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?

 

[Garthanos]

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.

That bit may have been in response to litigation but I always considered it such an obvious lie it really didnt do him credit.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Regarding the Kuntz thread. It is a great thread and like what Kunts says.

If there is a particular thing he said, feel free to cite it in detail.

He explains how the game came to be, and goes in pretty fair detail of that process of progression from 1972 all the way up to publication. And it contradicts what you're saying. So for you to have read that thread, and claim what you claim knowing it's not accurate, is, well, odd.

 

[Garthanos]

Just to say I meant "free kriegsspiel" not kriegspiel.

make it easier to look up when I am running down that path.

 

[Yaarel]

For example, the Kuntz thread calls attention to the Foreward of the original D&D 0e.



"ONCE UPON A TIME, long, long ago there was a little group known as the Castle and Crusade Society. Their fantasy rules were published, and to this writer's knowledge, brought about much of the current interest in fantasy wargaming.

For a time the group grew and prospered, and Dave Arneson decided to begin a medieval fantasy campaign game for his active Twin Cities club. From the map of the "land" of the "Great Kingdom" and environs — the territory of C & C Society — Dave located a nice bog wherein to nest the weird enclave of "Blackmoor," a spot between the "Giant Kingdom" and the fearsome "Egg of Coot."

From the CHAINMAIL fantasy rules he drew ideas for a far more complex and exciting game, and thus began a campaign which still thrives as of this writing!

In due course the news reached my ears, and THE RESULT is [Dungeons & Dragons] what you have in your hands at this moment."



This is Gygax himself talking. Gygax himself admits that Dungeons & Dragons is the ‘result’ of the campaign that Arneson and his group are playing.

No doubt this is true, because Gygax seems to hate admitting authorship to anyone else (not even Tolkien!).

Arneson is what became D&D.

Arneson and his players invented it.

 

[Superbeast20]

This seems really a common problem when you look back at something that blew up to become big today. It was slapdash ideas and something came out of it.

No one was keeping track of this stuff and then years pass and memory gets fuzzy. Interesting read.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Sacrosanct]

For example, the Kuntz thread calls attention to the Foreward of the original D&D 0e.



"ONCE UPON A TIME, long, long ago there was a little group known as the Castle and Crusade Society. Their fantasy rules were published, and to this writer's knowledge, brought about much of the current interest in fantasy wargaming.

For a time the group grew and prospered, and Dave Arneson decided to begin a medieval fantasy campaign game for his active Twin Cities club. From the map of the "land" of the "Great Kingdom" and environs — the territory of C & C Society — Dave located a nice bog wherein to nest the weird enclave of "Blackmoor," a spot between the "Giant Kingdom" and the fearsome "Egg of Coot."

From the CHAINMAIL fantasy rules he drew ideas for a far more complex and exciting game, and thus began a campaign which still thrives as of this writing!

In due course the news reached my ears, and THE RESULT is [Dungeons & Dragons] what you have in your hands at this moment."



This is Gygax himself talking. Gygax himself admits that Dungeons & Dragons is the ‘result’ of the campaign that Arneson and his group are playing.

No doubt this is true, because Gygax seems to hate admitting authorship to anyone else (not even Tolkien!).

Arneson is what became D&D.

Arneson and his players invented it.

Dave didn't invent OD&D like you said. He invented the concept of a TTRPG (and arguably the first RPG). Those are not the same things. Even by that forward you quoted, it says how Dave used the Chainmail rules. Combine that with Rob's recollection of history in the other thread, and what we know of OD&D, and it's simply not true what you claimed. You either didn't read Rob's thread, or you have no idea what OD&D actually is or how it grew and morphed.

 

[Garthanos]

Eh, I think it's more complicated than that. People repeat things so much that they do believe them. I think that Gygax truly believed his game was separate from Tolkien, because he wasn't much of a Tolkien guy ... but the trouble is, that Tolkien is all over D&D.

If not a lie then an extraordinary error of ignorance of what seems extravagant scale. The idea he put literal hobbits and rangers and Balrogs and so on in without knowing sources....

So it's a category error, in many ways, to try and say "X PERSON INVENTED THIS ALL BY HIMSELF!

Even E=mc^2/sqroot(1-v^2/c^2) had foundational precedent - and involved others who were better mathematicians than Einstein involved

 

[Sacrosanct]

It's like saying that Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot invented the Model T because he came up with the concept of, and built the first working self propelled vehicle.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*