(30/41: 1971) (30/40) DAVE ARNESON
The Spark Before the System
Dave Arneson invented role-playing. Then he spent thirty-five years watching someone else get credit for it.
This isn’t bitterness talking. It’s the historical record. Before Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign began in 1971, no one had combined persistent individual characters, ongoing narrative continuity, and referee-mediated fantasy adventure into a single play experience. After Blackmoor, the entire hobby existed.
Gary Gygax codified what Arneson created. The codification was essential — without it, role-playing remains a local phenomenon, dying when the original group disbands. But codification is not invention. Gygax wrote the manual. Arneson built the machine the manual describes.
The tragedy of Dave Arneson is that his genius was improvisational, intuitive, and resistant to documentation. He created something revolutionary, then couldn’t prove he’d created it in a court of law.
The Braunstein Inheritance
To understand Arneson, you have to understand the Twin Cities gaming scene of the late 1960s.
Dave Wesely, a physics major and Army enlistee, had been experimenting with a game he called Braunstein — named after a fictional Napoleonic-era German town. Instead of commanding armies, each player controlled a single character: the mayor, the banker, the spy, the university student. The referee adjudicated their conflicting objectives. There were no victory conditions. The game was the interaction itself.
When Wesely deployed overseas, Arneson took over as the group’s primary referee. He ran a Braunstein variant set during a Banana Republic revolution — players controlled generals, rebels, CIA operatives. Then another set in a post-apocalyptic future. Each time, the individual character perspective remained central.
Then Arneson read Conan the Conqueror. And The Lord of the Rings. And he started thinking about dungeons.
Blackmoor: The First Campaign
In the fall of 1971, Dave Arneson invited his gaming group to explore a ruined castle sitting atop an ancient dungeon complex in a place called Blackmoor.
This was not a wargame. There were no armies to command, no territories to conquer. Each player controlled a single character — a fighting man, a wizard, a thief — who descended into darkness seeking treasure and glory. When a character survived multiple sessions, they grew more powerful. When they died, the player rolled up someone new.
Arneson refereed from behind a cardboard screen, rolling dice the players couldn’t see, describing rooms they couldn’t map until they’d explored them. He made rulings on the fly. Can I swing from the chandelier? Let’s find out. Can I bribe the guard? Roll something — we’ll see what happens.
The rules were loose, personal, improvisational. Arneson used Chainmail as a starting framework but departed from it constantly. Combat resolution varied from session to session. What mattered wasn’t mechanical consistency — it was narrative momentum.
Dave Wesely saw it clearly: “He was an only child as I was, and that gives you a little different perspective on things… I know from various evidence that his parents, by and large, had given him to understand he was quite a disappointment.”
Arneson found his tribe in the gaming group. And in Blackmoor, he found a world he could control, a place where his improvisational genius — the quick wit, the theatrical flair, the ability to yes-and any player choice — made him essential.
The Blackmoor campaign ran weekly for years. Characters became legends. The dungeon grew deeper. Other referees in the Twin Cities started running their own adventures in Arneson’s world. The campaign became a living thing, a shared mythology that no one owned but everyone contributed to.
This was the invention: not a game you played once and put away, but a world you inhabited session after session, where your character’s choices accumulated into a story no one had scripted in advance.
The Lake Geneva Meeting
In late 1972, Arneson and fellow Minnesota gamer David Megarry drove to Lake Geneva to show Gary Gygax what they’d built.
Gygax was intrigued. He’d been running fantasy wargames using Chainmail, but this was different. Individual characters. Ongoing campaigns. Dungeons as adventure environments. The possibilities were immediate and obvious.
The two Daves ran Gygax through a Blackmoor session. Gygax’s response was electric. This was it — this was what gaming could become.
Over the following months, Arneson sent Gygax his notes. About twenty pages of rules, monsters, and dungeon descriptions — the accumulated wisdom of two years of Blackmoor sessions, scrawled in Arneson’s loose hand.
What happened next is where history fractures.
The Collaboration
Gygax maintained throughout his life that Arneson’s contribution was conceptual — an inspiring spark that required enormous labor to transform into a publishable game. The twenty pages of notes were rough, inconsistent, full of gaps. Gygax spent months writing actual rules, establishing mechanical frameworks, creating systems that strangers could learn from a book.
Arneson saw it differently. The core innovations — individual characters, the dungeon environment, experience and levels, the referee as world-controller rather than opponent — all came from Blackmoor. Gygax was an editor who packaged and promoted what Arneson had already invented.
Both versions contain truth. Both versions omit truth.
Arneson’s Blackmoor was revolutionary. No one disputes this. The combination of individual characters, persistent campaigns, referee-mediated fantasy adventure, and emergent narrative existed nowhere else before Arneson created it. But Arneson’s rules were personal, intuitive, inconsistent. They worked because Arneson was in the room, adjudicating, improvising, yes-and-ing. They didn’t transfer.
Gygax’s genius was systematization. He took the Blackmoor experience and asked: how do we make this work without Arneson present? How do strangers learn this game from a book? The answer was D&D as published in 1974 — a hybrid of Arneson’s vision and Gygax’s structure. Neither man could have produced it alone. Arneson couldn’t systematize. Gygax couldn’t have conceived Blackmoor without seeing it first.
The Fracture
D&D was published in January 1974. Gygax and Arneson had a handshake deal: 10% royalties each on every copy sold. Within a year, the relationship soured.
In April 1975, Gygax presented Arneson with a revised agreement: royalties cut from 10% to 5%, and ownership of D&D transferred to TSR. To Gygax, this was signing D&D over to himself — he controlled TSR. To Arneson, he had just given away his creation.
The tension escalated. After the contentious 1976 shareholder meeting, Arneson’s position at the company became untenable. Gygax presented him with an employee agreement: everything created while working for TSR belonged to TSR. When Arneson missed the signing deadline and returned with a counter-offer, Gygax demoted him from Research Director to the shipping department at $2.30 an hour.
Arneson was devastated. Rob Kuntz recalled seeing him that night: “He was down there, and he wasn’t drinking. He’s being consoled by his friends, McGarry and Carr. And he was actually crying because it meant that something had happened that wasn’t going to fulfill his destiny.”
When Advanced Dungeons & Dragons appeared in 1977–1979, Gygax claimed it was a new game — incompatible with original D&D, and therefore not subject to Arneson’s royalty agreement. Arneson sued. The case settled in 1981: $600,000 in back royalties and 2.5% on future D&D products — approximately $7.5 million in today’s money. But he lost his bid for co-creator credit on AD&D materials.
For the rest of his life, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books bore Gary Gygax’s name alone.
The Work Beyond D&D
Arneson never stopped designing. But nothing matched the lightning-strike success of his collaboration with Gygax.
The First Fantasy Campaign (1977), published by Judges Guild, was Arneson’s attempt to document the original Blackmoor. It’s a fascinating artifact — part setting guide, part design diary, part window into how the first role-playing campaign actually functioned. The prose is loose, the organization chaotic, but the creative energy is unmistakable. This is the raw material Gygax refined into D&D.
Adventures in Fantasy (1979), co-designed with Richard Snider, was Arneson’s attempt at a complete RPG system independent of TSR. It didn’t sell. The rules were complex, the presentation unclear, and Arneson’s name alone couldn’t move product without Gygax’s systematizing hand.
Blackmoor as a D&D supplement (1975) brought Arneson’s setting into the official canon — the Temple of the Frog adventure, the disease rules, the monk class. But even this was edited heavily by TSR staff. Arneson’s raw vision kept getting filtered through other people’s sensibilities.
He taught game design at Full Sail University in Florida for years. He consulted, advised, appeared at conventions. But he never produced another Blackmoor — another lightning strike that changed everything.
Some creators only have one revolution in them. That revolution was enough.
The Honest Assessment
The old scoring gave Arneson Architecture 9 and Mastery 10. The new methodology corrects both — and the corrections tell a true story about the difference between conceptual brilliance and published craft.
Architecture measures two things: how well the system was built AND whether other designers built on it. Nobody studied Arneson’s published systems. They studied Gygax’s codification of Arneson’s concepts. That’s a crucial distinction.
Arneson’s systems were never well-built in the publishable sense. The entry itself says it repeatedly: “His rules were loose, personal, improvisational.” Adventures in Fantasy didn’t sell — the rules were complex, the presentation unclear. First Fantasy Campaign is fascinating but disorganized. Blackmoor as published was heavily edited by TSR staff.
At Architecture 9 — “Blueprint everyone studied” — nobody studied Arneson’s published systems. At 7 — “Built to last, built for itself” — Blackmoor as a live campaign was excellent. But the published products weren’t. Adventures in Fantasy was Arneson’s one attempt at a complete standalone RPG system and it failed — commercially and critically.
Architecture 5. “It works.” Functional design that achieves its goals. Arneson wasn’t building card games — he was attempting to build RPG systems, the hardest architectural challenge in tabletop gaming. And Blackmoor AS PLAYED was a functioning system that supported years of campaign play. It just couldn’t be transferred. The concepts were visionary. The published systems were not well-built, and nobody built on Arneson’s architecture — they built on Gygax’s codification of Arneson’s ideas.
Mastery measures craft development across a body of work — specifically the craft of published design. Being a legendary GM is a performance skill. Designing publishable game systems is a different skill. Arneson mastered one and struggled with the other.
The old entry awards Mastery 10 based on Arneson’s GMing: “At the table, Arneson was a virtuoso.” Under the new scale, that’s the wrong question. The 10,000 hours question asks about published design craft, not performance. Arneson’s published body of work is: D&D (co-credit), Blackmoor supplement (heavily edited), First Fantasy Campaign (disorganized), Adventures in Fantasy (failed). That’s thin. There’s no refinement arc. There’s one collaborative masterpiece and several unsuccessful attempts to work independently.
Mastery 5. Working designer. Professional credits spanning multiple projects. The fundamentals are sound — Arneson understood what made games compelling at a level few ever reach. But his published output doesn’t demonstrate the craft refinement the scale measures. The 10,000 hours were spent performing, not publishing.
The Scoring Case
Invention (10): “Pulled it out of their ass.”
“Pulled it out of their ass.” Before Blackmoor, nobody played a persistent fantasy campaign with individual characters gaining experience under a referee who mediated narrative. Arneson’s players had no frame of reference. Wesely’s Braunstein provided the individual-character and referee concepts, but Arneson made the leap to fantasy, persistence, dungeon exploration, and character progression. Gygax saw Blackmoor and immediately recognized it as something that had never existed. Arneson is credited as co-creator of D&D and acknowledged by historians as the originator of the RPG play experience.
Architecture (5): “It works.”
“It works.” The concepts were visionary — the living world, character continuity, the referee’s world-building role. But Arneson’s published systems were not well-built. Adventures in Fantasy failed commercially and critically. First Fantasy Campaign is a design diary more than a system. The Blackmoor supplement was heavily edited by TSR staff. Nobody built on Arneson’s architecture — they built on Gygax’s codification. The concepts propagated. Arneson’s specific published systems did not.
Mastery (5): “Working designer.”
“Working designer.” Thin published catalog. No refinement arc. Adventures in Fantasy failed. Legendary GM ≠ master game designer. The 10,000 hours were spent performing, not publishing. D&D’s published form is largely Gygax’s writing. Arneson’s solo published work shows the gap between conceptual brilliance and ability to execute in print. Arneson was a genius inventor and a legendary performer. He was not a master of the craft of published game design.
Adjustments (+10):
- ■ Longevity 20+ years: +2 (1971–2009, 38 years of engagement with gaming, though published output is sporadic)
- ■ Full-time career: No. Taught at Full Sail. Consulted and appeared at conventions. Published game design was not his primary livelihood for most of his career.
- ■ Awards: +1 (Co-creator credit on D&D is the most significant recognition in tabletop gaming history.)
- ■ Branded name: +2 (D&D. He co-created it. The brand exists because of Blackmoor.)
- ■ Cross-genre success: No. RPGs only.
- ■ Commercial success: +1 (D&D has generated $1 billion+. Arneson co-created it.)
- ■ Design propagation: +2 (Every RPG descends from Blackmoor’s concepts. The persistent campaign, individual characters, referee-mediated narrative — all propagated universally. Documented through Gygax, but originated with Arneson.)
- ■ Full-time career: No. Teaching was his primary profession.
Total: 30 points. Year: 1971.
The Gap
Arneson and Gygax, year-tied at 1971:
Gygax — 39 points (1971): Inv 10 / Arch 10 / Mast 9 / Adj +10
Arneson — 30 points (1971): Inv 10 / Arch 5 / Mast 5 / Adj +10
Nine-point gap. Both invented the same category. Both score Invention 10. The gap comes entirely from Architecture (10 vs 5), Mastery (9 vs 5), and a tie on Adjustments (+10 vs +10).
Gygax built the system. Arneson had the spark. The methodology separates conceptual brilliance from published craft — and the 9-point gap is honest about where the evidence falls.
The adjustments tell their own story. Arneson triggers nearly every fact-based adjustment: longevity (+2), awards (+1), branded name (+2), commercial success (+1), design propagation (+2). The real-world impact of co-creating D&D fires almost every trigger. The methodology captures that impact even when the craft pillars honestly can’t inflate the score.
30 points is the highest score possible for a designer with Invention 10 but limited published craft evidence. The adjustments rescue what the pillars can’t reward. The facts of Arneson’s impact are enormous. The evidence for published design mastery is thin. Both things are true.
The Hidden Pattern
Dave Arneson’s tragedy is the tragedy of the improviser who can’t document.
His genius was presence. In the room, making rulings on the fly, yes-and-ing player choices, building narrative momentum through force of personality — he was unmatched. But genius that can’t transfer isn’t a product. It’s a performance.
Gygax understood something Arneson didn’t: the game needed to work without either of them present. Strangers needed to be able to learn from a book, run sessions for their own friends, build their own Blackmoors. That required systems, rules, documentation — all the things Arneson’s improvisational style resisted.
The lawsuit was really a fight over this question: who deserves credit for an invention that only exists because two incompatible approaches collided? The spark or the system? The vision or the manual?
The answer, obviously, is both. But “both” doesn’t fit on a book cover. “Both” doesn’t satisfy ego or legal precedent. So they fought.
What Remains
Every role-playing campaign owes its existence to Blackmoor. Every character who survives one session and returns for another. Every referee who builds a world and invites players to change it. Every moment where a player asks “can I try something?” and the GM says “let’s find out.”
That’s Arneson’s invention. Not a rulebook — a mode of play. A way of being creative together that hadn’t existed before 1971 and became the foundation of a $15 billion industry.
Gygax wrote the manual. Arneson built the experience the manual describes.
The manual got famous. The experience is what people actually love.
30 points. 1971. Invention 10 — tied for the highest on the list. Architecture 5. Mastery 5. The widest gap between brilliance and craft in the entire registry.
The methodology doesn’t punish Arneson. It tells his story honestly. The spark was his. The system was not. The impact was enormous. The published evidence of craft mastery is thin.
Dave Arneson co-created the most important game in history. He spent thirty-five years unable to prove it on paper — in court or in print.
The methodology has the same problem. The invention is undeniable. The published craft evidence is not there. Both things are true.
Both things have always been true.
Total: 30 points. Year: 1971.
30 points. 1971. Invention 10 — tied for the highest on the list. Architecture 5. Mastery 5. The widest gap between brilliance and craft in the entire registry.
Both things have always been true.