(23/41: 1968) MIKE CARR
The Teenager in the Basement
In 1966, a fifteen-year-old in Saint Paul watched The Blue Max and started tinkering with plastic model airplanes.
Most kids would have staged dogfights on the carpet and moved on. Mike Carr wrote rules. He gave his pilots names. He tracked their kills. When a pilot survived enough missions, that pilot got better — more accurate, harder to hit, a veteran.
When one died, it mattered.
By 1968, Carr had formalized Fight in the Skies well enough to run it at the first Gen Con. Not a later Gen Con. The first one. Lake Geneva, 1968. Gary Gygax was there. Dave Arneson would soon be in the same orbit.
And Carr’s pilots were already leveling up.
The Parallel Evolution
This is the historically significant detail that gets overlooked.
Dave Wesely ran Braunstein in 1967 — the game where wargame players took individual roles instead of commanding armies. Arneson evolved that into Blackmoor by 1971. Gygax and Arneson published D&D in 1974. The standard narrative traces a clean line from Braunstein to Blackmoor to D&D.
But Carr was doing something adjacent at the same time, in the same community.
Fight in the Skies gave wargame units individual identity. Each pilot had a name, a service record, a kill count, a progression track. Players didn’t command squadrons in the abstract — they were Lieutenant Werner Voss or Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. When your pilot survived a campaign, you felt ownership. When your ace caught a burst of machine gun fire and spiraled into the mud, you felt loss.
This isn’t role-playing in the Arneson sense. The pilots didn’t negotiate with tavern keepers or explore dungeons. They didn’t make narrative choices beyond tactical ones. But the emotional core — this specific character is mine, and what happens to them matters — was already present in 1968.
Carr didn’t invent the RPG. But he independently arrived at one of its essential ingredients: the player’s emotional investment in a singular, persistent character who grows over time. He was exploring the same design space as Wesely and Arneson, from a different angle, at the same moment.
The hobby’s creation myth usually has three fathers. Carr was in the room, building something parallel, and his contribution fed the culture that produced D&D even if it didn’t directly generate the mechanics.
The Only Game at Every Gen Con
Fight in the Skies has been played at every Gen Con since 1968.
No other game can claim that. Not D&D. Not any wargame. Not any board game.
Carr founded the Fight in the Skies Society in 1969 and launched The Aerodrome, a newsletter that served as the community’s connective tissue for over 150 issues across decades. He ran the games personally. He maintained the rules. He kept showing up.
This is a different kind of design achievement. It’s not mechanical innovation or commercial success. It’s community stewardship — sustaining a living game culture for over fifty-five years through personal commitment.
The game evolved through seven editions, from self-published runs of 25 copies to TSR’s full-color Dawn Patrol (1982), which sold approximately 20,000 units. Each edition refined the rules while preserving the core identity: named pilots, historical campaigns, character progression, lethal consequences.
Most games from 1968 are museum pieces. Fight in the Skies is still being played because one person never stopped caring for it.
The First Dungeon Master’s Teacher
Carr joined TSR in 1976 as employee #8, at Gygax’s invitation. Over seven years he served as game designer, editor, general manager, and VP of production — a range of roles that reflected TSR’s scrappy early culture where everyone did everything.
His editorial fingerprints are on the foundational texts. He wrote forewords for the AD&D Monster Manual, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Players Handbook. He edited Vault of the Drow, White Plume Mountain, The Village of Hommlet, Keep on the Borderlands, The World of Greyhawk, Against the Giants, and Descent into the Depths of the Earth. He collaborated with Arneson and Gygax on Don’t Give Up the Ship! (1972), handling research and editing for the first published collaboration between D&D’s co-creators.
But his most important TSR contribution was In Search of the Unknown (B1, 1979).
B1 was bundled with the D&D Basic Set. For thousands of players, it was the first dungeon they ever explored. For thousands of DMs, it was the first adventure they ever ran.
Carr designed it as a teaching tool. The module provided the dungeon architecture — rooms, corridors, features — but left monster and treasure placement partially open for the DM to customize. This wasn’t laziness. It was pedagogy. Carr was showing new Dungeon Masters how to think about adventure design, not just handing them a finished product to read aloud.
The “introductory module bundled with the starter set” became a standard practice that TSR and every publisher since has followed. Carr established the template: give new GMs enough structure to succeed and enough flexibility to learn.
B1 reached more players than almost any other early module because it shipped with the gateway product. It was invisible infrastructure — the tutorial level that taught a generation how to play.
The Turtle Trader
The strangest chapter in Carr’s biography has nothing to do with gaming.
When TSR overexpanded in the early 1980s, Carr was among the layoffs in 1983. That summer he saw a Wall Street Journal ad: “Commodity Futures Trader.” He applied and was selected by legendary Chicago trader Richard Dennis for the famous “Turtle Traders” experiment — a program designed to prove that trading could be taught systematically.
Carr traded commodities for Dennis for several years. The analytical mind that had built dogfight probability tables and dungeon encounter balancing turned out to be well-suited for financial markets.
This isn’t a game design credit. But it reveals something about how Carr’s brain works. He builds systems — whether those systems govern Fokker triplanes, dungeon corridors, or soybean futures. The medium changes. The systematic thinking doesn’t.
The Honest Assessment
Carr’s draft scored him at Invention 7, Architecture 7, and Mastery 7 with no adjustments, for a total of 21. The methodology corrects Mastery downward and adds the adjustments the draft omitted, netting a higher total of 23. The corrections reveal something important about the difference between editorial excellence and personal design authorship.
Invention holds at 7. Character progression in a wargame in 1968 is genuine innovation — Carr independently arrived at one of the RPG’s essential emotional ingredients in the same community, at the same moment, as Wesely and Arneson. B1’s pedagogical approach to adventure design established a teaching template the industry still follows. But the 8+ threshold requires documented adoption, and the RPG lineage ran through Arneson and Gygax, not Carr. His innovations were noticed, not adopted wholesale. That’s the definition of 7: “People noticed.”
Architecture holds at 7. Fight in the Skies supports deep campaign play across 55+ years of continuous community engagement — seven editions of structural refinement producing a game that outlasted nearly everything from its era. But it’s a relatively simple game, and simple games cap at 6–7. Nobody copied the FITS architecture to build other games. It’s excellent, self-contained, and unpropagated. “Built to last, built for itself.”
Mastery drops from 7 to 6. This is where the draft overreached. Mastery 7 requires “multiple quality games with personal craft driving results.” Carr’s personal design credits are narrow: one game system (FITS, seven editions) and one adventure module (B1). Don’t Give Up the Ship! was a collaboration where Carr handled research and editing, not lead design. The seven years at TSR were primarily editorial — he edited the foundational AD&D texts, which is important, skilled work, but editing is not personal design authorship. The methodology weights solo-authored work more heavily. Mastery 6 fits precisely: sustained career, one deep design amid solid professional work, team and editorial credits common. The craft is real but the personal design volume isn’t there for 7.
The Scoring Case
Invention (7): “People noticed.”
“People noticed.” Character progression in a wargame (Fight in the Skies, 1968) was a parallel evolution to the RPG impulse — individual identity, emotional investment, persistent advancement — happening independently in the same community as Wesely and Arneson. Not the RPG invention itself, but genuinely important adjacent work that fed the culture producing D&D. B1’s pedagogical adventure structure — teaching DMs how to build dungeons rather than just handing them one — established a template the industry still follows. Meaningful innovation, noticed by the field, not adopted as standard. That’s a 7.
Architecture (7): “Built to last, built for itself.”
“Built to last, built for itself.” Fight in the Skies created a durable micro-category: the character-driven aerial combat campaign game, sustained by an active community for 55+ years through seven editions of refinement. The campaign structure with persistent pilots, kill tracking, and lethal consequences supports deep extended play. But it’s a relatively simple game — simple games cap at 6–7 — and nobody copied the architecture to build other systems. Excellent within scope. Unpropagated beyond it.
Mastery (6): “Competent professional, moments of real craft.”
“Competent professional, moments of real craft.” Sustained career spanning decades. One deep design (FITS, seven editions) showing genuine craft refinement over time. One standout module (B1) that reached tens of thousands through Basic Set distribution. Seven years of professional editorial work at TSR on the foundational AD&D texts. But personal design output is narrow — one game system and one module — and the TSR years were primarily editorial rather than lead design. The craft is demonstrable. The volume of personally-authored design work limits the score.
Adjustments (+3):
- ■ Longevity 10+ years: +1 Published designs from 1968 (FITS first edition) through 1982 (Dawn Patrol). Fourteen years of published work.
- ■ Full-time career: +1 TSR employee #8 for seven years (1976–1983). Game design, editing, and production was his primary profession.
- ■ Awards: No. No major industry award wins, nominations, or Hall of Fame inductions.
- ■ Branded name: No. Non-gamers have never heard of Dawn Patrol, FITS, or B1.
- ■ Cross-genre success: +1 Wargame (FITS/Dawn Patrol) + RPG module (B1). Two distinct game formats.
- ■ Commercial success: No. Dawn Patrol sold approximately 20,000 units. Not close to $10M lifetime retail.
- ■ Design propagation: No. The pedagogical module format was widely adopted, but that’s a publishing template, not a game design approach per the methodology’s standard. Character progression influence flowed through Arneson and Gygax, not Carr.
The Hidden Pattern
Mike Carr builds systems that teach.
Fight in the Skies taught wargamers to care about individual characters. B1 taught new Dungeon Masters how to build dungeons. The Turtle Traders experiment taught that systematic analysis could be learned, not just inherited.
In each case, Carr created a framework that empowered others to develop their own skills within a structured environment. His dungeons had empty rooms for the DM to fill. His pilot progression gave players ownership over characters the rules didn’t fully define. Even his financial career was built on the premise that good systems produce good practitioners.
He’s not the inventor of the RPG. He’s the guy who was independently building toward the same insight, in the same room, at the same time — and then spent the next fifty years teaching other people how to use what the inventors created.
What Remains
The only game played at every Gen Con since 1968.
The first dungeon thousands of DMs ever ran.
The editorial hand behind the foundational AD&D texts.
A pilot progression system that independently discovered one of role-playing’s essential emotional ingredients.
And fifty-five years of showing up — running games, editing newsletters, maintaining a community that most people in the hobby have never heard of but that predates almost everything else in it.
Mike Carr was in the room when the hobby was born. He’s still in the room. He just never needed anyone to notice.
23 points. 1968. The pilot who leveled up before anyone knew leveling up was possible.
The methodology honors what you built, how well you built it, and whether you kept building. Carr kept building. The score reflects the craft, the commitment, and the limits of a career spent mostly in service of other people’s games.
Both things are true.
Total: 23 points. Year: 1968.
23 points. 1968. The pilot who leveled up before anyone knew leveling up was possible.
Both things are true.