Dave Arneson
Encyclopedia
David Lance "Dave" Arneson (October 1, 1947 – April 7, 2009) was an American
game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game
(RPG), Dungeons & Dragons
, with Gary Gygax
, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the development of the genre, developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons", using a neutral judge, and having conversations with imaginary characters to develop the storyline.
Arneson discovered wargaming as a teenager in the 1960s, and began combining these games with the concept of role-playing
. He was a University of Minnesota
student when he met Gygax at the Gen Con
gaming convention in the late 1960s. In 1970 Arneson created the game and fictional world that became Blackmoor
, writing his own rules and basing the setting on medieval fantasy
elements. Arneson showed the game to Gygax the following year, and the pair co-developed a set of rules that became Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Gygax subsequently founded TSR, Inc.
to publish the game in 1974. Arneson worked briefly for the company.
Arneson left TSR in 1976, and filed suit in 1979 to retain credits and royalties on the game. He continued to work as an independent game designer, briefly worked for TSR again in the 1980s, and continued to play games for his entire life. Arneson also did some work in computer programming, and taught computer game design and game rules design at Full Sail University from the 1990s until shortly before his death in 2009.
s. His parents bought him the board wargame
Gettysburg
by Avalon Hill
in the early 1960s. After Arneson taught his friends how to play, the group began to design their own games and tried out new ways to play existing games. Arneson was especially fond of naval wargames
. Exposure to role-playing
influenced his later game designs. In college history classes he role-played historical events, and preferred to deviate from recorded history in a manner similar to "what if" scenarios recreated in wargames.
In the late 1960s Arneson joined the Midwest Military Simulation Association
(MMSA), a group of miniature wargamers
and military figurine collectors in the Minneapolis
-St. Paul area that included among its ranks future game designer David Wesely
. Wesely asserts that it was during the Braunstein games he created and refereed, and in which other MMSA members participated, that Arneson helped develop the foundations of modern role-playing games on a 1:1 scale basis by focusing on non-combat objectives—a step away from wargaming towards the more individual play and varied challenges of later RPGs.
In 1969 Arneson was a history student at the University of Minnesota
and working part time as a security guard. He attended the second Gen Con
gaming convention
in August 1969 (at which time wargaming was still the primary focus) and it was at this event that he met Gary Gygax
, who had founded the Castle & Crusade Society
within the International Federation of Wargamers
in the 1960s at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
, not far from Arneson's home in Minnesota. Arneson and Gygax also shared an interest in sailing ship games and they co-authored the Don't Give Up The Ship!
naval battle rules, serialized from June 1971 and later published as a single volume in 1972 by Guidon Games
with a revised edition by TSR, Inc.
in 1975.
to resolve combat, but later adapted elements from his naval wargame rules which had an armor class
system like that later used in D&D. "I had spent the previous two days watching about five monster movies on channel 5’s 'Creature Feature' weekend, reading several Conan books (I cannot recall which ones, but I always thought they were all pretty much the same), and stuffing myself with popcorn, doodling on a piece of graph paper. At the time, I was quite tired of my Nappy (Napoleonic) campaign with all its rigid rules and was rebelling against it." The Fantasy combat system appearing in the Chainmail
rules, written by Gygax and Jeff Perren and published in the spring of 1971, were also applied for a short time. Finding those lacking, Arneson wrote modified rules to apply to his role-playing game scenarios. The game that evolved from those modifications to Chainmail was the game Blackmoor
, which modern players of D&D would describe as a campaign setting rather than a "complete game." The gameplay
would be recognizable to modern D&D players, featuring the use of fixed hit points, armor class
, character development, and dungeon crawl
s. This setting was fleshed out over time and continues to be played to the present day. Arneson described Blackmoor as "roleplaying in a non-traditional medieval setting. I have such things as steam power, gunpowder, and submarines in limited numbers. There was even a tank running around for a while. The emphasis is on the story and the roleplaying." Details of Blackmoor and the original campaign, which was by then established on the map of the Castle & Crusade Society
's "Great Kingdom", were first brought to print briefly in issue #13 of the Domesday Book, the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society
in July 1972, and later in much-expanded form as The First Fantasy Campaign, published by Judges Guild
in 1977.
Although much of what was later deemed to be "Tolkien
-influenced" in D&D and the concept of adventuring in "dungeons" originated with Blackmoor, as a setting it was not purely fantasy-oriented, as it incorporated recent history and science fiction elements. These are visible much later in the DA module series
published by TSR (particularly City of the Gods), but were also present from the early to mid 1970s in the original campaign and parallel and intertwined games run by John Snider
, whose ruleset developed from these adventures and was intended for publication by TSR from 1974 as the first science fiction RPG.
In November 1972, Arneson and David Megarry traveled to Lake Geneva to meet with Gary Gygax. Arneson thought that Gygax would be interested in Megarry's Dungeon!
boardgame, which Megarry had developed as player in Blackmoor, and Gygax had expressed a desire to play a game of Blackmoor itself. After playing in the Blackmoor game Arneson refereed, Gygax almost immediately began a similar campaign of his own which he called Greyhawk
and asked Arneson for a draft of his playing rules. The two then collaborated by phone and mail, and playtesting carried out by their various groups and other contacts. Gygax and Arneson wanted to publish the game, but Guidon Games
and Avalon Hill
rejected it. Arneson could not afford to invest in the venture.
Gygax felt that there was a need to publish the game as soon as possible, since similar projects were being planned elsewhere, so rules were hastily put together and Arneson's own final draft was never used. Despite all this, Brian Blume
eventually provided the funding required to publish the original Dungeons & Dragons set
in 1974, with the initial print run of 1,000 selling out within a year and sales increasing rapidly in subsequent years. Further rules and a sample dungeon from Arneson's original campaign (the first published RPG scenario in a professional publication) were released in 1975 in the Blackmoor
supplement for D&D, named after the campaign setting. The supplement offered little in the way of details from Arneson's actual campaign, however.
Arneson formally joined TSR as their Director of Research at the beginning of 1976 but left at the end of the year to pursue a career as an independent game designer.
, the original 3-book set of D&D
, the five D&D supplements (Greyhawk
; Blackmoor
; Eldritch Wizardry
; Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes
; and Swords & Spells
), and all seven issues of The Strategic Review.
TSR had agreed to pay Arneson royalties on all D&D products, but when the company came out with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) in 1977, it claimed that this was a significantly different product and did not pay him royalties. In response, Arneson filed the first of five lawsuits against Gygax and TSR in 1979. In March 1981, as part of a confidential agreement, Arneson and Gygax resolved the suits out of court by agreeing that they would both be credited as "co-creators" on the packaging of D&D products from that point on, but this did not end the lingering tensions between them. (Twenty years later, Wizards of the Coast
(WotC) bought TSR and wanted to drop the word "Advanced" from its planned third edition of D&D. WotC CEO Peter Adkison
approached Arneson to resolve the two-decade-old issue and Arneson released all claims to D&D for an undisclosed sum of money.)
In 1979 Arneson and Richard L. Snider, an original Blackmoor player, co-authored Adventures in Fantasy, a role-playing game that attempted to recapture the "original spirit of the Role Playing Fantasy Game" that Arneson had envisioned in the early 1970s, instead of what D&D had become. In the early 1980s he established his own game company, Adventure Games, that produced the miniatures games Johnny Reb and Harpoon, as well as his own Adventures in Fantasy role-playing game. Adventure Games was profitable, but Arneson found the workload to be excessive and finally sold the company to Flying Buffalo
.
While Gary Gygax was president of TSR in the mid 1980s, he and Arneson reconnected, and Arneson briefly relinked Blackmoor to D&D with the "DA" (Dave Arneson)
series of modules set in Blackmoor (1986–1987). The four modules, three of which were written by Arneson, detailed Arneson's campaign setting for the first time. When Gygax was forced out of TSR, Arneson was removed from the company before a planned fifth module could be published. Gygax and Arneson again went their separate ways. In 1986 Arneson wrote a new D&D module set in Blackmoor called "The Garbage Pits of Despair", which was published in two parts in Different Worlds
magazine issues #42 and #43.
Arneson stepped into the computer industry and founded 4D Interactive Systems, a computer company in Minnesota that is still in business today. He also did some computer programming and worked on several games. He eventually found himself consulting with computer companies.
Living in California
in the late 1980s, Arneson had a chance to work with special education
children. Upon returning to Minnesota, he pursued teaching and began speaking at schools about educational uses of role-playing and using multi-sided dice to teach math. In the 1990s he began working at Full Sail, a private university that teaches multimedia subjects, and continued there as a professor of computer game design until 2008.
Around 2000, Arneson was working with videographer
John Kentner on Dragons in the Basement, a video documentary
on the early history of role-playing games. Arneson describes the documentary: “Basically it is a series of interviews with original players (‘How did D&D affect your life?’) and original RPG designers like Marc Miller (Traveller) and M.A.R. Barker (Empire of the Petal Throne).” He also made a cameo appearance
in the Dungeons & Dragons movie as one of many mages
throwing fireballs at a dragon
, although the scene was deleted from the completed movie. Arneson and Dustin Clingman founded Zeitgeist Games to produce an updated d20 System
version of the Blackmoor setting. Goodman Games
published and distributed this new Blackmoor in 2004.
Arneson continued to play games his entire life, including D&D and military miniature games, and regularly attended an annual meeting to play the original Blackmoor in Minnesota. At Full Sail University he taught the class "Rules of the Game", a class in which students learned how to accurately document and create rule sets for games that were balanced between mental challenges for the players and "physical" ones for the characters. He retired from the position on June 19, 2008.
Arneson died on April 7, 2009, after battling cancer for two years. According to his daughter, Malia Weinhagen, "The biggest thing about my dad's world is he wanted people to have fun in life ... I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun."
and in 1999 was named by Pyramid
magazine as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons, "at least in the realm of adventure gaming".
Three days after his death, Wizards of the Coast
temporarily replaced the front page of the Dungeons & Dragons section of their web site with a tribute to Arneson. Other tributes in the gaming world included Order of the Stick #644, and Dork Tower
for April 8, 2009.
Video game publisher Activision Blizzard
posted a tribute to Arneson on their website and on April 14, 2009, released patch 3.1 of the online role-playing game World of Warcraft
, The Secrets of Ulduar, dedicated to Arneson.
Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online, now Dungeons and Dragons: Eberron Unlimited, added an in-game memorial altar to Arneson in the Ruins of Threnal location in the game. They also created an in-game item named the "Mantle of the Worldshaper" that is a reward for finishing the Threnal quest chain that is narrated by Arneson himself. The Mantle's description reads: "A comforting and inspiring presence surrounds you as you hold this cloak. Arcane runes run along the edges of the fine cape, and masterfully drawn on the silken lining is an incredibly detailed map of a place named 'Blackmoor'."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
(RPG), Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
, with Gary Gygax
Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....
, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the development of the genre, developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons", using a neutral judge, and having conversations with imaginary characters to develop the storyline.
Arneson discovered wargaming as a teenager in the 1960s, and began combining these games with the concept of role-playing
Role-playing
Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role...
. He was a University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
student when he met Gygax at the Gen Con
Gen Con
Gen Con is one of the largest and most prominent annual gaming conventions in North America. It features traditional pen-and-paper, board, and card-style games, including role-playing games, miniatures wargames, board games, live action role-playing games, collectible card games, non-collectible...
gaming convention in the late 1960s. In 1970 Arneson created the game and fictional world that became Blackmoor
Blackmoor
Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. It originally evolved in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature wargames, then as an...
, writing his own rules and basing the setting on medieval fantasy
Medieval fantasy
Medieval fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that encompasses medieval era high fantasy and sometimes simply represents fictitious versions of historic events. This subgenre is common among role-playing games, text-based roleplaying, and high-fantasy literature....
elements. Arneson showed the game to Gygax the following year, and the pair co-developed a set of rules that became Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Gygax subsequently founded TSR, Inc.
TSR, Inc.
Blume and Gygax, the remaining owners, incorporated a new company called TSR Hobbies, Inc., with Blume and his father, Melvin Blume, owning the larger share. The former assets of the partnership were transferred to TSR Hobbies, Inc....
to publish the game in 1974. Arneson worked briefly for the company.
Arneson left TSR in 1976, and filed suit in 1979 to retain credits and royalties on the game. He continued to work as an independent game designer, briefly worked for TSR again in the 1980s, and continued to play games for his entire life. Arneson also did some work in computer programming, and taught computer game design and game rules design at Full Sail University from the 1990s until shortly before his death in 2009.
Experience with miniature wargaming
Arneson's role-playing game design work grew from his interest in wargameWargaming
A wargame is a strategy game that deals with military operations of various types, real or fictional. Wargaming is the hobby dedicated to the play of such games, which can also be called conflict simulations, or consims for short. When used professionally to study warfare, it is generally known as...
s. His parents bought him the board wargame
Board wargame
A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer, or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The hobby around this type of game got its start in 1954 with the publication of Tactics, and saw its greatest popularity in the...
Gettysburg
Gettysburg (game)
Gettysburg is a board wargame produced by Avalon Hill which re-enacts the American Civil War battle of Gettysburg. It was originally published in 1958, and was the first board wargame based on a historical battle....
by Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...
in the early 1960s. After Arneson taught his friends how to play, the group began to design their own games and tried out new ways to play existing games. Arneson was especially fond of naval wargames
Naval wargaming
Naval wargaming is a branch of the wider hobby of miniature wargaming. Generally less popular than wargames set on land, naval wargaming nevertheless enjoys a degree of support around the world...
. Exposure to role-playing
Role-playing
Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role...
influenced his later game designs. In college history classes he role-played historical events, and preferred to deviate from recorded history in a manner similar to "what if" scenarios recreated in wargames.
In the late 1960s Arneson joined the Midwest Military Simulation Association
Midwest Military Simulation Association
The Midwest Military Simulation Association was a group of wargamers and military figurine collectors active during the late 1960s and 1970s when wargaming was in its heyday and role-playing games were first developed. The group lived in the Minneapolis-St Paul area...
(MMSA), a group of miniature wargamers
Miniature wargaming
Miniature wargaming is a form of wargaming that incorporates miniature figures, miniature armor and modeled terrain as the main components of play...
and military figurine collectors in the Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
-St. Paul area that included among its ranks future game designer David Wesely
David Wesely
David Wesely is a wargamer, board game designer, and video game developer. Dave Arneson credited him with coming up with the idea of the role-playing game....
. Wesely asserts that it was during the Braunstein games he created and refereed, and in which other MMSA members participated, that Arneson helped develop the foundations of modern role-playing games on a 1:1 scale basis by focusing on non-combat objectives—a step away from wargaming towards the more individual play and varied challenges of later RPGs.
In 1969 Arneson was a history student at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
and working part time as a security guard. He attended the second Gen Con
Gen Con
Gen Con is one of the largest and most prominent annual gaming conventions in North America. It features traditional pen-and-paper, board, and card-style games, including role-playing games, miniatures wargames, board games, live action role-playing games, collectible card games, non-collectible...
gaming convention
Gaming convention
A gaming convention is a gathering that centered on role-playing games, collectible card games, miniatures wargames, board games, video games, or other types of games. These conventions are typically two or three days long, and often held at either a university or in a convention center hotel...
in August 1969 (at which time wargaming was still the primary focus) and it was at this event that he met Gary Gygax
Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....
, who had founded the Castle & Crusade Society
Castle & Crusade Society
Formed by Gary Gygax in 1968, the Castle & Crusade Society was a chapter of the International Federation of Wargaming dedicated to medieval miniature wargaming.Its membership included Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz and Dave Arneson....
within the International Federation of Wargamers
International Federation of Wargamers
The International Federation of Wargaming was founded by Gary Gygax, Bill Speer, and Scott Duncan in 1966. Originally named the United States Continental Army Command, the organization served as an umbrella for local wargaming clubs such as the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association and the...
in the 1960s at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
Lake Geneva is a city in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 7,148 at the 2000 census. A resort city located on Geneva Lake, it is southwest of Milwaukee and popular with tourists from metropolitan Chicago and Milwaukee.-History:...
, not far from Arneson's home in Minnesota. Arneson and Gygax also shared an interest in sailing ship games and they co-authored the Don't Give Up The Ship!
Don't Give Up The Ship!
Don't Give Up the Ship! is a set of rules for conducting Napoleonic era naval wargames. The game was published by Guidon Games in 1972 and republished by TSR, Inc. in 1975. It was the first collaboration between Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, the co-creators of Dungeons & Dragons...
naval battle rules, serialized from June 1971 and later published as a single volume in 1972 by Guidon Games
Guidon Games
Guidon Games produced board games and rulebooks for wargaming with miniatures, and in doing so influenced Tactical Studies Rules , the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons. The Guidon Games publishing imprint was the property of Lowry's Hobbies , a mail-order business owned by Don and Julie Lowry...
with a revised edition by TSR, Inc.
TSR, Inc.
Blume and Gygax, the remaining owners, incorporated a new company called TSR Hobbies, Inc., with Blume and his father, Melvin Blume, owning the larger share. The former assets of the partnership were transferred to TSR Hobbies, Inc....
in 1975.
Blackmoor
Following the departure of David Wesely to armed service duty in October 1970, Arneson began to imagine a medieval fantasy style Braunstien wherein the players explored the dungeons of a castle inhabited by fantastic monsters. Originally Arneson played his own mix of rules and used rock, paper, scissorsRock, Paper, Scissors
Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two people. The game is also known as roshambo, or another ordering of the three items ....
to resolve combat, but later adapted elements from his naval wargame rules which had an armor class
Armor class
In some role-playing games, armor class is a derived statistic that indicates how difficult it is to land a successful blow on a character with an attack...
system like that later used in D&D. "I had spent the previous two days watching about five monster movies on channel 5’s 'Creature Feature' weekend, reading several Conan books (I cannot recall which ones, but I always thought they were all pretty much the same), and stuffing myself with popcorn, doodling on a piece of graph paper. At the time, I was quite tired of my Nappy (Napoleonic) campaign with all its rigid rules and was rebelling against it." The Fantasy combat system appearing in the Chainmail
Chainmail (game)
Chainmail is a medieval miniatures wargame created by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Gygax developed the game with fellow Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association member Perren, a hobby-shop owner with whom he had become friendly, and the game was first published in 1971...
rules, written by Gygax and Jeff Perren and published in the spring of 1971, were also applied for a short time. Finding those lacking, Arneson wrote modified rules to apply to his role-playing game scenarios. The game that evolved from those modifications to Chainmail was the game Blackmoor
Blackmoor
Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. It originally evolved in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature wargames, then as an...
, which modern players of D&D would describe as a campaign setting rather than a "complete game." The gameplay
Gameplay
Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and player's connection with it...
would be recognizable to modern D&D players, featuring the use of fixed hit points, armor class
Armor class
In some role-playing games, armor class is a derived statistic that indicates how difficult it is to land a successful blow on a character with an attack...
, character development, and dungeon crawl
Dungeon crawl
A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games in which heroes navigate a labyrinthine environment, battling various monsters, and looting any treasure they may find...
s. This setting was fleshed out over time and continues to be played to the present day. Arneson described Blackmoor as "roleplaying in a non-traditional medieval setting. I have such things as steam power, gunpowder, and submarines in limited numbers. There was even a tank running around for a while. The emphasis is on the story and the roleplaying." Details of Blackmoor and the original campaign, which was by then established on the map of the Castle & Crusade Society
Castle & Crusade Society
Formed by Gary Gygax in 1968, the Castle & Crusade Society was a chapter of the International Federation of Wargaming dedicated to medieval miniature wargaming.Its membership included Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz and Dave Arneson....
's "Great Kingdom", were first brought to print briefly in issue #13 of the Domesday Book, the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society
Castle & Crusade Society
Formed by Gary Gygax in 1968, the Castle & Crusade Society was a chapter of the International Federation of Wargaming dedicated to medieval miniature wargaming.Its membership included Gary Gygax, Rob Kuntz and Dave Arneson....
in July 1972, and later in much-expanded form as The First Fantasy Campaign, published by Judges Guild
Judges Guild
Judges Guild is a small game publisher in the business of creating and selling role-playing game supplements, periodicals and related material, most notable as one of the leading publishers in the late 1970s and early 1980s of Dungeons & Dragons-related materials...
in 1977.
Although much of what was later deemed to be "Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
-influenced" in D&D and the concept of adventuring in "dungeons" originated with Blackmoor, as a setting it was not purely fantasy-oriented, as it incorporated recent history and science fiction elements. These are visible much later in the DA module series
DA module series
The DA module series is a series of four adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, designed to be compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set. They were written for character levels 10–14 by Dave Arneson and David J...
published by TSR (particularly City of the Gods), but were also present from the early to mid 1970s in the original campaign and parallel and intertwined games run by John Snider
Star Probe (game)
Star Probe is a space game written by John Snider and published by TSR, Inc. in 1975. It consists of a 36 page rulebook with a map and counters. Prepublication play-testing was done by members of the MMSA. Artwork is by Paul Snider....
, whose ruleset developed from these adventures and was intended for publication by TSR from 1974 as the first science fiction RPG.
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeon!
Dungeon! is a 1975 adventure board game designed by David R. Megarry, Gary Gygax, Michael Gray, Steve Winter and S. Schwab, published by TSR, Inc...
boardgame, which Megarry had developed as player in Blackmoor, and Gygax had expressed a desire to play a game of Blackmoor itself. After playing in the Blackmoor game Arneson refereed, Gygax almost immediately began a similar campaign of his own which he called Greyhawk
Greyhawk
Greyhawk, also known as the World of Greyhawk, is a fictional world designed as a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game...
and asked Arneson for a draft of his playing rules. The two then collaborated by phone and mail, and playtesting carried out by their various groups and other contacts. Gygax and Arneson wanted to publish the game, but Guidon Games
Guidon Games
Guidon Games produced board games and rulebooks for wargaming with miniatures, and in doing so influenced Tactical Studies Rules , the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons. The Guidon Games publishing imprint was the property of Lowry's Hobbies , a mail-order business owned by Don and Julie Lowry...
and Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill
Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...
rejected it. Arneson could not afford to invest in the venture.
Gygax felt that there was a need to publish the game as soon as possible, since similar projects were being planned elsewhere, so rules were hastily put together and Arneson's own final draft was never used. Despite all this, Brian Blume
Brian Blume
Brian J. Blume is noted for being a business partner of Gary Gygax in TSR, Inc., producers of the fantasy role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons.-Biography:...
eventually provided the funding required to publish the original Dungeons & Dragons set
Dungeons & Dragons (1974)
The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It initially included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game...
in 1974, with the initial print run of 1,000 selling out within a year and sales increasing rapidly in subsequent years. Further rules and a sample dungeon from Arneson's original campaign (the first published RPG scenario in a professional publication) were released in 1975 in the Blackmoor
Blackmoor (supplement)
Blackmoor is a supplementary rulebook for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game written by Dave Arneson...
supplement for D&D, named after the campaign setting. The supplement offered little in the way of details from Arneson's actual campaign, however.
Arneson formally joined TSR as their Director of Research at the beginning of 1976 but left at the end of the year to pursue a career as an independent game designer.
After TSR
In 1977, despite the fact that he was no longer at TSR, Arneson published Dungeonmaster's Index, a 38-page booklet that indexed all of TSR's D&D properties to that point in time, including ChainmailChainmail (game)
Chainmail is a medieval miniatures wargame created by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Gygax developed the game with fellow Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association member Perren, a hobby-shop owner with whom he had become friendly, and the game was first published in 1971...
, the original 3-book set of D&D
Dungeons & Dragons (1974)
The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It initially included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game...
, the five D&D supplements (Greyhawk
Greyhawk (supplement)
Greyhawk is a supplementary rulebook written by Gary Gygax and Robert J. Kuntz for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game...
; Blackmoor
Blackmoor (supplement)
Blackmoor is a supplementary rulebook for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game written by Dave Arneson...
; Eldritch Wizardry
Eldritch Wizardry
Eldritch Wizardry is a supplementary rulebook by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume, written for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, which included a number of significant additions to the core game.-Contents:...
; Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes
Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes
Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes is a supplementary rulebook for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.-Contents:The work provides information on the pantheons and constructs of the Egyptian, Hindu, Greek, Celtic, Norse, Finnish, Aztec, Mayan, Chinese, and Japanese mythologies, as well as...
; and Swords & Spells
Swords & Spells
Swords & Spells is a supplementary rulebook by Gary Gygax for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.-Contents:Swords & Spells was a supplement of miniature rules, for use with the original D&D set....
), and all seven issues of The Strategic Review.
TSR had agreed to pay Arneson royalties on all D&D products, but when the company came out with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) in 1977, it claimed that this was a significantly different product and did not pay him royalties. In response, Arneson filed the first of five lawsuits against Gygax and TSR in 1979. In March 1981, as part of a confidential agreement, Arneson and Gygax resolved the suits out of court by agreeing that they would both be credited as "co-creators" on the packaging of D&D products from that point on, but this did not end the lingering tensions between them. (Twenty years later, Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games...
(WotC) bought TSR and wanted to drop the word "Advanced" from its planned third edition of D&D. WotC CEO Peter Adkison
Peter Adkison
Peter D. Adkison is the founder and first CEO of Wizards of the Coast , as well as a hobby game professional.During Adkison's tenure, Wizards of the Coast rose to the status of a major publisher in the hobby game industry. Wizards achieved runaway success with its creation of "Magic: the...
approached Arneson to resolve the two-decade-old issue and Arneson released all claims to D&D for an undisclosed sum of money.)
In 1979 Arneson and Richard L. Snider, an original Blackmoor player, co-authored Adventures in Fantasy, a role-playing game that attempted to recapture the "original spirit of the Role Playing Fantasy Game" that Arneson had envisioned in the early 1970s, instead of what D&D had become. In the early 1980s he established his own game company, Adventure Games, that produced the miniatures games Johnny Reb and Harpoon, as well as his own Adventures in Fantasy role-playing game. Adventure Games was profitable, but Arneson found the workload to be excessive and finally sold the company to Flying Buffalo
Flying Buffalo
Flying Buffalo Incorporated is a Scottsdale, Arizona game company that publishes role playing games, card games, gaming materials, and runs Play-by-mail games....
.
While Gary Gygax was president of TSR in the mid 1980s, he and Arneson reconnected, and Arneson briefly relinked Blackmoor to D&D with the "DA" (Dave Arneson)
DA module series
The DA module series is a series of four adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, designed to be compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set. They were written for character levels 10–14 by Dave Arneson and David J...
series of modules set in Blackmoor (1986–1987). The four modules, three of which were written by Arneson, detailed Arneson's campaign setting for the first time. When Gygax was forced out of TSR, Arneson was removed from the company before a planned fifth module could be published. Gygax and Arneson again went their separate ways. In 1986 Arneson wrote a new D&D module set in Blackmoor called "The Garbage Pits of Despair", which was published in two parts in Different Worlds
Different Worlds
Different Worlds was an American role-playing games' magazine, now defunct.-History:Different Worlds was launched in 1979 by Greg Stafford to promote the role-playing games from his own editing house, Chaosium...
magazine issues #42 and #43.
Arneson stepped into the computer industry and founded 4D Interactive Systems, a computer company in Minnesota that is still in business today. He also did some computer programming and worked on several games. He eventually found himself consulting with computer companies.
Living in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in the late 1980s, Arneson had a chance to work with special education
Special education
Special education is the education of students with special needs in a way that addresses the students' individual differences and needs. Ideally, this process involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials,...
children. Upon returning to Minnesota, he pursued teaching and began speaking at schools about educational uses of role-playing and using multi-sided dice to teach math. In the 1990s he began working at Full Sail, a private university that teaches multimedia subjects, and continued there as a professor of computer game design until 2008.
Around 2000, Arneson was working with videographer
Videographer
Strictly speaking, a videographer is a person who works in the field of videography, video production — recording moving images and sound on video tape, disk, other electro-mechanical device. News broadcasting relies heavily on live television where videographers engage in electronic news...
John Kentner on Dragons in the Basement, a video documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
on the early history of role-playing games. Arneson describes the documentary: “Basically it is a series of interviews with original players (‘How did D&D affect your life?’) and original RPG designers like Marc Miller (Traveller) and M.A.R. Barker (Empire of the Petal Throne).” He also made a cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
in the Dungeons & Dragons movie as one of many mages
Wizard (Dungeons & Dragons)
The wizard is one of the standard character class in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. A wizard uses arcane magic, and is considered less effective in melee combat than other classes.-Creative origins:...
throwing fireballs at a dragon
Dragon (Dungeons & Dragons)
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game , dragons are an iconic type of monstrous creature used as adversaries or, less commonly, allies of player characters...
, although the scene was deleted from the completed movie. Arneson and Dustin Clingman founded Zeitgeist Games to produce an updated d20 System
D20 System
The d20 System is a role-playing game system published in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast originally developed for the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons...
version of the Blackmoor setting. Goodman Games
Goodman Games
Goodman Games is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes. Goodman Games is best known as the publisher of the Dungeon Crawl Classics series of adventure modules, as well as the Dragonmech and the award-winning Etherscope role-playing games, and has...
published and distributed this new Blackmoor in 2004.
Personal life
Arneson married Frankie Ann Morneau in 1984; they had one daughter, Malia, and two grandchildren.Arneson continued to play games his entire life, including D&D and military miniature games, and regularly attended an annual meeting to play the original Blackmoor in Minnesota. At Full Sail University he taught the class "Rules of the Game", a class in which students learned how to accurately document and create rule sets for games that were balanced between mental challenges for the players and "physical" ones for the characters. He retired from the position on June 19, 2008.
Arneson died on April 7, 2009, after battling cancer for two years. According to his daughter, Malia Weinhagen, "The biggest thing about my dad's world is he wanted people to have fun in life ... I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun."
Honors and tributes
Arneson received numerous industry awards for his part in creating Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games. In 1984 he was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design's Hall of FameOrigins Award
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins.The Origins Award is commonly...
and in 1999 was named by Pyramid
Pyramid (magazine)
Pyramid is a gaming magazine, publishing articles primarily on role-playing games, but including board games, card games, and other sorts of games. It began life in 1993 as a print publication of Steve Jackson Games for its first 30 issues, though it has been published on the Internet since March...
magazine as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons, "at least in the realm of adventure gaming".
Three days after his death, Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games...
temporarily replaced the front page of the Dungeons & Dragons section of their web site with a tribute to Arneson. Other tributes in the gaming world included Order of the Stick #644, and Dork Tower
Dork Tower
Dork Tower is an online comic created, written and drawn by John Kovalic. It chronicles the lives of a group of geeks living in the fictional town of Mud Bay, Wisconsin. Mud Bay's design is strongly influenced by the author's home town of Madison, Wisconsin. Topics have included role-playing...
for April 8, 2009.
Video game publisher Activision Blizzard
Activision Blizzard
Activision Blizzard, Inc., formerly Activision, Inc. is the American holding company for Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. The company is majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA and was created through the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, announced on December 2, 2007, in a...
posted a tribute to Arneson on their website and on April 14, 2009, released patch 3.1 of the online role-playing game World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
, The Secrets of Ulduar, dedicated to Arneson.
Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online, now Dungeons and Dragons: Eberron Unlimited, added an in-game memorial altar to Arneson in the Ruins of Threnal location in the game. They also created an in-game item named the "Mantle of the Worldshaper" that is a reward for finishing the Threnal quest chain that is narrated by Arneson himself. The Mantle's description reads: "A comforting and inspiring presence surrounds you as you hold this cloak. Arcane runes run along the edges of the fine cape, and masterfully drawn on the silken lining is an incredibly detailed map of a place named 'Blackmoor'."
Partial bibliography
- Dungeons & DragonsDungeons & Dragons (1974)The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It initially included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game...
(1974) (with Gary GygaxGary GygaxErnest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....
) - BlackmoorBlackmoor (supplement)Blackmoor is a supplementary rulebook for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game written by Dave Arneson...
(1975) - Dungeonmaster's Index (1977)
- The First Fantasy Campaign (1977)
- Adventures in Fantasy (1979) (with Richard L. Snider)
- Robert Asprin's Thieves' World (1981) (co-author)
- Citybook II – Port o' Call (1984) (co-author)
- Adventures in BlackmoorAdventures in BlackmoorAdventures in Blackmoor is a 64-page Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game adventure, designed to be compatible with the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set.-Plot summary:...
(D&D Module:DA1) (1986) (with David J. Ritchie) - Temple of the FrogTemple of the FrogTemple of the Frog is a 48-page 1986 adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Its module code is DA2 and its TSR product code is TSR 9175...
(D&D Module:DA2) (1986) (with David J. Ritchie) - City of the GodsCity of the GodsCity of the Gods is a 1987 adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Its module code is "DA3" and its TSR product code is "TSR 9191".-Plot summary:...
(D&D Module:DA3) (1987) (with David J. Ritchie) - DNA/DOA (1989)
- The Case of the Pacific Clipper (1991)
- The Haunted Lighthouse (Dungeon Crawl ClassicsDungeon Crawl ClassicsDungeon Crawl Classics is a series of roleplaying adventure modules published by Goodman Games under the d20 open gaming license. It includes more than 40 adventures, and features celebrated game designers such as Michael Mearls, Dave Arneson, and Monte Cook, as well as classic TSR artists like...
Module #3.5) (2003) - Dave Arneson's Blackmoor (2004) (lead designer)
- Player's Guide to Blackmoor (2006)
External links
of Dave Arneson.- "Dave Arneson Interview" by at Digital Entertainment News.
- "Dave Arneson Interview" by Andrew S. Bub at GameSpy, August 11, 2002.
- "Slice of SciFi #151: Interview with “Dungeons & Dragons” co-creator Dave Arneson" by Farpoint Media, February 8, 2008.
- Jeremy L.C. Jones. “Interview with Dave Arneson”, koboldquarterly.com, 2009-04-11. Retrieved on 2009-05-03. Arneson’s last known interview.