Dave Who? Arneson Gameday Celebrates Other D&D Creator

[RealAlHazred]

This should be saved for the information on Don Kaye.

Originally posted by MaximumHavoc:

D&D in the News
Dave Who? Arneson Gameday Celebrates Other D&D Creator
2011 September 29
By Ethan Gilsdorf

“Fantasy role-playing games essentially begin with Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign,” says Tavis Allison, organizer of the Third Annual Arneson Memorial Gameday that takes place this Saturday, Oct 1, in New York, Minneapolis and across the Internet.

Talk about this news here.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Not to take away from Dave's monumental accomplishments, but I wonder if anybody will ever talk about the other other person who created D&D: Don Kaye.  Don Kaye is virtually unknown because he tragically died before D&D became popular.  But according to Gygax he was an equal contributor to D&D along with he and Dave. 

 

[RealAlHazred]

Originally posted by Hocus-Smokus:

Not to take away from Dave's monumental accomplishments, but I wonder if anybody will ever talk about the other other person who created D&D: Don Kaye.  Don Kaye is virtually unknown because he tragically died before D&D became popular.  But according to Gygax he was an equal contributor to D&D along with he and Dave. 

It's strange...looking through all of the OD&D material that I have, I see Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, Hugh Kantrell, Rob Kuntz, Steve Marsh, Tim Kask (editor), Dave Sutherland (art), Mike Bell, Tracy Lesch (art), Tom Keogh (in memorium), Brian Blume, Jim Ward, Dennis Sustare, Gary Kwapisz (art), Deborah Larson (art), Alan Lucion, Mike Mornard, Jeff Key, Greg Bell (art), Jeff Perren (Chainmail), and Don Lowry (art).

Not a single mention in any of the OD&D books of Don Kaye. I wonder what to make of that, if the claim is true that Mr. Kaye was as much of a contributor as Gygax says he was?

 

[RealAlHazred]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Don Kaye died in January 1976, before most of those books were published.  He is listed as a co-author of the very first D&D publication.  This was back when TSR still thought it would have popular RPGs in every genre, and thought Boot Hill would be as big as D&D.  Kaye was a huge fan of Westerns (Don Kaye's character in Gygax' Greyhawk campaign was Murlynd, the gunslinger-cum-fantasy adventurer), so he stopped working on D&D stuff and worked on Boot Hill.  Then he died (and Brian Blume finished Boot Hill).  I would guess that to the extent that 1st edition Boot Hill and OD&D share similar mechanics, that is some indication as to what mechanics Kaye may have contributed. 

It's alwasy been unclear what Kaye contributed to the game because he and Gygax co-wrote everything and Gygax never specified what was his idea and what was Kaye's.  One of the reasons we know so much about Arneson's and Gygax' respective contributions was that their dispute encouraged each of them to make clear what they had brought to the game.  It also encouraged Gygax to lump his and Kaye's contributions together.

Don Kaye was one of the co-founders, with Gygax, of TSR.  When he died, Melvin Blume bought his one-third interest and then gave it to his son, Kevin, which is why the Blumes could control TSR and oust Gygax in 1985 and bring in she-who-shall-not-be-named.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Originally posted by Hocus-Smokus:

Wow...you'd think a simple Don Kaye shout-out in at least one of the OD&D books would have been a nice gesture, especially considering Gygax listed Tom Keogh "in memorium". Makes me wonder if there was some bad blood somewhere along the line.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Yeah.  I don't know why he almost never gets a mention anywhere.  Gygax and Kaye were friends from the age of 8 until his premature death.  Maybe there were tensions after they became partners in TSR.  The third partner was Brian Blume and Gygax never spoke well of him until the end of his days.  So maybe Gygax just wasn't an easy guy to be business partners with.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Originally posted by AbdulAlhazred:

Yeah.  I don't know why he almost never gets a mention anywhere.  Gygax and Kaye were friends from the age of 8 until his premature death.  Maybe there were tensions after they became partners in TSR.  The third partner was Brian Blume and Gygax never spoke well of him until the end of his days.  So maybe Gygax just wasn't an easy guy to be business partners with.

That was the impression I got. While I never met Gary personally I did know some of the people that were pretty active in the late 70's and did know the guy. He wasn't especially considered the easiest person to work with. Actually it seemed like he kind of annoyed the heck out of a lot of people and his rep has in a lot of ways evolved a lot in the decades since. So perhaps he and Don just ran into the kind of "Gary isn't going to yield on this." kind of situations that apparently came up, who knows? Reading between the lines I get the impression it was somewhat similar with Dave, he had some different ideas from Gary, and Gary wasn't one to compromise. Dave apparently wasn't one to fight about it and went on about his way. Dave was always known as a pretty low-key guy, but I think he was also a lot less invested in D&D as a project. I suspect he'd have been happy enough to just play his Blackmoor game and share it around with people. It was definitely Gary that had the ambition to make it a bigger thing. Anyway, I'm sure they were all fun people to hang around with. I'd love to have gamed with Dave (or any of them really), must have been fun times.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Originally posted by Hocus-Smokus:

I think I remember reading that somewhere...about Gygax not being the easiest person to get along with, that is. Not only do I not recall who wrote it, but where I read it or when. It's entirely possible I just picked it up as cross-chatter on these boards.

I seem to remember it being something along the lines of Gary having a very fixed idea of how D&D was supposed to go, and blew his top whenever anyone suggested otherwise. Even in the OD&D books, he mentions that DMs are free to change the rules as they see fit, but to be careful as to not "destroy the flavor of D&D" in the process. What that flavor was, exactly, I can't say.

But yeah, I have no doubt that it would have been a hoot to play a session or two with Gygax, Arneson, Greenwood, and company.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

There's an interesting snippet from Frank Mentzer online (Dragonsfoot?) where he discusses the (execrable, incomplete) Temple of Elemental Evil and how the other TSR staffers were really pleased when he was given the job of turning Gary's chaos into an adventure as apparently Gary didn't like to be questioned let alone edited.

Clearly his my way or the highway-attitude wasn't confined to those mid-80s The Dragon/Dragon editorials....