OD&D Evidence Chainmail Had Material from Dave Arneson

[Ovinomancer]

No need to go full sociopath, LowKey, this is just an internet board... Geez.

It seems to me that you're giving as good as your getting. Perhaps the less tall horse?

 

[lowkey13]

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[Rob Kuntz]

It seems to me that you're giving as good as your getting. Perhaps the less tall horse?

I didn't start the insults. I supported the OP furthering his position to a conclusion of True or False which earned me disparagement, innuendo and similar. Quite childish behavior, but I have no electronic pacifier for it, such persons must seek their own antidotes.

 

[mwittig]

I believe that there are those here that are purposefully attempting to derail this thread. The question remains: WHY?

In the case of Lowkey13, it seems that he harbors some heavy bias and should probably have abstained from posting in this thread, as it obviously requires some open-mindedness.

Arneson could never have created D&D; it wasn't in his DNA. Everything we think of as "D&D," the books, the rules, the mythos, that was all Gygax.

I still remember hearing about the ouster of EGG after-the-fact, and being floored. As far as I was concerned, EGG was TSR; EGG was D&D!

And as we all know, that cannot happen, as it goes against the will of God and Gygax (but I repeat myself).

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Not sure who you're responding to, and assuming you're talking about the OP just be curious, that's not exactly what's happening.

The OP has advanced that there may be some influence to Chainmail from Dave Arneson's Blackmoor game. This is an interesting idea, and I'd enjoy reading something that explores it. But that's not what's happened. Instead, the OP takes the premise as a given and looks for evidence to support it, which he presented. In this evidence, he lays out the case that Gary may have been aware of material from Blackmoor and included it in Chainmal. This requires a very tight timeline of events that's only feasible if the actual publication of Chainmail is later than generally thought. How the material is included under this tight timeline is elided (apparently Gary is assumed to be a gifted plagiarist?)

The problem is that both Dave and Gary made repeated statements over many years that contradicts this premise. They did so consistently and even during a legal fight over the Arneson's share of the credit for D&D (where claiming that Gary previously stole material would be very helpful to Dave's case). This evidence to the contrary is dismissed in preference of the above conjecture. So, for the conjecture to be true, Dave would have to have not recognized his own work in Chainmail and decided to instead say how his own work was very helpful to him in developing Blackmoor AND Gary would have to be a liar. For the premise to be true, you need to at least assume Dave was dumb and Gary a liar. Or something even more fanciful, like a conspiracy for no apparent reason. This is a huge hurdle for the central premise of the OP to clear, and he's come no where near doing so. Instead, he assumes, without cause or rational, that there was early sharing and then builds his case from there. That's literally begging the question.

When challenged on this, the OP tried to claim that witness statements are actually weak evidence and shouldn't be credited over other evidence. But, he hasn't presented any evidence that the statements are untrue, just a conjecture that they may be so if you squint and and blur some (only some, he ignores what doesn't help) evidence to create his timeline. This is bunkum. It's obviously bad work in pursuit of a theory rather than scholarship to discover more truth.

You assume wrong.

 

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

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[Rob Kuntz]

and know I know you’re dishonest.
Here is the full context of the first quote:


The issue with EGG and Arneson is more complicated. I tend to oppose both the deification of EGG, and the backlash/hagiography of Arneson. I do think it is incorrect to view them as equals in an endeavor (Lennon/McCartney), and I also think it's unfair to tar Gygax as the Ray Kroc of this situation- someone who just took someone else's idea and marketed it.

If you know the history, and read this article, it's not surprising. Arneson brought in the magical element; he took Chainmail and turned it into the semblance of what we know today- an RPG. He was the original element of chaos- as he was in Braunstein.

BUT ... and this is a huge and unavoidable but, he wasn't Gygax. Here is the telling pullquote, which is in accord from everything I have read: "Arneson didn’t have a concrete ruleset; he was making things up as he went along. But, Kuntz said, he did manage to cobble together 18 pages of handwritten notes, a lot of which were simply stats for Chainmail monsters."

Arneson could never have created D&D; it wasn't in his DNA. Everything we think of as "D&D," the books, the rules, the mythos, that was all Gygax. Would he have done it if he hadn't played in Arneson's game? No. That really was a eureka moment.

And as for the rest ... wow. Just look where you found those.
Dude- you really googled me To try and discredit me and that was the best you can find.
You are as terrible at google as you are at history.

Thankfully, that little exercise should show how trustworthy you are with quotes.

You know nothing about design if you assume Arneson had no concrete rules to play 1.5 years of sessions before revealing them to us, the LGTSA, in 1972. And that Gary was able to latch onto Dave's system and calibrate it into his own iteration of Blackmoor is a fact:

"Dave and I disagree on how to handle any number of things, and both of our campaigns differ from the "rules" found in DandD."--Gary Gygax, Alarums & Excursions #2, July, 1975

By the time that Gary and I (as Mordenkainen & Robilar) adventured into Dave's "City of the Gods" in Early 1976, Dave was still using his system. then, and in turn adding in bits and pieces of the printed D&D matter.
That is of course consistent with his ongoing iterating of the base concept as an evolving form (re, note Gygax's quote from A&E above where he puts in quotes the word "rules" which in usage means that THERE ARE NO STEADFAST RULES, and that you can add and change them as you iterate them into existence to meet the infinite array of possibilities and variabilities that are presented in a Fantasy world context):

"…I've never used any of the D&D rules because whatever version comes out, I've already added to it and gone on and done things different. If there's a good resemblance to those rules, I got my own. Most of the rules are only between my ears and they're constantly changing."

Dave Arneson, GameSpy Interview, August 19, 2004

This is not just "he was making things up as he went along," but he was compiling these as well and preserving their access by way of a notational system.

Did we play in an RPG in 1972? Yes. How different was it than the written version of the D&D rule set? Not much different. The mechanical access was different but the architecture had to remain the same from Arneson's transference of it to Gygax, or else it would not have been what we refer to as an RPG.

Arneson wrote several rule sets prior to D&D. Two drafts of DGUTS for instance. He most definitely could and would have published these without Gygax, I have no doubt, just as his group had come that far with it and with the DUNGEON board game by 1972. But Gary was the Rules Editor for Guidon Games, so he was an easy access point for the Two Daves who were most excited by their discoveries and gaming systems, and so they brought them down with the express notion of publishing them through Guidon. To assume that if Gary had not known Arneson, had not been the GG Rules Editor, that these would not have been published at some future time and in a form consistent with Dave Arneson's complete mechanical systems is, by itself, a Fantasy or perhaps wishful thinking.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I didn't start the insults. I supported the OP furthering his position to a conclusion of True or False which earned me disparagement, innuendo and similar. Quite childish behavior, but I have no electronic pacifier for it, such persons must seek their own antidotes.

"I didn't start it," is not covering yourself in glory.

 

[lowkey13]

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