Dave Arneson

The gamester who co-invented Dungeons & Dragons

Dave Arneson

1947–2009

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Dave Arneson, who grew up in St. Paul, Minn., loved military board games. Before long, he and his friends began improvising. “We started setting different objectives for the players. We started stealing things,” Arneson recalled. “Bombs, guns, food supplies. Players could negotiate with one another, and then had to figure out how they were going to slip the products past a blockade and sell them on the black market.” Within a few years this idiosyncratic role-playing would morph into the fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons, which has now been played by more than 20 million people and spawned a $1 billion business.

Arneson was in college when he met his D&D collaborator-to-be, Gary Gygax, at a 1969 gaming convention, said the London Daily Telegraph. After devising a naval warfare game, Don’t Give Up the Ship!, they became consumed with myth-laden medieval culture. “Suddenly, their heroes were ax-wielding dwarves and warrior-princesses clad in unfeasibly tight leather armor.” The nemeses were dragons, goblins, and the like. Eventually the partners hatched Dungeons & Dragons. The equipment was simple: pencils, paper, a rulebook, and many-sided dice. “Arneson’s own father was bemused that gaggles of young players disappeared into his basement for hours on end to play the game,” yet not once raided the liquor cabinet there.

Among Arneson’s innovations were “that players control a single character, that skill is gained through experience, and that personality is as important as strength,” said the London Times. In 1974 he and Gygax released D&D to retailers. “Since neither could afford to fund it, a friend came up with the money for the initial print run of 1,000 copies.” In 1976, Arneson joined with Gygax to form a company, Tactical Studies Rules, to develop the game, “but he came to feel that money sucked the fun from game developing and left a year later.” The following year, when the company published an advanced version of D&D, Arneson sued over crediting and royalties; a 1981 settlement awarded Arneson co-authorship.

Arneson and Gygax eventually reconciled, sending each other get-well cards following their respective strokes in 2002 and 2004. Gygax died last year; Arneson, who succumbed to cancer, had until recently taught game design in Florida.