billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
Arneson is covered. Wesely is mentioned mostly in passing as an influence. Jon Peterson's tome Playing at the World covers that development in more detail. It's a much more involved read than Riggs, however.
D&D General Extra Credits: The History of D&D Hasbro Refused to Learn
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Dungeons & Dragons - Wikipedia
Braunstein (game) - Wikipedia
David Wesely was a wargamer in the Twin Cities area who ran several scenarios, the first of which (in 1969) was a Napoleonic-era one called Braunstein after the German (or Prussian?) town it was set in. The various players were assigned roles like local military leaders, mayor of the town, town banker, university chancellor, and so forth. The idea being to have them act in the roles of and negotiate, playing out the events leading up to a wargame. But legend has it that the players got so wrapped up in playing their characters that they never got to the actual wargame battle part. Wesely runs similar scenarios (and the original one again) nowadays at GaryCon. Because the game was very popular in their wargaming club, he ran a few more similar scenarios with different settings, one of which was a Latin American banana republic.
Dave Arneson was inspired by these games to start his own "medieval-style Braunstein" called Blackmoor in 1971. He initially used some parts of Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren's then-new Chainmail miniatures wargame, with its fantasy supplement and man to man combat appendix to run combat in his game. Arneson seems to have basically invented the concept of an ongoing campaign in which players each run the same individual character over multiple sessions* over a long period of time, and that character advances and increases in power and experience. He also invented the concept of Hit Points, a multi-leveled labyrinthine dungeon under a castle as a place of fantastic exploration, and some other concepts.
Dave pitched his game as a potentially publishable concept to Gary Gygax (who had done a lot of wargame design work and worked for Guidon Games, Chainmail's original publisher), and Gary took his ideas and fleshed them out and expanded on them to create Dungeons & Dragons, first published at the beginning of 1974.
History of D&D in 12 Treasures
[for best results, watch on YouTube directly ] In honor of the fortieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons , and for a change of pace, ...
playingattheworld.blogspot.com
Secrets of Blackmoor is a recent documentary movie which dives deep into the history of Blackmoor and its inspiration of/becoming D&D.
Secrets of Blackmoor
Secrets of Blackmoor is a 90 Minute Feature Documentary about the birth of the “Mother of all Games;” Dungeons and Dragons.
www.secretsofblackmoor.com
Lorraine Williams is an heiress to the Buck Rogers estate and licenses, along with her brother Flint Dille, a well known writer and producer of TV and cartoon properties including GI Joe and the Transformers (the GI Joe character Flint is named after him). Gary met and befriended Flint when Gary went to Hollywood in the early 80s to try to get D&D made into a movie and TV show and other media properties. Lorraine came on board as an investor in 1984 or so after TSR had been doing very badly financially for a couple of years, and became an executive helping run the company. In 1985 she made corporate maneuvers to buy out Gary's business partners the Blume brothers, who held controlling shares of TSR, and eventually forced Gary out of the company. She ran TSR from about 1985 until they eventually succumbed to further financial problems, and sold out to Wizards of the Coast in 1997.
A few excellent books have been written about the development, inspiration, and history of D&D in the last ten years or so, Playing at the World by Jon Peterson generally the best and most comprehensive among them (although being ten years old now, some additional historical details have come to light since it was published). His more recent The Elusive Shift focuses more on the evolutionary period of Roleplaying games as a concept developing out of wargaming in the 1970s; it's shorter and an easier read, covering somewhat different ground.
Peterson's Game Wizards details the business side of TSR, how it was created and how it ran up until Gary Gygax's ouster in 1985.
Ben Riggs' Slaying the Dragon gives light coverage of those first 10-12 years then focuses mainly on the Lorraine Williams years of TSR, '85-'97.
*Although this same idea in an American Wild West setting was also hit upon by some British wargamers around the same time, in parallel with Braunstein and Blackmoor:
Western Gunfight (1970): the First RPG?
In 1970, a group of UK gamers located in Bristol published the first edition of their Western Gunfight rules, which recorded systems they ...
playingattheworld.blogspot.com
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A very good bit of information about David Wesley is presented in the Blackmoor documentary. The dude pretty much invented DMing and role-playing (though for wargame campaigns.)
Edit: Ninja'd by @Mannahnin
Edit: Ninja'd by @Mannahnin
AmandaBarbarian
Explorer
Also I was SOOOO off on the time line I guess Braunstein (Dave Wes game) was 60s and D&D wasn't until the 70s. For some reason I always thought Gary was running games in the 50s and it just didn't see print as basic until 60s and this '50th anniversary' was of AD&D 1e...
SO I looked it up and 3e didn't come out until 2000 and it 4e and now 5e are only 23 years old
SO I looked it up and 3e didn't come out until 2000 and it 4e and now 5e are only 23 years old
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
Gygax got deeply into wargaming in the 60s, and was famous in that small community for playing and publishing (in fanzines) Diplomacy variants. Play by mail Diplomacy was its own fanatic hobby among a number of early gamers, prior to RPGs being invented as such. Sometimes people wrote "in character" messages in the newsletters and zines.Also I was SOOOO off on the time line I guess Braunstein (Dave Wes game) was 60s and D&D wasn't until the 70s. For some reason I always thought Gary was running games in the 50s and it just didn't see print as basic until 60s and this '50th anniversary' was of AD&D 1e...
SO I looked it up and 3e didn't come out until 2000 and it 4e and now 5e are only 23 years old
He also wrote and developed historical wargames, one based on Alexander the Great and another on Dunkirk, before the Chainmail medieval miniatures rules, with their very influential Fantasy Supplement appendix rules for running battles in Middle Earth and similar fantasy worlds. He was extremely prolific as a letter writer and in writing in to newsletters and fanzines, advertising his passion for gaming and desire to collaborate with others on game design. He made sense as a contact for Dave Arneson to pitch Blackmoor to, the two of them having met at GenCon (which originally started in the late 60s primarily focused on miniatures wargames) and gotten along.
The development of Braunstein (1969) to Blackmoor (first session May 1971*) to D&D basically started in 1969 and resulted in D&D's publication in Jan/Feb of 1974. Hence next year will be the 50th anniversary of D&D.
(*As a note, Chainmail having been published with the Fantasy Supplement that March, though I guess the main rules without the fantasy stuff had appeared in club publications earlier)
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the Jester
Legend
I just want to say that I'm really digging watching you learn all this stuff. Welcome to the deep lore!Also I was SOOOO off on the time line I guess Braunstein (Dave Wes game) was 60s and D&D wasn't until the 70s. For some reason I always thought Gary was running games in the 50s and it just didn't see print as basic until 60s and this '50th anniversary' was of AD&D 1e...
SO I looked it up and 3e didn't come out until 2000 and it 4e and now 5e are only 23 years old
Vaalingrade
Legend
I mean, the video even specifically calls out that they're skipping a lot of the TSR drama.
Cordwainer Fish
Imp. Int. Scout Svc. (Dishon. Ret.)
Ye cats are second hand copies expensive, though.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Watch the docu Secrets of Blackmoor for the story of the two Daves.
For more textual resources, there’s Jon Peterson’s books Playing at the World, The Elusive Shift, and Game Wizards.
