D&D General When D&D Co-Creator Dave Arneson Asked WotC For A Job!

Back in 1997, after WotC had purchased the failing TSR (and D&D), and just prior to the launch of D&D 3E, Dave Arneson -- who co-created D&D in the 1970s along with Gary Gygax -- wrote to WotC president Peter Adkison asking to be put in charge of TSR.

Ben Riggs -- author of Slaying the Dragon -- discovered Arneson's letter to Adkison while researching his history of D&D.

Newly Discovered Letters Reveal D&D's Co-Creator Asked to be put in Charge of D&D in 1997 and it Did Not Go Well — Ben Riggs

While writing my book, Slaying the Dragon , I discovered a number of fascinating historical documents hidden from public view until now. Over the coming months, I’m going to be sharing some of these captivating documents with you. The first is a 1997 letter from D&D co-creator Dave Ar

www.writerbenriggs.com

The letter was full of typos -- Arneson even got Adkison's name wrong! According to Riggs, Adkison did not reply, and Arneson wrote to him a second time.

 

[Von Ether]

"How the mighty of fallen and the lowly have risen."

"My relations were never good, through no fault of my own, BUT I know their product line. And I have a pretty darn good idea what TSR should be doing with it."

"So what does Dave want? Well I would like to run TSR for you."

Sad thing is in a couple of years he could have gotten a sinecure out of them riding the OSR boom. "We've got Dave Arneson on staff!" Let him make one mod "by the original creator of D&D" and boom, everyone wins.

This was 1997. The OSR didn’t take until off until a decade later? Sadly he passed in 2009 so his time to enjoy a resurgence, like Gary did with Castles and Crusades, would be have been short.

And as previously mentioned, he seemed to have issues with finishing assignments so he might have been a mixed blessing for even team that had it together, never mind if he had hooked up with some superfans with no publishing experience.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'm reminded of when I was about to graduate from undergrad and sent out any number of resumes with both a line about "keen attention to detail" and a grammatical error in the cover letter.

Since then, I've long believed that the longer you make a cover letter, the more you're just increasing your chances of shooting yourself in the foot, and that has been generally borne out by my experiences hiring people.

I'm also pretty sure that calling your prospective employer "lowly," even in the past tense, isn't great. There are enough warning signs in that letter to disqualify a person from an entry level position, let alone being in charge of one of a company's top lines.

This was one of the most painful things I ever read. Like, how could he have read this over and thought it was a good idea to send in this state??

 

[David Howery]

between "Slaying the Dragon" and "Game Wizards", it's painfully obvious that both Arneson and EGG received some substantial amounts of money and seemed to have squandered a lot of it... both were rather happy to be bought out by Adkison when he was looking to clear up the legalities of the D&D IP....

 

[adamantyr]

Yikes... That is one badly written letter. It's no wonder Adkison never replied.

Now I'm anxious about the 2nd letter where he laid out what he would do with the game... Cringe coming!

 

[Mull Ponders]

For what it's worth, there's a coda to this story that isn't mentioned in Riggs' post, which is that once WotC's acquisition was complete, part of Adkison's plan to bring D&D back to health meant buying out Arneson's royalties to "Dungeons & Dragons" as a brand (which was why AD&D had the "Advanced" part added to it: to avoid paying Arneson those royalties under the idea that AD&D was a separate game). I'm not sure exactly how large of a check Adkison wrote, but my understanding was that it was fairly substantial.

On a broader note, I wonder if this is part of a lead-in toward a new book from Riggs. I attended his seminars at Gen Con, and his one about the process of writing 3E that went on at WotC made it very clear that he has a lot more material than was published in Slaying the Dragon.

In a seminar, Ben Riggs described the check Arenson got as "low six figures". Apparently Gary Gyax and his ex-wife also got similar checks.

 

[billd91]

Just another reason why fans should never deify anyone, even original creators.

Sure, but there are worse ways for a celebrity to be undermined that being something of a bumbler. I daresay Arneson comes away from this looking better than MAR Barker looks after recent disclosures.

 

[Parmandur]

Sure, but there are worse ways for a celebrity to be undermined that being something of a bumbler. I daresay Arneson comes away from this looking better than MAR Barker looks after recent disclosures.

Not necessarily, Arneson was personal friends with M.A.R. Barker, that's why he publishes with TSR to begin with. Based on Game Wizards, Arneson's weird personal honor code and "Libertarian" views played a huge part in his Salinger-esque bouncing off of gainful employment.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Not necessarily, Arneson was personal friends with M.A.R. Barker, that's why he publishes with TSR to begin with. Based on Game Wizards, Arneson's weird personal honor code and "Libertarian" views played a huge part in his Salinger-esque bouncing off of gainful employment.

I mean ... that does not look great now, does it.

 

[Parmandur]

I mean ... that does not look great now, does it.

I'm not saying that Arneson agreed with Barker, or knew what Barker thought. That would be a logical fallacy. However, fact is that Arneson had a long standing friendship and spent significant hobby time with the dude, which is unfortunate.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'm not saying that Arneson agreed with Barker, or knew what Barker thought. That would be a logical fallacy. However, fact is that Arneson had a long standing friendship and spent significant hobby time with the dude, which is unfortunate.

No, and I wouldn't want to tar people just by association. But at a certain point, you have to think some people back then knew, and just didn't care.

And I think that there was a higher tolerance for people who ... admired (is that the preferred word) the Axis in WW2 among the wargaming set than there was in the general population.