# Dave Arneson - Maker: Game designer - Date: 1947–2009 - Houses: TSR, Inc. - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/dave-arneson/ > The Minnesota wargamer whose Blackmoor campaign of 1971 put single heroes, dungeons and hit points on the table, and who co-created Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax. **Why it matters:** Arneson's Blackmoor was the first campaign recognizable as a fantasy roleplaying game: players each ran one character who explored a dungeon, grew in experience and returned week after week. That model, published as D&D, is the root of every tabletop and computer RPG. ## Quick answers **Who was Dave Arneson?** The Minnesota wargamer whose Blackmoor campaign of 1971 put single heroes, dungeons and hit points on the table, and who co-created Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax. **When was Dave Arneson born?** Dave Arneson was born in 1947 in Hennepin County, Minnesota and died in 2009. **What is Dave Arneson known for?** Dave Arneson is best known for Blackmoor, Dungeons & Dragons and Braunstein. **Why does Dave Arneson matter to fantasy and games?** Arneson's Blackmoor was the first campaign recognizable as a fantasy roleplaying game: players each ran one character who explored a dungeon, grew in experience and returned week after week. That model, published as D&D, is the root of every tabletop and computer RPG. ## Life David Lance Arneson was born in Hennepin County, Minnesota, on October 1, 1947, and grew up in the Twin Cities. By the late 1960s he was a history student at the University of Minnesota and a regular in the local miniatures scene, first in the Twin Cities Military Miniatures Group and then in the Midwest Military Simulation Association. These were hobbyists who staged Napoleonic battles on tabletops and argued about rules; they also, crucially, liked to experiment. The key experiment belonged to [David Wesely](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/david-wesely/). In [Braunstein](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/braunstein/), first run around 1969, Wesely gave some twenty players individual roles in a fictional German town rather than armies to command, and discovered that they would rather scheme, bargain and duel than fight the battle he had planned. Arneson played in these games and took turns refereeing later ones, including a coup in the imaginary Latin American republic of Banania, and when Wesely left for Army service in October 1970 Arneson took over as referee. He was also a naval enthusiast: after meeting [Gary Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/) at the second [Gen Con](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/gen-con/) in August 1969, he co-wrote with him the sailing-ship rules *Don't Give Up the Ship!*, serialized from 1971 and published by Guidon Games in 1972. He married Frankie Ann Morneau in 1984 and had a daughter, Malia. For much of his later life he taught, and he died of cancer in Saint Paul on April 7, 2009, aged 61, after a two-year illness. ## Work In 1971 Arneson launched [Blackmoor](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/blackmoor/), a "medieval Braunstein" set in a fictional barony beneath whose castle lay a sprawling dungeon. He later recalled that the idea came together after a weekend of monster movies and Conan books. He began with the fantasy rules of Gygax and [Jeff Perren](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/jeff-perren/)'s [Chainmail](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/chainmail/), but found their combat tables unsatisfying for individual heroes and developed his own hybrid rules. The result had most of what we now think of as a roleplaying game: each player ran a single persistent character; characters improved with experience; they could absorb several blows before dying, tracked as [Hit points](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/hit-points/); armor made them harder to hit, the germ of [Armor Class](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/armor-class/); and adventures took place in an underground maze mapped on graph paper by a referee who played everything else in the world. It was, in short, the first [Dungeon crawl](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/dungeon-crawl/) campaign, and Arneson's Twin Cities players returned to it week after week. In the winter of 1972–73 (accounts differ on the exact date) Arneson traveled to Lake Geneva with members of his group to run Blackmoor for Gygax and his players. Gygax asked for Arneson's notes and began drafting a formal rulebook while running his own Greyhawk campaign; for most of 1973 the two exchanged material by mail and telephone, with playtesting in both cities. The manuscript Gygax prepared became [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/), published by [TSR, Inc.](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/) in January 1974 with both names on the cover. Arneson later said his own final draft was not used, and the published text reflected rules choices he had not approved; the two men's visions of the game were already diverging. Arneson's own contributions to the line followed. The *Blackmoor* supplement (1975) introduced the monk and assassin classes and "The Temple of the Frog," a scenario presented for other referees to run. In January 1976 he joined TSR as Director of Research but left before the year was out to design independently. Judges Guild published his *First Fantasy Campaign* (1977), a window into early Blackmoor, and with original Blackmoor player Richard Snider he wrote *Adventures in Fantasy* (1979), an attempt to recapture what they saw as the spirit of the original game. When TSR launched [Advanced Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/) in 1977, it treated the new line as a different product from D&D and did not pay Arneson royalties on it. In 1979 he filed the first of five lawsuits against TSR and Gygax. The parties settled confidentially in March 1981; Arneson received a 2.5% royalty on AD&D products, which gave him a substantial income for years, and was credited as co-creator on the game's packaging. The episode, and the long argument it started about who invented what, is told in [The Gygax–Arneson Disputes](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/the-gygax-arneson-dispute/). Through the 1980s Arneson ran Adventure Games Inc., which published the naval miniatures game *Harpoon* (1981), the American Civil War rules *Johnny Reb* (1983) and material for his friend [M. A. R. Barker](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/m-a-r-barker/)'s Tékumel, before selling it to [Flying Buffalo](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/flying-buffalo/) in 1985. During Gygax's brief return to power at TSR he wrote the "DA" series of Blackmoor modules (1986–87), which TSR's editors reshaped for its Known World setting. He wrote *DNA/DOA* (1989), the first published adventure for [FASA Corporation](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/fasa/)'s [Shadowrun](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/shadowrun/), reviewed games for *Computer Gaming World*, and spent years promoting roleplaying as a teaching tool. From the 1990s until his retirement in June 2008 he taught game design at Full Sail University in Florida. ## Legacy For decades Arneson was the lesser-known name on the cover, in part because Gygax wrote so much more of the published text and was the company's public face. Arneson's supporters argued that the conceptual leap (one player, one character, open-ended play in a world run by a referee) was his, and that the rules Gygax built afterward were elaboration. Gygax's partisans pointed to the manuscripts, rules and supplements that made the leap playable by strangers. The truth documented by historians such as Jon Peterson, whose *Playing at the World* (2012) reconstructed the period from letters and fanzines, is that the game needed both: Arneson's campaign to show what roleplaying could be, and Gygax's systematizing to carry it beyond Minnesota. More recent work, including Ben Robbins's research on Braunstein and the 2019 documentary *The Secrets of Blackmoor*, built on interviews with Arneson's original players, has restored the Twin Cities scene to the center of the story. His influence runs through everything that followed. The dungeon, the persistent character and the hit point passed from Blackmoor through D&D to the [PLATO](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/plato-system/) games, to [Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/wizardry/) and [The Bard's Tale](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-bards-tale/), and into online worlds. When he died in April 2009, Wizards of the Coast replaced its D&D homepage with a tribute, Turbine added an in-game memorial to *Dungeons & Dragons Online*, and Blizzard dedicated the Ulduar patch of [World of Warcraft](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/world-of-warcraft/) to him, a graceful acknowledgment that the biggest computer RPG of its era was, at bottom, still running Arneson's campaign. Honors came in his lifetime too: the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 1984, and in 1999 *Pyramid* magazine named him, alongside Gygax, among the most influential people in adventure gaming of the millennium. ## Facts - David Lance Arneson was born on October 1, 1947, and studied history at the University of Minnesota. - He played in [David Wesely](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/david-wesely/)'s [Braunstein](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/braunstein/) games and took over as referee after Wesely entered Army service in October 1970. - The Blackmoor supplement (1975) included "The Temple of the Frog," often cited as the first published adventure written for others to run. - Arneson's March 1981 settlement with TSR gave him a 2.5% royalty on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons products. - World of Warcraft patch 3.1, released April 14, 2009, a week after his death, was dedicated to him. - Full Sail University named its student game studio "Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Studios" in 2010. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Arneson) - [Wikipedia: Blackmoor (campaign setting)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmoor_(campaign_setting)) - [Wikipedia: Braunstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunstein_(game)) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.