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

[KevTheDabbler]

Sticking to what are the reported facts, Arneson had the vision of the new model, Gygax wrote it down...
Both are creators, none would have done the game alone. Then if we need to appoint one name only as the "true" creator, this is an opinion and it is subjective according to the info available, his own idea and his mindset...
It is like talking of an artist and an engineer: the artist provides fantasy, ideas and the "emotional" part... The engineer prodides the structure, the plan and its deplyoment...
It is up to everyone decide who (if one only has to be appointed) is the creator...
My opinion is towards Arneson because i am kind of "romantic" and i do see in his part the most valuable contribution.

I would interpret the situation a little differently.

Arneson had been successfully running Blackmoor for two years; a large, multi-player, character-focussed fantasy campaign comprised of rulers, generals and ‘heroes’ – with some overlap across the characters and players. As all aspects of the campaign had a major Kriegsspiel element (i.e. the players’ involvement with the game was presented to them through the information that their characters were aware of and the enhancement of player agency in the game by the prioritisation of referee’s/game-master’s rulings over formally set out rules) the game emerged through the on-going interaction of players and their characters (from kings to spear carriers) mixed with the guidance and imagination of the referee/games-master.

Arneson was unable to access the writing skills and vocabulary necessary to translate the game in to something that could be easily communicated to those outside of his immediate circle.

Gygax also lacked the necessary abilities. However, forever keen to turn a dollar on his hobby whenever the opportunity presented itself, he saw a way of presenting a bastardised version of aspects of Blackmoor through a rough mix of Chainmail and Megarry’s boardgame Dungeon! Though Arneson was disappointed with the result, Gygax, by tying him in with co-authorship and royalties, ensured that D&D was able to establish itself over several years with little meaningful competition.

 

[overgeeked]

Arneson was unable to access the writing skills and vocabulary necessary to translate the game in to something that could be easily communicated to those outside of his immediate circle.

This is the only part I'd quibble with. We don't have a copy of Arneson's notes to Gygax. So we don't know where the communication issue was, or if there even was one. Whether it was with Arneson's inability to communicate the idea or with Gygax's inability to understand, we don't know. Whether it was Arneson fully communicating the idea and Gygax completely understanding it, but simply deciding to change things anyway, we don't know. Access to Arneson's notes would answer the question.

 

[Malmuria]

Arneson was unable to access the writing skills and vocabulary necessary to translate the game in to something that could be easily communicated to those outside of his immediate circle.

Gygax also lacked the necessary abilities.

 

[KevTheDabbler]

Whether it was with Arneson's inability to communicate the idea or with Gygax's inability to understand, we don't know. (...) Access to Arneson's notes would answer the question.

I agree, there is a huge unknown in there, though, given their different experiences of game playing up to that point, I would imagine that it was a combination of both.

As a crude (or, possibly, obtuse) analogy for the way the concept of Blackmoor was recreated in Lake Geneva, one could use the life-size ‘dinosaur’ statues at Crystal Palace in south London (see A visitor's guide to the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs ). Created in the 1850’s, following a boom in paleontology over the previous 70 years and some major fossil discoveries just 30 years earlier, the statues represented the most up to date consensus of how the larger creatures known at that time would have looked. However, though the sculptures have a majesty of their own, they were based on interpretations of partial skeletal fossil finds and, as a consequence, differ quite considerably (in some cases) from the current consensus.

Likewise, Arneson turned up at Gygax’s house with fragments; the most portable chunk of the Blackmoor campaign (the dungeons) shorn of: all bar one of his players, the wider political landscape the dungeons existed in, and several years of collective experience of the ‘active’ referee role (as introduced by Wesley through his stripped-down Strategos and the Braunstein games).

While stunned by the gaming experience, Gygax’s only terms of reference were fantasy Chainmail (from which Arneson had borrowed and repurposed much of the terminology) and the conceptually ‘easier to digest’ Megarry game, Dungeon. Add in Gygax’s desire for a fully codified rule set against Arneson’s preference for a more organically-derived ruling-based system (Gygax's reaction to Arneson's notes suggests they were more likely 'ideas to bear in mind' rather than rules per se) and it seems obvious why Gygax’s impression of how to realise the Fantasy Game as a product was so at odds with what Arneson thought he had demonstrated.

 

[darjr]

Dave did publish a game to his own specs meant to compete with D&D.

Adventures in Fantasy.

Adventures in Fantasy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

It’s probably the closest you’ll get to what Dave intended or would have done as a product.

Though I admit it was written in the shadow of D&D and meant to compete with it. I think Dave really thought it might have competed well against D&D. It absolutely did not.

 

[darjr]

I wonder who owns the rights? I’d like to see it for sale in pdf at least, either or both versions.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Gygax also lacked the necessary abilities. However, forever keen to turn a dollar on his hobby whenever the opportunity presented itself, he saw a way of presenting a bastardised version of aspects of Blackmoor through a rough mix of Chainmail and Megarry’s boardgame Dungeon! Though Arneson was disappointed with the result, Gygax, by tying him in with co-authorship and royalties, ensured that D&D was able to establish itself over several years with little meaningful competition.

....uh, no. This is just not in accord with the historical evidence. And it is pretty well documented now.

First, you are incorrectly portraying Gygax as someone "forever keen to turn a dollar on his hobby" while Arneson is some, what, pure Gamer?

Not at all true. In fact, total bunk. Arneson tried over and over again to make money on the hobby- he just was terrible at it. He didn't want anything to do with D&D because he thought the money was in making figures - and then, when he saw the actual money TSR was making, both demanded royalties for all the products he could, while, at the same time, told everyone that it was a terrible product. He burned EVERYONE that he got into business with. The way he made money was by suing TSR and Gygax.

Next, as much as I appreciate Arneson as a creative force (especially w/r/t DMing), Gygax certainly didn't try and tie him in with co-authorship and royalties in order to avoid competition. That's so far from the historical truth that ... well, it's not correct. Gygax was offering other creators what he thought were the correct terms when he started TSR (which was supposed to publish a number of different rules)- as he learned, the imprecise wording of the terms ended up biting the company in the posterior.

Seriously, all of this has now been covered well in books. not sure why you feel the need to re-argue things incorrectly.

 

[David Howery]

both Arneson and EGG were unprepared for the stunning success of D&D... and the financial rewards of it all. Neither had any great business skills either. Such a situation was bound to be troublesome...

 

[KevTheDabbler]

....uh, no. This is just not in accord with the historical evidence. And it is pretty well documented now.

First, you are incorrectly portraying Gygax as someone "forever keen to turn a dollar on his hobby" while Arneson is some, what, pure Gamer?

Not at all true. In fact, total bunk. Arneson tried over and over again to make money on the hobby- he just was terrible at it. He didn't want anything to do with D&D because he thought the money was in making figures - and then, when he saw the actual money TSR was making, both demanded royalties for all the products he could, while, at the same time, told everyone that it was a terrible product. He burned EVERYONE that he got into business with. The way he made money was by suing TSR and Gygax.

Next, as much as I appreciate Arneson as a creative force (especially w/r/t DMing), Gygax certainly didn't try and tie him in with co-authorship and royalties in order to avoid competition. That's so far from the historical truth that ... well, it's not correct. Gygax was offering other creators what he thought were the correct terms when he started TSR (which was supposed to publish a number of different rules)- as he learned, the imprecise wording of the terms ended up biting the company in the posterior.

Seriously, all of this has now been covered well in books. not sure why you feel the need to re-argue things incorrectly.

It is pretty well documented that Gygax was keen to make enough income from his hobby to support his family. Despite Chainmail (with the fantasy supplement) selling 100+ copies a month, Gygax was disappointed with the insufficient return he was receiving.

Arneson, at that point, was only making pennies from the hobby as a result of his collaborations with Gygax. But, as he was younger and didn't have a family to support, it was less of a concern to him.

The money that Arneson received as co-author of D&D was only that which Gygax had agreed with him. That Gygax decided to try and freeze him out was Gygax's issue.

Whatever his motives, Gygax did tie Arneson into the commercial success of D&D despite the fact that Arneson really wasn't happy with the direction it took. If Arneson hadn't been tied in, then the launch of the publication could have seen it embroiled in bad feelings as Arneson and the Twin Cities crowd could have gone to far greater lengths to bad mouth it and Gygax.

Seriously, all of this has now been covered well in books. not sure why you feel the need to re-argue things incorrectly.

 

[Parmandur]

This didn't age well over the past year.

I mean, or still might be a worthwhile subject of study, for informational purposes.