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The Dueling Essays of Arneson & Gygax
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7804606" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>While I agree with Arneson that based on the evidence, the game being played at his table was only partially inspired by Chainmail and had largely departed from the Chainmail rules, the truth is that that game that he was playing was, while it was recognizable as an RPG, was probably not D&D either. Indeed, attempts to reconstruct exactly what was being played and what it's rules actually were have been extremely difficult, and it seems likely that the rules were very fluid and quite possibly based partially on Strategos N. Regardless, Arneson never published the not-D&D game that was being played before D&D existed, and we only have weird references to it in some of the language that Arneson uses to describe the rules that suggest he's thinking about them in ways that have nothing to do with D&D or Chainmail. </p><p></p><p>Why does Gygax think that Chainmail was central to the creation of D&D? Well, aside from the self-serving reason, I suspect that the Blackmoor game was demo'd to him using Chainmail based rules, so naturally he will think that this is largely an extension of Chainmail. It's unclear if Gygax ever really saw the Strategos N based game that Arneson thought of as the Blackmoor game, and as no one was able to understand Arneson's notes on that game, I don't really know how many people have ever played it. </p><p></p><p>Personally, I don't think that you can ever disentangle this. They are both critical to the development of RPGs and I don't see how you can say one or the other created the RPG. Arneson clearly played the first one that was ever played, but to this day we know almost nothing about that table, and my perception of it is that Arneson primarily wanted to run a fantasy domain management game, partially using Strategos N, wildly at variance with the experience of what we think of as an RPG and more in common perhaps with those play by mail wargames whose scale was overly ambitious for anything prior to the development of home computing. </p><p></p><p>The only way I would see Gygax as unfairly receiving joint credit is that Arneson had been able at some point been able to independently bring the larger community the Blackmoor game that owed almost nothing to Gary's Greyhawk game that became the basis for D&D. But since he was not able to do that, and as far as I know never tried to do that ever after leaving TSR, I think that they both have to share equal credit, and if Gygax is the more famous of the two, then it shouldn't be surprising given how much more stuff his name was on compared to his less prolific partner and frenemy(?).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7804606, member: 4937"] While I agree with Arneson that based on the evidence, the game being played at his table was only partially inspired by Chainmail and had largely departed from the Chainmail rules, the truth is that that game that he was playing was, while it was recognizable as an RPG, was probably not D&D either. Indeed, attempts to reconstruct exactly what was being played and what it's rules actually were have been extremely difficult, and it seems likely that the rules were very fluid and quite possibly based partially on Strategos N. Regardless, Arneson never published the not-D&D game that was being played before D&D existed, and we only have weird references to it in some of the language that Arneson uses to describe the rules that suggest he's thinking about them in ways that have nothing to do with D&D or Chainmail. Why does Gygax think that Chainmail was central to the creation of D&D? Well, aside from the self-serving reason, I suspect that the Blackmoor game was demo'd to him using Chainmail based rules, so naturally he will think that this is largely an extension of Chainmail. It's unclear if Gygax ever really saw the Strategos N based game that Arneson thought of as the Blackmoor game, and as no one was able to understand Arneson's notes on that game, I don't really know how many people have ever played it. Personally, I don't think that you can ever disentangle this. They are both critical to the development of RPGs and I don't see how you can say one or the other created the RPG. Arneson clearly played the first one that was ever played, but to this day we know almost nothing about that table, and my perception of it is that Arneson primarily wanted to run a fantasy domain management game, partially using Strategos N, wildly at variance with the experience of what we think of as an RPG and more in common perhaps with those play by mail wargames whose scale was overly ambitious for anything prior to the development of home computing. The only way I would see Gygax as unfairly receiving joint credit is that Arneson had been able at some point been able to independently bring the larger community the Blackmoor game that owed almost nothing to Gary's Greyhawk game that became the basis for D&D. But since he was not able to do that, and as far as I know never tried to do that ever after leaving TSR, I think that they both have to share equal credit, and if Gygax is the more famous of the two, then it shouldn't be surprising given how much more stuff his name was on compared to his less prolific partner and frenemy(?). [/QUOTE]
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