TSR Rob Kuntz Recounts The Origins Of D&D

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In this interesting article from Kotaku, Rob Kuntz relates a history of early TSR that differs somewhat from the narrative we usually hear. It delves into the relationship between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (D&D's co-creators) and the actual development of the game, which dates back to Arneson in 1971.

Dungeons & Deceptions: The First D&D Players Push Back On The Legend Of Gary Gygax

Everybody calls Rob Kuntz last, he says. Those who want to know about the history of Dungeons & Dragons start with co-creator Gary Gygax’s kids, one of Gygax’s biographers, or D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast. As they’re wrapping things up, they might get around to dialing up Kuntz, a...

kotaku.com

 

[Umbran]

It’s certainly possible. TSR’s history is filled with What Ifs.

All of history is filled with What Ifs.

Heck, Kevin Kulp wrote Timewatch, a role playing game that is entirely about What Ifs! You wanna What If this, go run timewatch, in which something in history changes, and D&D never happens, so the game you are playing never happens!

 

[talien]

Okay, I want to talk about this.

For the last several years, I've become intensely interested in the history of D&D, and have made a dedicated effort to read up on it. I've acquired and read copies of the little brown books, supplements I-IV, Swords & Spells, Outdoor Survival, First Fantasy Campaign, the collector's edition of Kuntz's own El Raja Key Archive and, of course, Chainmail. I've likewise read through Playing at the World, all four volumes of Designers & Dragons and its "Platinum Appendix," Empire of Imagination, Heroic Worlds, Of Dice and Men, Art & Arcana, and Kuntz's book Dave Arneson's True Genius. (I've also got a copy of C. A. L. Totten's Strategos, but that's proving much harder to read, as are those first few dozen issues of Alarums & Excursions I bought a while back.)

With the exception of Dave Arenson's True Genius and the El Raja Key Archive, I own and have read all those books in detail as well. My assessment matches yours almost exactly -- the biggest flaw in the article is that major emotional flashpoints are cited without the context of WHEN they happened, and that matters quite a bit in the history of TSR, Gygax, etc.

Thank you for your detailed analysis, well done!

 

[Sacrosanct]

"Gary took all of Dave's notes and organized them in a publishing format."

Have you seen the way OD&D was written?!

 

[Celebrim]

To a degree. But, it looks like Gygax was the one who actually took the ideas, wrote them down, codified them, and then got them to market.

I think it is clear and has been clear for decades and was known to be back even in the '80s that Gygax was the co-creator of D&D along with Dave Arneson.

Looking back at both men's life, it's clear that Arneson was a brilliant man who played the first true RPG ever played - in part using Gygax's rules. But it isn't the fact that he used Gygax's tactical combat rules that made Gygax the co-creator. For all of Arneson's brilliance it's clear that there was one area he was deficient in, and that was communicating the ideas in his head to anyone except through first hand examples. He never was a great writer, and you can tell that by looking at the body of work he ultimately produced. Arneson could only distribute and disseminate an RPG by having people play one with him. When he showed that to Gygax, it was Gygax that formulated how to tell people how to do this new thing called an RPG for the first time just by reading some rules, and the act of doing that meant that those idea inherently became in part Gygax's.

I disagree that Gygax was motivated by jealousy of Arneson. Indeed, I think Gygax initially probably saw Arneson as the expert and at least an equal if not senior partner in the project to make Arenson's ideas distributable (and sellable), and the two had intended an amicable and equal relationship from the start. It's only after Arneson doesn't meet Gygax's standards for being prolific and productive that the relation starts breaking down and the two men begin to annoy each other severely and ultimately an acrimonious relationship develops. Gygax would go on to build a bunch of stuff. Arneson had the pedigree to be just as productive, even without Gygax's name, but never produced anything that had a bunch of impact. Gygax got the acclaim not because we didn't know Arneson had been first and had the ideas first, but because it was Gygax's stuff that we gravitated to playing. It's not judging between the two, but simply a fact of their varied talents. Partnerships are hard. Writing is hard.

Honestly, I thought the piece didn't do a lot of credit to the people quoted in it. Trying to tell the story as if one side or the other was the villain I think misses the point. Mistakes probably were made on both sides. But I don't think there is a black and white story here, that the writer of the piece seems to want to tell, and to the extent that they want to tell it that way, I think it is a matter of their personal biases and not good history.

See similar stories about the invention of Calculus, or who is The Founder of McDonalds.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I think it is clear and has been clear for decades and was known to be back even in the '80s that Gygax was the co-creator of D&D along with Dave Arneson.

Looking back at both men's life, it's clear that Arneson was a brilliant man who played the first true RPG ever played - in part using Gygax's rules. But it isn't the fact that he used Gygax's tactical combat rules that made Gygax the co-creator. For all of Arneson's brilliance it's clear that there was one area he was deficient in, and that was communicating the ideas in his head to anyone except through first hand examples. He never was a great writer, and you can tell that by looking at the body of work he ultimately produced. Arneson could only distribute and disseminate an RPG by having people play one with him. When he showed that to Gygax, it was Gygax that formulated how to tell people how to do this new thing called an RPG for the first time just by reading some rules, and the act of doing that meant that those idea inherently became in part Gygax's.

I disagree that Gygax was motivated by jealousy of Arneson. Indeed, I think Gygax initially probably saw Arneson as the expert and at least an equal if not senior partner in the project to make Arenson's ideas distributable (and sellable), and the two had intended an amicable and equal relationship from the start. It's only after Arneson doesn't meet Gygax's standards for being prolific and productive that the relation starts breaking down and the two men begin to annoy each other severely and ultimately an acrimonious relationship develops. Gygax would go on to build a bunch of stuff. Arneson had the pedigree to be just as productive, even without Gygax's name, but never produced anything that had a bunch of impact. Gygax got the acclaim not because we didn't know Arneson had been first and had the ideas first, but because it was Gygax's stuff that we gravitated to playing. It's not judging between the two, but simply a fact of their varied talents. Partnerships are hard. Writing is hard.

Honestly, I thought the piece didn't do a lot of credit to the people quoted in it. Trying to tell the story as if one side or the other was the villain I think misses the point. Mistakes probably were made on both sides. But I don't think there is a black and white story here, that the writer of the piece seems to want to tell, and to the extent that they want to tell it that way, I think it is a matter of their personal biases and not good history.

See similar stories about the invention of Calculus, or who is The Founder of McDonalds.

It seems odd to me that you'd dismiss and not believe the people who were actually there, but instead think it's something else you think might have happened, based only on speculation of who knows what because I don't think you were there either.

 

[Celebrim]

I also think it's unfair to tar Gygax as the Ray Kroc of this situation- someone ho just took someone else's idea and marketed it.

Well, I personally think it's unfair to tar Ray Kroc, because that situation if you look at the details turns out to be really complicated as well, and neither Ray Kroc nor the McDonald's Brothers come out as being as clean as a paladin in that one. First of all, the McDonald's brother didn't invent the fast food concept. They had gone to New Jersey and patterned their store after White Castle, whose techniques, marking, limited menu, and cooking hardware they had themselves shamelessly stolen. The brother repeatedly tried to screw Ray Kroc as well, including tricking him to sign a deal for "exclusive" franchising rights to a part of the country without telling him that they'd already signed away those rights to someone else and leaving him having paid for a useless piece of paper. If it were me, I would have immediately hit them up with a law suit for fraud, but Ray Kroc instead took the hit and bought out the other person they'd sold the franchise rights to and continued to try to work with the brothers even after he had learned that they were dishonest (intentionally or otherwise) as the day is long. Point is not that Ray Kroc is some shiny pillar of honesty and integrity, but that the sordid story about how McDonald's came to be is not a simple story of honest hard working brothers swindled out of their idea by a crooked villain either.

So, even if Gygax was the Ray Kroc of this situation, my sympathy wouldn't be entirely one way or the other. Mistakes were made on both sides of that relationship. It's likely that they were made on both sides of the Arneson/Gygax relationship as well. Gygax and Arneson at least were able to work their differences out better than Kroc and the McDonald's brothers.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

While I tell myself that they were in whole new territory with D&D and that it’s easy to judge the stuff decades later, yeah. The OD&D texts would have been pretty inscrutable to me without my knowledge of later editions. For someone back then coming to it without a person to explain it to them, I can only imagine how that would’ve gone. Clearly, though, that didn't stop it from becoming a lightning-in-the-bottle phenomenon.

"Gary took all of Dave's notes and organized them in a publishing format."

Have you seen the way OD&D was written?!

 

[Sacrosanct]

While I tell myself that they were in whole new territory with D&D and that it’s easy to judge the stuff decades later, yeah. The OD&D texts would have been pretty inscrutable to me without my knowledge of later editions. For someone back then coming to it without a person to explain it to them, I can only imagine how that would’ve gone. Clearly, though, that didn't stop it from becoming a lightning-in-the-bottle phenomenon.

When we say D&D was written in the 70s, we don't mean the 1770s . By comparison of other game rules there were published at the same time D&D was, it's obvious Gary was not a very good writer or layout specialist or editor. Those OD&D rules, even by 1970s game standards, were awfully written and presented. We can say that and also agree that the game took off. People are weird that way, with what catches on and what doesn't. I love me some 1e. Favorite edition of all time. I even like the odd way Gary presented things in the 1e books (with fancy words I had never heard before like "milieu"). But it's OK to admit that he wasn't the best writer or presenter of rules.

If Gary gets credit for packaging and presenting Dave's ideas, just imagine what would have happened with D&D if someone who was actually skilled in writing and presenting did it.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Unfortunately, it seems Gygax interpreted it as a power move, and a threat, and liked being a big fish in a small pond...

I was going to say that: Big fish in a small pond-ism. That happens a lot. I've dealt with people like that and in general they are a real pain.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I even like the odd way Gary presented things in the 1e books (with fancy words I had never heard before like "milieu"). But it's OK to admit that he wasn't the best writer or presenter of rules.

The 1E DMG was an awesome SAT word study guide. There is a surprising number of statisticians of my rough cohort who first learned about statistics due to it, to---while the field is hot now (in the guise of "data science") that was certainly not the case back in the day.