TSR The Dueling Essays of Arneson & Gygax

A recent article and documentary about Dave Arneson's involvement in Dungeons & Dragons shares a different perspective on the game's creation, with a particular emphasis on Rob Kuntz's testimony. Some of it contradicts what Gary Gygax positioned as D&D's origins. Fortunately we can read what both designers thoughts in their very own words -- published in the same book.

Alzrius pointed out that both Arneson and Gygax contributed essays to Lawrence Schick's Heroic Worlds. What's startling is how their essays contradict each other just pages apart.

Heroic Worlds, published in 1991, was an attempt to catalog every tabletop role-playing games publication. It was a massive undertaking that was possible only because of the limited scope of the hobby. Thanks to electronic publishing, the Open Game License, and the Internet, tabletop gaming products have exploded -- DriveThruRPG has over 30,000 products alone -- making it impossible to produce a book of this scope ever again. It also provides a snapshot in time of the thoughts of various game designers, including Steve Jackon, Jennell Jaquays, Tom Moldavy, Sandy Petersen, Ken St. Andre, Michael Stackpole, Greg Stafford, Erick Wujcik and more.

Arneson kicks off the D&D controversy on page 131:

My first set of miniatures rules was for fighting out battles with sailing ships. This led me to meet several people, including Gary Gygax, at an early GenCon. These people later participated in a historical campaign I refereed. When I began refereeing what later became D&D in Minnesota, I mentioned it to them. They were interested, and when some of us went down to visit we all played this strange game...the lads in Lake Geneva got turned on to it. Tactical Studies Rules, a Lake Geneva-based game company, was already publishing historical rules and was willing to do D&D.

Gygax follows up on the origins of D&D in a short one-page essay on the very next page:

In the late 1960s a club called the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association met weekly at my home for military/naval miniatures gaming. From this activity sprang Chainmail. The D&D game was drawn from its rules, and that is indisputable. Chainmail was the progenitor of D&D, but the child grew to excel its parent.

This point is disputed by RPG archivist, Paul Stromberg, in the Kotaku article, "Dungeons & Deceptions: The First D&D Players Push Back On The Legend Of Gary Gygax":

“People think that Blackmoor arose from Chainmail, and thus Chainmail gave rise to Dungeons & Dragons. That is not correct,” said Stormberg, the RPG historian. While Chainmail, amongst other things, was an influence on Blackmoor, Arneson’s game was “entirely new,” he said. “It’s a game entirely unlike Chainmail. It’s like saying a Rodin uses red and a Picasso uses red so they’re the same style of painting.”

This perspective is shared by Arneson himself in his first essay:

Contrary to rumor, the players and I were all quite in control of our mental processes when D&D was designed. I also hasten to point out hat the Chainmail connection was the use of the Combat Matrix and nothing more. Find a first-edition Chainmail and compare it to a first-edition Original D&D someday and you will see that for yourself: not a hit point, character class, level, or armor class, much less any role-playing aspects in Chainmail.

Arneson's perspective on the game industry comes through in the other essays scattered throughout the book. Here's his version of how Blackmoor came about:

I originally began with a simple dungeon and expanded it into several dungeons loosely organized as a campaign. The rules were not really an organized set, more notes on what I had earlier. Today people expect a lot more detail, coherency, organization, and story.

Here's Arneson's thoughts on writing a scenario:

When I design a scenario, sometimes the plot or situation will come from books I read, and sometimes it just pops into my head...Changes are made, and then the work is sent off to be butchered--er, ah, edited, I mean...The original Blackmoor supplement included what was the very first published scenario. My intention was that it would serve as a guideline for other GMs to design their own. Instead, it spawn an entire "service" industry. Oh, well...

And finally here's what Arneson thought of the game industry:

My serious advice to the would-be role-playing-game author will sound cruel and heartless, and most will be offended and not listen. To would be game designers I say: seek useful employment in another field...play your own house rules with your friends and associates; it will be less painful and far more fun. (On the other hand, frankly, I wouldn't have listened to an old fogey like me.)

Gygax's thoughts on the subject of D&D are well-known; Arneson's less so, and Heroic Worlds is a trove of his perspective on tabletop gaming and publishing, undoubtedly informed by his legal tussles with TSR. The difference between Arenson and Gygax's approach to gaming is starkly illustrated in their essays. And yet, despite their long and sometimes antagonistic history, Gygax ends his essay on a hopeful note:

Dave Arneson and I have spoken frequently since the time we devised D&D. We don't plan to collaborate on another game, but just maybe one day he'll decide to combine talents again.

Did Gygax mean "we'll" instead of "he'll"? Gygax ends the essay with our only answer: Who knows?

 

[Alzrius]

First of all, I am highly suspicious of the claim that Blackmoor was the first time folks played something we might recognize as a roleplaying game. Parlour games were a thing for a hundred years or more. Murder mysteries were a thing. Shared storytelling was a thing.

There was a little more to it than that. Arneson's Blackmoor game was, by all accounts, the first time that a game featured a combination of all of the following elements: 1) players played a specific individual, 2) wherein anything could be attempted, and 3) the game had a referee, along with 4) characters had statistical measurements of their abilities, and 5) those same characters were used in subsequent sessions, along with 6) the characters were able to improve their abilities across those sessions, with those improvements being represented via the game mechanics.

That all of those were featured together was the key. The first four were certainly featured in various other games prior to the invention of the role-playing game, but the fifth one was far more rare (and I'm not even sure any other formal or commercial games had it), and none utilized the sixth until Blackmoor. All of those together were what let you summon Captain RPG we'd now recognize as a role-playing game.

 

[Reynard]

There was a little more to it than that. Arneson's Blackmoor game was, by all accounts, the first time that a game featured a combination of all of the following elements: 1) players played a specific individual, 2) wherein anything could be attempted, and 3) the game had a referee, along with 4) characters had statistical measurements of their abilities, and 5) those same characters were used in subsequent sessions, along with 6) the characters were able to improve their abilities across those sessions, with those improvements being represented via the game mechanics.

That all of those were featured together was the key. The first four were certainly featured in various other games prior to the invention of the role-playing game, but the fifth one was far more rare (and I'm not even sure any other formal or commercial games had it), and none utilized the sixth until Blackmoor. All of those together were what let you summon Captain RPG we'd now recognize as a role-playing game.

Interesting.

I'd like to know more about the original Blackmoor campaign prior to Gygax's involvement.

 

[Tony Vargas]

@Tony Vargas
It looks like you're quoting and responding to my quotes- other than the very first sentence, that's not me that you're quoting.

Whoops. Still getting used to multi-quote that actually works!

 

[Yaarel]

I see no contradictions between the perspectives of Arneson and Gygax.

I feel Arneson deserves credit for the lightning-flash inspiration that caused D&D to come into existence: a narrative roleplaying game.

However, the technical mechanics were minimal and inconsistent for his freeform shared imagination.

Gygax embraced Arneson’s concept of narrative imagination as a game. But Gygax developed more rigorous mechanics for this game.

Collaborating together, the Chainmail of Gygax (completely) outgrew its original mechanics via adopting the vision of Blackmoor, and the Blackmoor of Arneson crystallized a more objective gaming mechanical structure.

Together, Arneson and Gygax seem like a dynamic Yang-and-Yin, where the Yang compelling idea of Arneson conflicts with the Yin mechanical details of Gygax. The birth of D&D is the Dao. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

 

[Yaarel]

I stop short of saying any one ‘systematized’ the rules for Original D&D.

Even D&D 1e is an ad-hoc primordial soup of ad hoc, incomplete, inconsistent, and often unusable rules.

But in the rawness of D&D 0e and 1e, one can perhaps indirectly glimpse the excitement and wonder of the paradigm shift taking place.

This new ‘game’ was in effect teaching its players how reality works − and how to reinvent a new reality.

Make a better reality. Imagine a better reality. Figure out what it takes to make it function.

 

[Yaarel]

As far as Arneson/Gygax, I think Arneson must be given credit for creating the idea of roleplaying, but Gygax must be given credit for editing and publishing it and making the game we all know and play possible.

Yeah, that is my perception too.

We must give Arneson the credit for inventing roleplaying games. The very concept. It is a watershed moment in human history.



From that moment on, we have popular ways to rethink reality, rethink religions, (which is why it was so threatening in its day), not just by telling stories, but the ways to implement the invented reality and participate in it. And today, we have videogames, virtual reality, and we literally cannot even imagine how humanity will be 100 years from now.

 

[Reynard]

I stop short of saying any one ‘systematized’ the rules for Original D&D.

Even D&D 1e is an ad-hoc primordial soup of ad hoc, incomplete, inconsistent, and often unusable rules.

But in the rawness of D&D 0e and 1e, one can perhaps indirectly glimpse the excitement and wonder of the paradigm shift taking place.

This new ‘game’ was in effect teaching its players how reality works − and how to reinvent a new reality.

Make a better reality. Imagine a better reality. Figure out what it takes to make it function.

By the time of AD&D, it was highly systemetized. You may not like the systems in place, but they were entirely intentional and purposefully designed. Really, only the little brown books had that sense of incompleteness, based largely on those books requiring Chainmail to use (my presumption has always been that D&D was designed to sell Chainmail at first, but I don't know for sure).

 

[Yaarel]

By the time of AD&D, it was highly systemetized. You may not like the systems in place, but they were entirely intentional and purposefully designed.

Heh, your perspective might vary. But I consider Advanced D&D 1e and 2e to be the Cambrian Explosion of the primordial Cambrian Period of roleplaying life.

Roleplaying evolved much since then.

I credit 3e for systematizing D&D, and 4e for understanding the mechanics − its machinery, math, and balance.

 

[Garthanos]

Heh, your perspective might vary. But I consider Advanced D&D 1e and 2e to be the Cambrian Explosion of the primordial Cambrian Period of roleplaying life.

Roleplaying evolved much since then.

I credit 3e for systematizing D&D, and 4e for understanding the mechanics − its machinery, math, and balance.

You wouldnt happen to be an Engineer?

 

[Yaarel]

Gary Gygax sometimes claims more credit than due, even claiming intellectual credit for the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not Lord of the Rings tropes.

So, when a historian seeks to accurately reconstruct earlier events of the origins of the D&D, one must take the overestimation by Gygax himself with a grain of salt.

Part of the obfuscation of credit comes from the legal lawsuits, which disincentivized honesty about where credit is due.

The historian must honestly take all of these evidences into account.