Something I wish we had about the origins of D&D would be videos of Arneson and Gygax DMing. None exist that I'm aware of. I think there's a brief clip of Gygax chatting while holding his DM notebook, but not much.
When I began playing in the late 70s (! omg) the 2 co-DMs had a rather low 'Gygax #' and had played with people who had learned the game from folks who had played in some of the original games. That style of open table games and picaresque adventures is still the ideal I shoot for in my campaigns; players make their own story by surviving and/or wrecking the sandbox world I've created for them.
Later a friend had the privilege of being DMed by Arneson at a convention. While not the same as seeing how Arneson ran a campaign, his description was that Arneson described an environment, and then actually appeared bored until the players responded with an action, at which point my friend described that "Arneson turned on like a light, evocatively reacting to the player character actions with urgency."
Given how many folks are learning the game from watching Critical Role and such, with all their modern assumptions and the effects due to being a media creation at least in part, I really wonder what else the founders of the game could have imparted upon the players. Certainly for all the criticism of Arneson's literary and organizational skills, Gygax's also had their (ahem) peculiarities and omissions.
kotaku.com
