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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7804579" data-attributes="member: 19857">I actually don't get this read at all.  First because in the popular culture at large that knows of D&D, Gary Gygax created D&D.  It's only those of us who have been around for a long time or who like to dive into the history of the field who may have even heard of Dave Arneson.  Given how much the game has grown in recent years there are a whole lot more people who don't know the history at all, so stories introducing that history to the new generation are going to happen.  And boosting Arneson is of course going to come at the expense of Gygax in these narratives because of the ugly falling out they had, the lawsuits over Arneson's compensation for D&D after they fell out, and the fact that as I said in the popular culture Gygax's name is so synonymous with the creation of the game that his status can only be driven downward by making other people's stories public to a wider audience.It reminds me of when Jack Kirby really started to get recognized for his role in creating Marvel's comics.  It came at a big expense to Stan Lee for exactly the same sets of reasons - outside of the hardcore Kirby fans, Lee had been the guy who got all of the credit for being the architect of the Marvel universe, he and Kirby had a pretty dramatic falling out, and Lee was the one who was the boss so he and his people got to create the narrative.  When Kirby started getting boosted again in the 90s and people were trying to set the record straight, it came at Stan Lee's expense because he had long been getting all of the credit for what was really a shared creative endeavor - reevaluating the contributions of both creators of course was going to lead to a loss of esteem for Lee because he went from "sole creator" in the eyes of the public to "shared creator who took sole credit for decades" - not a great place to be.Eventually it will shake out, as it mostly has with Lee and Kirby among those who know comics history (though even that still remains contentious).</blockquote>

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