One Shot
I don't think there was any disrespect intended - the delay probably had more to do with Arneson's family than anything else. But it's emblematic. For example: The original edition of D&D in 1974 would be the last with Arneson's name on the cover. And with the publication of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1977, the gaming world would largely forget about him.
That's around the time I started playing D&D, and the ingredients to nurture my inner geek were there in abundance. I was 12 when I bought my first D&D set - what purists refer to as the "blue box edition." Unbeknownst to me, one reason for the set's existence was to bridge the gap between the Arneson-inspired original version and Gygax's "advanced" game.
But regardless, I was hooked. I had just read The Hobbit for the first time, and girls weren't even on the radar. Entertainment was basic. Other than reading and riding around like maniacs on bicycles, me and my friends had little to keep us busy. I remember one or two families in the neighborhood had something called "cable TV," and one particularly well-off friend had HBO. Somebody a few blocks away had Pong. For a group of kids bored silly with Risk and Monopoly, D&D was like a Vegas show.
Of course, I also had an over-active imagination, which didn't hurt. D&D gave me just enough structure to encourage its growth without any judgment. D&D taught me it was OK to be creative, and how to feed creativity in others. They sure weren't teaching that in school.
It was Dave Arneson who put the creativity - the "role-playing" - in role-playing games. Gygax had written rules for tactical combat with wargaming miniatures (even including fantasy elements like wizards and spells), but Arneson was the one who took those rules, added a slew of his own, and began to add noncombat objectives to the mix. This forced players to contemplate their characters' needs, desires, and fears - to treat them like people instead of pieces on a board.
A friend suggested that Dave Arneson was the George Harrison of D&D. If pressed to make a musical analogy, I'd say that Arneson is more like Jimi Hendrix. He did things that no one else had done before, and influenced people (like Gygax and countless others) who would accomplish even more.
Unlike Hendrix, however, Arneson didn't die at a young age. Lucky for me, because that meant I got a chance to meet him.
In 2002 I attended a gaming convention where Arneson was a featured guest. As part of a charity fundraising auction to support a local literacy group, four seats at Arneson's D&D table were auctioned off. I paid $100 for mine without even thinking about it.
I remember nervously asking "Mr. Arneson" the night before what rules we were using and whether I needed to roll up a character. The first thing he said was just to call him "Dave." The second was that he'd have characters we could use. And finally he held up this battered, ancient-looking D&D book and said between that and what he had in his head, we didn't need any rules.
I don't remember much about the game the next day, except for the fact that it went by way too fast. I do remember how friendly and funny Dave was, and how he was great about posing for pictures. I got a chance to tell him how much D&D had meant to me. And when we were finished, he signed my character sheet and told me that next time we played, I would be second level.
Thanks, Dave. Even though I won't play at your table again, you'll always have a place at mine.
