frontier and eventually as a teacher:
I went into computers. I helped found a computer company in Minnesota which is still in business today. Then I got into computer programming, which I hated, and programmed a couple games. I did consulting and advisory work with computer companies, showing them how much money they could save by doing modules.
I got into education in the late ’80s when I lived out in California. I did some work for some special education kids, and when I got back to Minnesota I picked up on that and did it some more. I would go to schools and talk about using role-playing for educational purposes — which were pretty much ignored by most of the people involved, but that’s the way it goes. Finally, I landed this really great job down here in Florida about twelve years ago.
And at the end of the day, Arneson and Gygax patched up their relationship, at least to the point that they could co-exist civilly.
We talk to each other. We don’t hate each other. You know, we wish each other well, and he sent me get-well cards when I had my stroke and I sent him a get-well card when he had his stroke. [Laughs] We don’t hang out with each other that often, though. We just kept going our own two separate ways.
And though Arneson and Gygax had their own issues, he left a lasting impact on D&D. He created the role of the DM, had the first DM screen, and helped make role-playing as much a part of D&D as it is. Without his influence, D&D might not be the cultural phenomenon it is today. Arneson and Gygax’ work outlives them, and their work together remains the most successful project that either would ever embark on, which goes to show what you can do when you’re excited about something and find the right person to create the ideas with.
One wonders what might have been for D&D if Arneson and Gygax had been able to keep working together through the editions. Would TSR have landed in trouble still? What would a more roleplaying focused D&D look like if Arneson’s hand had been on the till when 2nd Edition came around?
While we may never know, we’ll always remember the designer who nurtured the soul of D&D and helped found the genre that D&D currently dominates.
Happy Adventuring!
