Dave Arneson

David L. Arneson (born 1955 in Minnesota, United States) is an American game designer. In the early 1970s, he co-created the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game with Gary Gygax. He is a University of Minnesota alumnus, and began working on role-playing games (RPGs) at Coffman Union. He has kept a relatively low profile and has been called an "unsung legend" in the early development of role-playing games.

Experience with miniature wargaming
Arneson's role-playing game design work grew from his interest in wargames. His parents bought him the Gettysburg game by Avalon Hill in the early 1960s and he soon taught his friends how to play. He and his gaming group began to design their own games. He was especially fond of naval war games. Exposure to role-playing as a tool also influenced his later designs. In college history classes, he role-played historical events and preferred deviating from the recorded history in a manner similar to "what if" scenarios recreated in wargames.

In the late 1960s, Arneson began playing with military miniatures with the Midwest Military Simulation Association, a gamer group in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that included among its ranks David Wesely. It was with Wesely and the other members of the MMSA that he first developed the inklings of modern role-playing games. When they played, they would set non-combat objectives for each player, a step away from wargaming towards the more individual play and varied challenges of later RPGs.

Arneson attended the Gen Con gaming convention for the first time in 1970, which was only its third annual meeting (still primarily a wargaming only convention). It was at this Gen Con that he met Gary Gygax who had founded the Castle & Crusade Society in the International Federation of Wargamers in the 1960s at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, not far from Arneson's home in Minnesota. They also shared an interest in sailing ship games that would bear fruit when they collaborated on the book Don't Give Up The Ship!, published in 1972 by Guidon Games.

The ideas of wargaming helped define the rules to apply to the acting gaming called role-playing. Role playing involves more one-on-one combat than wargaming could allow. And it was this that the group wanted.

Blackmoor
Originally Arneson played his own mix of rules, using rock, paper, scissors to resolve combat. Later he adapted a set of rules intended for conducting naval combat. These rules had an armor class system like that which would be used later in D&D. In particular, the lower the armor class, the harder the ship (or creature) was to hit.

Arneson later dabbled with the Chainmail rules, written by Gygax and Jeff Perren, but found them lacking. He wrote his own rules in his own play, applying his own to his role-playing game scenarios and brought in his own rules. Eventually, he dropped all of Chainmail ' s rules and replaced most of them with naval game rules. But Chainmail was on a similar track to what Arneson had in mind, combining fantasy elements with real-world rules.

He thought that Gygax would be interested in role-playing, as he was already a game-maker with similar interests, and he helped to start the game Blackmoor (original name of D&D). Gary was more interested in alternative wargaming, but saw this as a great idea. Gygax played for one full weekend after Arneson had been doing it for years.

They then worked together on the game. They were in the basement, often attacking dragons, and thus Gygax's wife is said to have come up with the "Dungeon" part of the game's name. Eventually, the "Blackmoor" name would be dropped for a more interesting and more encompassing name.

The game that evolved was Blackmoor, which modern players of D&D would describe as a campaign setting, not a complete game. Arneson tracked the myriad of rules notes in binders to maintain consistency. The gameplay would now be recognizable to players of Dungeons & Dragons, featuring the use of hit points and armor class, character development (levels and experience points), and dungeon crawls. The setting was also fleshed-out over time. In the early 1970s, Arneson's gaming group in Minnesota began the "Blackmoor" campaign and has continued to play to the present, making it the longest continuously played RPG campaign.

Arneson demonstrated "Blackmoor" to the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association where Gygax was inspired to rename the game Dungeons & Dragons. After phone and mail design collaboration, Gygax and Arneson wanted to publish the game, but Arneson could not afford to invest in the venture. Don Kaye provided funding to publish D&D in 1974, which became a sold-out success. "Blackmoor" became one of the two major settings for the game.

In 1979, Arneson filed the first lawsuit (of five) against Gygax and TSR Hobbies (D&D's publisher) over crediting and royalties on later adapted versions of Dungeons & Dragons. Arneson left D&D/TSR and they resolved the suits out of court in 1981, but this did not end the lingering tensions between them. The court documents are confidential and neither party may talk about the issues involved. It was resolved, however, that they are "co-creators." A movie detailing some of these events, Dragons in the Basement, is forthcoming.

After TSR
In the early 1980s Arneson established his own game company, Adventure Games, which produced the miniature games Johnny Reb and Harpoon. He wrote the Adventures in Fantasy RPG (with co-author Richard L. Snider), which can be seen as D&D as he envisioned it. Adventure Games published several games and made money, but Arneson handed it over to Flying Buffalo as the workload became unbearable.

Arneson briefly returned to "Blackmoor" and D&D in the mid 1980s when Gygax became president of TSR. This production yielded the "DA" (Dave Arneson) series of Blackmoor modules. When a new president after Gygax took control of TSR, Arneson was removed from the company before the fifth module was published. Gygax and Arneson 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. He founded 4D Interactive Systems, Inc., a computer company in Minnesota that is still in business today. He also did some programming and worked on several games. He eventually found himself consulting with computer companies.

Living in California in the late 1980s, he 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. In the 1990s, he began working at Full Sail, a private university that teaches multimedia subjects, and continues there as a professor of computer game design.

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. He also made a cameo appearance in the Dungeons & Dragons movie as one of many mages throwing fireballs at a dragon. Eventually the scene was deleted from the completed movie.

Arneson suffered a stroke in early 2002. He has recovered and continues his work.

Present
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 continues to play games, including D&D, military miniatures, and an annual meeting to play the original Blackmoor in Minnesota. He has received numerous industry awards for his part in creating Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games. He teaches the class "Rules of the Game" at Full Sail, in which students learn how to accurately document and create balanced rules sets.

Interviews

 * "Dave Arneson Interview" by Harold Foundary at Digital Entertainment News
 * "Dave Arneson Interview" by Andrew S. Bub at GameSpy, August 11 2002
 * "Dave Arneson Interview" by Allen Rausch at GameSpy, August 19 2004
 * "An Interview with Dave Arneson" from Pegasus Magazine, Issue #1 (Apr/May 1981)

Dave Arneson Dave Arneson Dave Arneson Dave Arneson Dave Arneson