D&D General Dave Arneson’s Pitch for the future of TSR and D&D in ‘97 to Peter Adkison

Following his 1997 application for a job at WotC, D&D co-creator Dave Arneson wrote a second letter to WoTC founder Peter Adkison and made a pitch about how he'd run TSR and D&D.

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...

www.enworld.org

Despite his excitement his plans seem underwhelming.

My heart already bleeds for Arneson. The man has never received his due as D&D’s co-creator. He never made CEO. He wasn’t on Futurama. TSR and Gary Gygax did him dirty. (This has been explored in my prior post and in Game Wizards by Jon Peterson.)

This letter is Arneson’s moment. If he wants to make D&D for a living again, he has to put points on the board, and he has to do it with this letter. Now. But he hasn’t even bothered to check his punctuation!

Six pages of his research and plans follow. Here’s a summary, but I’m pasting the letter below if you want to thrill to every misspelled word.

In the main, Arneson’s thoughts are nothing you wouldn’t have heard hanging around a game store in the spring of 1997. He said that all of TSR’s projects were “dead in the water,” which the whole world knew as the company hadn’t published anything for months.

See Ben Riggs article for the full letter and more of his observations.

Why D&D’s Co-Creator Didn’t Get Hired by Wizards of the Coast — Ben Riggs

Unfortunately Dave Arneson’s Plans for Dungeons & Dragons in 1997 Were Not Great

www.writerbenriggs.com

 

[Olaf the Stout]

There's a saying that comes to mind about how great men (that is, men who accomplish notable deeds) are rarely good men.

Also, it seems that absolute power almost always corrupts absolutely.

 

[Mark Craddock]

The Irony no one will actually realize.

5e took off because they discarded the ideas of Dancey and the old guard of WotC and their philosophy behind 3e, and actually utilized some of the ideas of Arneson (that he put in these letters, though they were arrived at by different means, the ideas are surprisingly similar) in the creation and continued production of 5e.

The OSR doesn't exist without Dancey and the OGL and 5E was designed to capitalize upon it.

 

[darjr]

The OSR doesn't exist without Dancey and the OGL and 5E was designed to capitalize upon it.

Also the OGL was brought back with 5e after WotC abandoned it.

Also the original Dancy and Peters plan was to let 3rd parties do all the other books and WotC profit from the sale of the core, which is also a 5e cornerstone.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Creative types are notoriously bad with spelling/grammar so I wouldn't hold that against him.

I know a ton of creative types and I don't find this generalization to be at all true.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The OSR doesn't exist without Dancey and the OGL and 5E was designed to capitalize upon it.

I think once we're further from Dancey's time on stage, the bigger a deal he and the OGL will be seen to be. His long-term impacts on the RPG industry may well put him in the top tier of industry innovators, even if it's hard to see that through the memories of the d20 glut.

 

[Marc Radle]

I know a ton of creative types and I don't find this generalization to be at all true.

Agreed - that’s quite an incorrect, and frankly more than a little insulting generalization to make.

 

[adamantyr]

Creative types are notoriously bad with spelling/grammar so I wouldn't hold that against him. Editors might..

No way could he have been a senior manager.
Back then WotC required even the current ex-TSR staff to move to Washington to keep their jobs.
At best, he could've been a consultant on something but probably had too many years out of the game. But even EGG contributed articles to Dragon.

Creativity has nothing to do with spelling and grammar. It's about communication. And not spelling the last name of the person you're writing to correctly is just sheer laziness.

I have serious issues with Gary's writing as well. For him, it was not the spelling but his overwrought prose style. He writes like a salesman who wants to awe you with all the big words he knows. And in that pile of words you MAY find a rule, ambiguously defined.

 

[Yaarel]

With 3e in the making, WotC planned to move D&D in a totally new direction.

To hire either Gygax or Arneson in any prominent capacity would likely prevent what WotC planned to do.

WotC compensated both Gygax and Arneson financially.

The situation was somewhat painful, but overall ethical.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have serious issues with Gary's writing as well. For him, it was not the spelling but his overwrought prose style. He writes like a salesman who wants to awe you with all the big words he knows. And in that pile of words you MAY find a rule, ambiguously defined.

IME, that's not a salesman thing, that's the mark of someone who doesn't feel their intelligence has been properly recognized over the years.

I think it's fair to say that, in another world, Gary would have made a great college professor, which I think would have suited him better, but circumstances meant that, until he co-created D&D, his world was much smaller.

 

[Alzrius]

IME, that's not a salesman thing, that's the mark of someone who doesn't feel their intelligence has been properly recognized over the years.

I think there's context that's not being recognized with regard to Gary's writing style: that he was trying to emulate the pulps that he enjoyed, and which played a strong influence on his development of D&D. His writing here on EN World, that I recall, wasn't quite so florid.