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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KevTheDabbler" data-source="post: 8743426" data-attributes="member: 7037455">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 href="https://cpdinosaurs.org/visit/visitors-guide/" target="_blank">A visitor's guide to the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs</a> ). 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.</blockquote>

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