Dave Arneson R.I.P

 

I unfortunately have some sad news to report today.  Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away at the age of 61 after a long battle with cancer.

 

Arneson was introduced to table-top wargaming in the early '60s by his parents, who bought him a copy of Avalon Hill's Gettysburg game. In college at the University of Minnesota, he met other wargamers and began both modifying existing games and designing his own. He attended the second official Gencon and there met a similarly youthful Gary Gygax. Gygax had published a set of 1:1 scale miniatures rules called Chainmail, which became the bare bones of an ongoing campaign that Arneson ran for friends called Blackmoor.

 

In 1974, Arneson and Gygax wrote up the rules they had evolved for their fantasy role-playing campaigns, creating the game Dungeons & Dragons. After failing to get any mainstream publishers interested, they created a company, TSR, and published the book themselves using investment money provided by one of Gygax's friends. The book became a hit, first in the wargaming community and then in the mainstream. Dungeons & Dragons not only created a new type of gaming, role-playing, but laid the foundation for the entire hobby gaming industry.

 

Arneson left TSR in 1979 and filed a lawsuit against the company. As a part of the ultimate settlement of that suit, neither Arneson nor Gygax ever spoke about what drove them apart, although Arneson would later return to TSR when Gygax was briefly president of the company again in the mid-'80s. They were on good terms at the time of Gygax's death last year.

 

With the death of Gary Gygax last year, and now the passing of Dave Arneson, the gaming community has lost two of its founding fathers in a relatively short amount of time.  It is a sad time indeed, but at least we will always have the games that they gave to the world and the countless hours of fun friendship that those games have spawned.

 

Rest in peace Mr. Arneson.  You made the world a better place during your time in it.  Our thoughts now go out to your family and friends during this rough period.