D&D General Dave Arneson: Is He Underrated, or Overrated?

[Parmandur]

I loved Game Wizards, and similarly came away with a different opinion of Arneson (not to mention Gygax and Lorraine Williams).

Overrated is difficult to assess without context, but I do think Arneson generally gets more credit than he deserves. He definitely was the first Dungeon Master and came up with key ideas, like levelling. On the other hand, he did so as part of a gaming group that was sort of collectively building towards such concepts, and he was not the first in that group to act as a sort of DM-like referee for war gaming, if not specifically a fantasy dungeon crawl.

Nevertheless, it is indisputable that Arneson got the thing working that Gygax was able to turn into D&D, and so no Arneson, no D&D. However, after that his contributions diminish rapidly, and while he typically blamed others, especially Gygax, for this, in reading the actual records it is pretty clear that Arneson had trouble actually producing material. And not just for TSR - he had contract after contract in which he basically failed to deliver what he promised as far as actual work.

Ultimately, he comes off as a great ideas guy who wasn't very good when it became time to produce.

Great Dungeon Master, lousy writer, it seems.

 

[mamba]

Great Dungeon Master, lousy writer, it seems.

lousy at producing content in general from what I have read

I am not sure who said it, but I think it sums it up perfectly: without Arneson, no one would play D&D, without Gygax, only one basement in Minnesota would.

 

[Parmandur]

lousy at producing content in general from what I have read

I am not sure who said it, but I think it sums it up perfectly: without Arneson, no one would play D&D, without Gygax, only one basement in Minnesota would.

You really couldn't make this story up.

 

[darjr]

lousy at producing content in general from what I have read

I am not sure who said it, but I think it sums it up perfectly: without Arneson, no one would play D&D, without Gygax, only one basement in Minnesota would.

It does seem like RPGs were brewing though.

I wonder what we might have gotten if it wasn’t for those two. I think a list could be made of what we probably wouldn’t have. Like Beholders and dungeon delving.

 

[Parmandur]

It does seem like RPGs were brewing though.

I wonder what we might have gotten if it wasn’t for those two. I think a list could be made of what we probably wouldn’t have. Like Beholders and dungeon delving.

So many D&D-isms have transcended the tabletop gaming hobby scene through video games and various art and culture, it is inconceivable me what 90's and later pop culture, let along TTRPGs, would look like without this particular set of events and influences with these particular people. Truly wild.

 

[mamba]

I wonder what we might have gotten if it wasn’t for those two.

yes, would be interesting to see what would have broken through in that case, what the attributes would have been, the classes, skills, spells, ... what the founding lore would have been

I assume the first one would have happened maybe a year or two later at most, whether it would have gotten a similar level of success and founded a genre or fizzled out with no one today remembering it is entirely unclear

 

[Alzrius]

I’ve read the book

You might find reading Dave Arneson's True Genius, by Rob Kuntz, worthwhile if you want to understand the pro-Arneson standpoint. Though I should warn you that despite its relative brevity (i.e. being only seventy pages or so in length), it is not light reading!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You might find reading Dave Arneson's True Genius, by Rob Kuntz, worthwhile if you want to understand the pro-Arneson standpoint. Though I should warn you that despite its relative brevity (i.e. being only seventy pages or so in length), it is not light reading!

So .... how do I put this. You know I have a strong interest in history. And a strong interest in theory.

I read the book, and let's just say that I found no reason to make a post about it.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Autumnal]

At one point I tallied up parallel inventions underway, but it was years back…let’s see.

M.A..R. Barker and Greg Stafford were both using their preexisting worlds (Tekumel and Glorantha, respectively) in wargaming, and had storytelling possibilities in mind. I don’t know what kind of mechanics Stafford was using; Barker was refining his Perfected system.

Steve Perrin and friends were doing some wargsming with elements of what became Basic Role Playing and RuneQuest. Anyone know how well they and Stafford knew each other circa 1973?

Freeform collaborative storytelling was a thing in sf fandom and growing in volume. Someone like Lee Gold would almost certainly have set up something like Alarums & Exuding sons within a year or few to discuss various kinds of mechanical underpinnings, conceptual tools, and writeups.

And that’s all US-based. I have No Clue<tm> what was going in the same late ‘60s/early ‘70s era elsewhere.

Charles Fort wrote that “we steam-engine when it’s steam-engine time”. I think it was that time for RPGs.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

It does seem like RPGs were brewing though.

I wonder what we might have gotten if it wasn’t for those two. I think a list could be made of what we probably wouldn’t have. Like Beholders and dungeon delving.

Without either Arneson or Gygax moving, is not possible Mike Carr or Dave Wesley cobbled together something?