Gamer with deep St. Paul ties created an enduring role-playing adventure
David Arneson, a co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, the best-selling and best-known role-playing game of all time.
Dave Arneson was a master dreamer.
His daughter thought every girl grew up with dragons and fairies.
His father couldn't figure out why the college kids in his St. Paul basement weren't raiding the liquor cabinet.
But Arneson — who in 1974 co-created Dungeons & Dragons, the best-known and best-selling role-playing game of all time — molded fantasy in such a way that many lament him as the "unsung hero" of the gaming industry.
After a falling-out with DD co-creator Gary Gygax and the company that published their work, Arneson went on to other careers: co-founding two other companies, moving to teaching — and finally, after being diagnosed with cancer, returning to St. Paul, where he died Tuesday at the
David Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, in 1979, as he promoted another role-playing game. ((Pioneer Press File Photo))
age of 61.
The creative process began in the early 1970s on a ping-pong table in the basement of his parents' Highland Park home. There, a core group of 10 or so high-school and college-age kids developed their own mental playground, taking board games and first altering the rules, then creating their own.
Arneson was the first to introduce the group to a fantasy setting, telling his friends to imagine that he had disappeared on a flight from Norway to the United States, returning from a family visit. The friends play-acted a scenario where they flew out to search for him. They found a cave in Iceland, entered — and on the other side was the land where Dungeons & Dragons was born.
The group was promptly attacked by a group
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of trolls.
"We quickly decided that we should retire those (real life-based) characters and start new ones because the game was awful deadly," said Ross Maker, of St. Paul, one of the gamers in the group.
Another member of the group, Dave Wesely, of St. Paul, remembers returning from the military to find his old friends fiddling with dice in a basement.
"I'm an Army lieutenant and leader of men, and not a college student and I'm trying to take myself seriously. Here they're playing with elves and dwarves and such ... I'm thinking I'm never going to tell anybody I was in this game."
Arneson's daughter, Malia Weinhagen, remembered venturing down to the basement on many occasions, drawn by the pretty dice.
"Any house I ever lived in with him always had a basement devoted to gaming. I thought everyone grew up with dragons and fairies. It was quite a shock in elementary school when I found out I was not the norm," she said.
That first campaign, known as Blackmoor, was one of Dungeons & Dragons' first fantasy settings. There would be dozens more — and dozens of games like it.
While Gygax is often seen as DD's rules guru, focusing on such things as tables and dice, Arneson is often credited with creating the "role playing" elements of the game.
"Dice and maps and figures and complicated rule books are a crutch. The game doesn't need them — but the market does," Arneson said in 1992.
In an era when dozens of gaming companies were starting and failing, the two teamed up under the auspices of Lake Geneva, Wis.-based Tactical Studies Rules Inc., and after a rocky start, started a product in 1974 that would soon become world-renowned.
"We had no advertising or anything like that,'' Arneson said in 1992. "We sold 500 sets in three months, invested the earnings to make 1,000 more, sold them, invested the earnings to make 5,000 more. And so on.''
But a few years later, Arneson was ousted from the company, which had taken on additional investors.
It was a painful time, many note, for Arneson — who sued the company over royalties. They settled out of court.
Gygax and Arneson's split remains a topic of heated debate in gaming circles.
"We never reconciled," Arneson told the Pioneer Press when Gygax died last year. "We were polite, but things never came together that way."
"We had fun," he added. "A lot of fun."
In 1978, Arneson joined three partners to establish 4D Interactive Systems, a St. Paul company originally created to design games.
But when the company turned largely to programming — first for games, and then, to make additional money, for medical devices — Arneson left for more creative endeavors. He started his own fantasy company, Adventure Games, fueled by funds from the lawsuit.
The company folded a few years later, and Arneson moved around, finally settling on teaching in the late 1990s. He ended up at Full Sail University in a suburb of Orlando, Fla., teaching a class on game design. In June, diagnosed with cancer, he returned to St. Paul.
Over the past several months, Arneson got together weekly in St. Paul with his old gaming crew. His last hours with them were over a brand new board game he enjoyed titled "Memoire 44."
"You get so busy and so distracted with everyday living, but my dad never forgot about passion and having fun," his daughter said.
As for Arneson's old Blackmoor campaign: "We've kept it alive. Sometimes once a year. I'm still playing the dwarf that I started with," Maker said. After more than 30 years, the dwarf is still a measly 10th level, he said. "You gotta work for it in Dave's campaign."
Born in Minneapolis in 1947, Arneson graduated from Central High School in St. Paul and went on to get his bachelor's in history from the University of Minnesota.
There will be a memorial from 4 to 8 p.m. April 20 at Bradshaw Funeral Home, 678 S. Snelling Ave., St Paul. Services will follow April 21 at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 104 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.
Tad Vezner can be reached at 651-228-5461.
Dave Arneson.
Dave Arneson, co-creator of the first roleplaying game, ''Dungeons and Dragons'', died on Tuesday of cancer, at the age of 61.

A close friend of Arneson, Bob Meyer, reported on April 5 that he had taken a turn for the worse and was admitted to a hospital.  Family later confirmed that he was in a facility "where we can focus on keeping him comfortable."  Reported at that time, the doctor indicated that he had days to live.

The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design in 1984 inducted Arneson  into their Hall of Fame.  Pyramid Magazine in 1999 named him as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons, "at least in the realm of adventure gaming".

Arneson started out as a wargamer including naval games. He soon developed some for his personal use due to the major publishers' slow release of games.  With David Wesley and the other members of the Midwest Military Simulation Association, Arneson developed the basis of modern role-playing games with individual miniatures representing one person and having non-military objectives.  

Arneson attended the University of Minnesota as a history student.  He was a founder, along with Gary Gygax, of the Castle & Crusade Society as a medieval miniature chapter of the International Federation of Wargamers.  With Gygax in 1972, he authored ''Don't Give Up the Ship!'', a naval wargame.

Arneson's ''Blackmoor'' was the first role-playing game, a genre in which players describe their characters in thorough detail and can attempt almost any action the character plausibly could.  Ernest Gary Gygax, then a close friend of Arneson, worked with him during 1972–73 to develop the extensive set of rules (in this case three volumes) that such a game requires.  This became the first edition of ''Dungeons & Dragons''.  With his experience with David Wesley, Arneson tried it with fantasy miniatures free style calling his game, ''Blackmoor''.  He then latched on Gygax's ''Chainmail'' miniature game and Fantasy supplement for resolution of battles.  He showed Gygax what he was doing.  Gygax got involved and started preparing a set of rules to supplement ''Chainmail''.  They shopped the game, ''Dungeons & Dragons'', around to various gaming companies but got turned down.  Gygax started a business partnership, Tactical Studies Rules, to publish the game in 1974.  The game launched a whole new category in gaming. 

Although not involved with rulebooks for later editions of ''D&D'', Arneson did create adventure modules for later editions.