Blackmoor Week Day 2: Unreasonable Dave Arneson Fans

[Havard]

Crossposted from my blog:

Unreasonable Dave Arneson Fans? (Blackmoor Week Day 2)

Every so often I read something on the net about Dave Arneson fans who have the most unreasonable opinions. Supposedly, there are a number of these people who insist that Dave Arneson was the sole originator of Dungeons & Dragons and that Gary merely spread the good word.

Now, I am sure that a few of these people do exist. But in my experience they are not many. Sometimes I see people praising Dave Arneson who are just using Dave's name as an excuse to attack Gary Gygax or D&D. It is often easy to see that many of them aren't real D&D fans or they have some other reason to dislike Gary or his legacy. Most of those people are clearly not real Dave Arneson fans, but people just using Arneson's name to serve their own agenda. 

As to real Dave Arneson fans, they are usually not very vocal at all. The ones who do speak out are often found at The Comeback Inn where we are all a very reasonable lot.

As more and more fans of D&D are becoming interested in the origins of the hobby, it is not surprising that many look into the role Dave Arneson and his group played in creating the game. While there are still many things that are unclear about what aspects of the game were added when and by whom, I think it is unfair to assume that one group of fans are less reasonable than another. 

This is the second day of Blackmoor Week and we are soon approaching Dave Arneson Game Day (October 1st). It is a good time to remind people of the people and the ideas that lead to the creation of the game and also of the great ideas that were lost along the way as Dave and Gary were both eventually cast aside.

-Havard

Read original here: http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/202...-fans.html

-Havard

[finarvyn]

Strange stuff indeed. Like you, I hear people defending positions that I never see folks express. It hadn't really occurred to me that this could be a backhanded anti-Gygax attack strategy, but I can see that as an option once you mentioned it. :O

[Havard]

Strange stuff indeed. Like you, I hear people defending positions that I never see folks express. It hadn't really occurred to me that this could be a backhanded anti-Gygax attack strategy, but I can see that as an option once you mentioned it. :O

The back-handed Gygax attack thing is something I have suspected when I saw it on sites that mostly focus on non-D&D RPGs.

I am sure those people still exist, but I think this is more of a myth. I also think that the real Dave Arneson fans are a bit of a mystery to those who peddle in gaming history. They rarely come and talk to us, although I have talked to Jon Peterson on occasion

Heh, I remember a time when you were one of the only few people talking about Dave Arneson my friend!

-Havard

[Greg]

I suspect that these "unreasonable Dave Arneson fans" are so few that they're completely inconsequential. In contrast, there seem to be many unreasonable Gary Gygax fans who completely dismiss Dave's contributions, and their view seems to have become the prevailing notion among old-school gamers.

I think Dave Arneson should be credited as the originator of D&D and fantasy role playing, certainly in terms of being the first game master who ran a fantasy role playing campaign and established many of the core mechanics, rules and concepts that are used across countless RPGs to this day. But Gary codified many of Dave's rules, took the game much further, and was largely responsible for bringing D&D to the world as a published product. As I've said elsewhere, I think Dave was the initial innovator and the creative mind that sparked it all (with considerable help and contributions from his players), and Gary was the rules lawyer, publisher and game designer who took it from there and led D&D to success (with plenty of help and contributions from his players and many others as well).

Let's hope a more balanced view becomes the prevailing one.