RIP: Dave Arneson, 61
- Scribbled on April 9th, 2009 by Jonah Falcon
- Filed in Industry News, RPG
Roughly a year after Gary Gygax passed away, Dave Arneson passed away at 61.
While the late Gary Gygax, who passed on a little more than a year ago, added fantasy elements to war gaming to create the basis for Dungeons & Dragons, it was Dave Arneson who took those rules and altered them to a point where instead of controlling large armies, players controlled a single character with a role to play, giving birth to the role-playing genre as we know it. It may have taken a 1979 lawsuit to get him listed officially as D&D’s co-creator, but role-players around the world will always remember his contributions to gaming, both tabletop and otherwise.
From Giants in the Playground:
Many of our younger readers may not know who Mr. Arneson was, but he was a pivotal part of the birth of the hobby we all play. By most accounts, he literally invented the very concept of role-playing games. While he would share official credit for the original Dungeons & Dragons rules with the late Mr. Gygax, Mr. Arneson was the first to take the Chainmail wargaming rules and run a game where players controlled a single character, rather than an army, and described that character’s actions to a judge who would determine how the environment reacted to them. Pretty much every roleplaying game (and many computer games) can trace their lineage to this single idea. He also invented the first campaign world, Blackmoor, which is hardly surprising considering he invented the concept of campaign worlds in the first place. It is impossible for me to overstate the impact his games had on what would become our mutual hobby.
While he didn’t get to appear on Futurama, his contributions to roleplaying games everywhere are incalculable.
(Thanks, Kotaku.)
April 9th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
My d20s d12s dd5s are still today for him
April 15th, 2009 at 12:01 am
[...] major addition is the Secrets of Ulduar, a new dungeon which is being presented as an homage to the recently deceased Dave Arneson. Since discovering Ulduar in the Storm Peaks, adventurers have journeyed to the titan [...]