Tim Kask on the Problems with Dave Arneson

While this will be old news for so many people who read this blog I've only recently discovered the Tim Kask Question and Answer thread over at Dragonsfoot. I've found the thread incredibly enjoyable to read but also really frustrating, as is the case with most any forum in the world. Which is why I decided to clean up a portion that I really have been enjoying and post it here. 

A couple of notes before we begin: (1.) I will not be correcting any misspellings or grammar and will be copying all text as it was published - less the emoticons, I hate those damned things; (2.) whenever I am adding anything to the text, such as expanding an abbreviation to its full name, I will put it in brackets, and color the text so that no one will be confused as to who's putting that information out there; (3.) each comment will be attributed to its author by their forum handle, while Tim Kask's, Gary Gygax's, and Greg Svenson's comments will be attributed to their real names rather than their forum handles; (4.) any links will be by me so that you can find more information about the topic being discussed. 

Let's get on with it then. 

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Rhuvein: "Was your focus as editor to bring interesting D&D content to the magazine when it started or rather to concentrate on the proper organization, editing and professional presentation of a printed publication" 

Tim Kask "I tried to do a mixture of both. Gary and I shared the opinion that one of the things that kept D&D from spreading any more rapidly was the lack of imaginative DMs. The influences that Gary has most often cited are Jack Vance's Dying Earth, Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions, Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and some of the writings of L. Sprague De Camp, a little of REH's [Robert E. Howard] Conan, a touch (only a touch) of JRRT [J.R.R. Tolkien] and various sword & sandal movies from the 50's and 60's. Accordingly, we touted those as necesary to understand how D&D was meant to be played by Gary. (DA's [Dave Arneson] input on the published game was minuscle.)

At the same time, we wanted to put out a first rate, professional magazine. This was during the heyday of fanzines and vanity press; we wanted to go in the other, higher caliber direction, complete with advertising, (More on that later.) Further, we shared the vision that the whole industry had tremendous potential for growth; make the pie bigger and everybody's piece will be bigger."

Crimhthan_The_Great: "There has always been the question of how much did he really contribute. We have all heard about the 16 pages of notes. I have always heard that levels/advancement and a number of other things originated with him. I have heard everything from zip to about 1/4 of the basic rules, so I would love to hear you expand on this.

I have also heard that he was a top notch ref, and I would like to see your comments on that and also on Gary as a ref."

Tim Kask: "This one deserves an in-depth answer; I am up to my eyeballs in stuff right now but maybe can give this the time it needs in a day or two. If the Malignant Toad [a reference to Dave Arneson] reads this forum or this site, it could very well start a thermonuclear flame war."

Crimhthan_The_Great: "The Malignant Toad? Great name for a arch-villain or a really seedy bar."

Tim Kask: "Arch-villain is right, or several other epithets that spring to mind. I promise to expand on that line of thought on the morrow...

Coming this weekend, just in time for Cinco de Mayo...
from The Tome of the Toad...

The True Story as I remember it of The Malignant Toad, possessor of little or no talent, no social skills and unbounding malicious intent. Bitter and twisted, The Toad clings to the pathetic vestiges of mistaken and misplaced credit for deeds not done...

also...
 

The Unmitigated Joys of Owning the Only Set of the Rules,
or,
Because I Said So, that's why! . . .

[There was a short delay in starting the story due to Tim's other job before he wrote this next part]

I have been reconstructing the timeline in my head for the last several days; I want to get it as right as possible.

The first topic I want to address is the old "How much did he..." I heard that the Toad has been using a busines card that makes the claim that he is the "Father of D&D"; then he makes the smarmy smirky claim that he has to be, as EGG [Ernest Gary Gygax] "...is such a mother...". Well, that just cries out for elucidation... so elucidate I shall.

As I prepare my treatise, ponder this: what else of any consequence whatsover has ever appeared under his name?"

Crimhthan_The_Great: "There has always been the question of how much did he really contribute. We have all heard about the 16 pages of notes. I have always heard that levels/advancement and a number of other things originated with him. I have heard everything from zip to about 1/4 of the basic rules, so I would love to hear you expand on this."

Tim Kask: "I can not unequivocally answer your first question; 16 pages, ¼, beats me, I wasn’t there. What I can attest to is what I did work with: the BM manuscript [I believe that he's referring to Blackmoor Supplement II from the Original Dungeons and Dragons game], and what I heard stated on several occasions. In a court of law that would be hearsay, I know, but that is all I can testify to. Now what extrapolations or interpretations you, the readers, make are not in my control. Further. I can attest to what I think; the last time I checked The Legal Review [I'm not sure which Law Review he's referring to here], my thoughts and opinions are protected by law, so no lawyers employed by loathsome amphibians [again, a reference to Dave Arneson] can harass me unduly. What I will NOT do is impugn any characters, I will not smirkily insinuate that any other individual has improper relationships with members of their immediate family, or anything else of that disgusting, juvenile or prurient ilk. Instead, I will tell a story that I call Bufo [a type of large toad, which means this is Dave Arneson] and the Ovum [an EGG, or Ernest Gary Gygax]. At the conclusion of my tale, I will try to provide additional answers....

The Curious Tale of Bufo and the Ovum, 

or, 

No good deed ever goes unpunished

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there was an entity of limited talent and ability known as Bufo. Bufo lived in a land of strange and unusual creatures in the north. There was also an entity known to his friends as Ovum. Ovum was possessed of a vivid imagination with which he had already entertained creatures far and wide with his various systems of and rules for doing wondrous things. One of those wondrous things was a system of play that he crafted with an old friend of his that was then shared with the world. This wondrous system allowed persons to believe that they were shining paladins fighting the forces of ignorance and evil. In sharing this wondrous set of rules and guidelines, the Ovum made mention of several different things that people using the guidelines might do beyond the battling of ignorance and evil under the light of day, one of which was battling the minions of wickedness in tunnels under the earth. 

Bufo was delighted and came up with a very primitive and confusing means of doing just that. Bufo said to Ovum "Look, Ovum, look what new thing I have done with your wondrous system of guidelines and tenets for chivalric behavior."

Ovum said, "Hmmm, Bufo, I think I know what you are talking about, but I am very confused because your thing that uses my thing is very confusing and hard to understand." To which Bufo said; "No big deal, Ovum. Let me send you a copy of my thing that you may better understand; perhaps you can make it less confusing and we can share it with others."

Chapter 2
 

One day, a packet of very confusing papers arrived in Ovum’s mailbox, back in the day when all they had was something called Snail Mail. The papers contained bits and pieces of seemingly unrelated writings about battling the forces of evil in tunnels under castle walls during sieges. Also mixed in were some charts and tables that made little or no sense until they were sorted out into some sort of coherent order. Ovum talked to Bufo and explained that he was having trouble finding any logical sequence and connections. Bufo assured him that the logic was there; Ovum just had to look harder.
 

It took Ovum a long time to sort them out; some he ignored, some he re-wrote and some had to have bits and pieces written new to connect them and make sense of them.
 

Ovum spent a very long time trying to figure out what all of the papers and tables and charts really meant. Some seemed to contradict others, some seemed to supersede others and some made no sense at all without intuitive leaps between them.
 

Ovum prevailed upon many other people that he knew to try to make sense of all of this stuff, but many of them were just as puzzled as he was. Finally, they came to the conclusion that the bits and pieces needed to be seriously rewritten and reorganized into a more coherent system before any sense could be made of them.
 

Soon, they barely resembled what had come before, although the germ of the original idea still persisted; you could fight other things under ground, do some exploring, kill some things, find neat stuff and become more scary and powerful.
 

After much tinkering and rewriting and months of work, Ovum was able to make all of the bits and pieces fit into an overall framework. When he was ready to share them with the world, he foolishly let the world think that he and Bufo had co-produced the system instead of spelling out that what they really were was his ideas and system of how to do the things that Bufo thought of in the most general of terms in the most unorganized and helter-skelter of manners.
 

His system resembled Bufo’s ideas like the Verrazano bridge [the longest bridge in the United States and the eleventh longest bridge in the world; it connects Staten Island and Brooklyn] fulfilled someone’s wish to cross a river.

Chapter 3 

When, in the fullness of days, Ovum had shown the finished thing to the world, it bore very little resemblance to the original thing except in the most general of ways. Ovum, being the affable and a little bit naive person that he was, put Bufo’s name on the thing as tho’ they had had an equal role in its creation. Further, Ovum offered Bufo a deal whereby he got a chunk of the proceeds derived from The Thing.

This was truly an extraordinary gesture of goodwill. After all, what had started as a large envelope crammed with several dozen confused and confusing sets of charts and pieces of paper had blossomed into three whole books in a spiffy brown box.

 

It was even more magnanimous when you realize that a good chunk of the materials on the original pages was scrapped and rewritten or replaced en masse.

 

Bufo was even overheard to remark to some of his friends that he hardly recognized the final product as being his thing. None of this, however, kept him from cashing any of his royalty checks....

 

Segue ahead ...

 

Ovum decided to publish some more charts and tables for the thing, this time based almost exclusively on events and happenings in his personal world. He also saw the need to clear up a couple of mistakes and misconceptions. In his real life personal world, he has a trusted and valued minion called The Kid [Rob Kuntz] who has helped him in his world in so many different ways. To recognize his help and provide him with a little income on the side, Ovum gave co-credit to The Kid. 

Their effort is most successful; hundreds and hundreds of eager imitators shell out their hard-earned geetus to obtain one. One day, Bufo wakes up consumed with envy, having been convinced in his own mind that he can do the same; NO, he can do better. So, he puts together lots and lots of information on how things work in his world, decides to do some further clarification and sends the lot off to Ovum to allow the hordes of imitators to spread some of that filthy lucre in his direction.

What the new guy saw...
or,
You expect me to do what with that?

----------------------------------------------

[I'll pause the story here because of an interesting exchange that brought Gary Gygax into the conversation and expanded a lot of our understanding on the subjects involved]

Le Noir Faineant: "I know this is a delicate issue to discuss, but I have some counter questions about it . . .

1. Supplement II reads much better than Supplement I, at least for me personally, and I can find much more use for my D&D game there than in the earlier supplements. - For me that always seemed to point towards that Mr Arneson was indeed the *leading man* behind the White Box and related publications. So, how much influence did the Lake Geneva team have on Supplement II? (In your opinion.)

2. If Mr Gygax wanted to get rid of any plagariasm accusations, why did he essentially *steal* Blackmoor and fit it into his World of Greyhawk setting? (No idea if he, in fact, did so with Mr Arneson's consent, or not.) - Especially regarding the subsequent publication of the DA series, this makes no sense to me.

3. Do you happen to know how things got as far as to a lawsuit? - When I look at what was written about it and how the conflicting parties finally came to an agreement, it seems pretty strange to me that one could sue about such matters.

Again, I don't want to take any sides here, I am just curious. I am an active Blackmoor player, but I also enjoyed Mr Gygax' fabulous modules, especially ToEE.

Tim Kask: "I am busily outlining the next segmnent, first in my head, then for publishing.  

In the next segment, I will be speaking of facts as I encountered them. Much of the preceding has been what I have been able to piece together through years of inquiry and my own assessment of who is truthful.  

I became part of TSR in the late summer of 1975; that predates the publication of Blackmoor. Blackmoor was my first major project.  

If someone thinks that Blackmoor "reads" better, then I say "Thank You". That is the first TSR project for which I can claim editing credit.  

When I got there, I originally thought that "editing" meant making something read better.

With Blackmoor, I also came to learn that sometimes editing meant a lot more: creating pieces to bridge other segments, rewriting entirely other things to make them conform to the existing rules, inventing stuff on my own to fulfill a new need created by gaps in other concepts and much more.  

It may interest historians of the game to know that the original manuscript provided by the MT [malignant toad or Dave Arneson] was about five dozen pages of this and that: tables, charts, explanations, and several pages of maps of the Temple. Less than half of what was in the apple basket of mixed up crap I was handed that wasn't duplicates or different versions of other stuff in the mix was used, and less than half of that bore much resemblance to the orginals when published.  

I am not purposefully drawing this out. As most of you know, I just recently joined this board, and have only had this thread for a couple of weeks. I certainly had no prior plans to write a lot of this stuff, so I am working on it about as fast as I can while still teaching and having a personal life. I value the truth and facts most highly; as a histroy teacher I can do no less. "

Gary Gygax: "I have nothing to add save to state that I stand on my creative works, and Mr. Arneson can do the same."

Crimhthan_The_Great: "If you look at the totality of the published works of both men, it is fairly obvious whose feet are standing on the most solid of foundations. This does not malign in anyway the value and content of DA's campaign world or the fun his players had in it or its historical significance in the scheme of things. While virtually all writers need a good editor, having copies of much of both men's work, I feel confident of my own opinion of which writer was most in need of a good editor. In fact, if DA had had the benefit of a good editor for FFC and AIF, his body of published work might very well be greater. At least the other volumes that were planned as part of AIF might of have been published instead of withering on the vine and not seeing the light of day.

One thing, I am now curious about is this: If DA and his group had not existed and no pages of charts, notes and things were never mailed, how soon would D&D have been written and how much would it have resembled D&D as it was written? It seems clear (at least to me) that when Gary received this hodge podge of material that was alleged to have been a cohesive whole that merely needed a bit of polish it turned into a major challenge to turn a sow's ear (one with a lot of ideas) into a silk purse, a challenge that was met by rewriting, adding and writing D&D. But I wonder if prior to this Gary had already started working on a successor or alternate game to the Chainmail Fantasy section? Even though what DA sent was altered to the point that little remained in a recognizable form, there was still a certain framework defined by trying to work with that material, that resulted in a different game that if it had been written purely from scratch. I seriously doubt that even Gary could answer that question, even if he wanted to.

I now know what I would like to see, but unfortunately never will: I would love to see the original three books edited by Tim into a cohesive whole that includes the good parts (that most likely no two of use will ever agree on) of the supplements, The Strategic Review, The Dragon early issues & other sources."

Gary Gygax: "A few undisputed facts:

Dave Arneson did not write one word of the D&D game as he stated in his interview printed in Different Worlds #3.

Dave Megary created the Dungeon! boardgame based on the Chainmail "Fantasy Rules." This was done prior to the circulation of my two mss [an abbreviation for manuscripts]. that became the D&D game and the publication of the original boxed set of D&D.

No other fantasy game rules, FRPGs [fantasy role-playing games], or boardgames were produced for several years after Chainmail,, D&D, and finally Megary's Dungeon! were published.

No other true RPGs were produced for several years either, and all of them were based on the D&D system. D&D is the progenator of all the RPGs, paper and electronic.

Those that speculate about actual history and what-might-have-beens must deal with those."  

Makofan: "I basically agree with Gygax Dragonlord, but I think Traveller came out in 1977 and it was completely different from D&D"

Gary Gygax: "That's amusing, because the chap that wrote the Traveller game [I believe he's referring to Mark Miller here] told me he sat down with the D&D booklets and used them as a template for what he was designing."  

Tim Kask: "The same one told me the same thing."

Gary Gygax: "It amazes me that some non-pros get all uptight over a writer or game designer using another's work as an inspirational basis, even as a model for what they plan to do.
Back a few millenia ago Solomon noted that there was nothing new under the sun. It is also quite evident to the thinking person that each successive creative generation is figuratively standing on the back of the preceeding one."

-------------------------------------------------

[We now return to the narrative]

Tim Kask:  ". . . In 1973, I bought my first copy of CHAINMAIL when I was a member of the SIU SGS (Southern Illinois University Strategic Games Society). As an old board gamer (6th grade-1961, AH’s D-Day), miniatures were immediately of interest to me. Having been the cause of great concern to my Mom when I persisted in playing with plastic soldiers in the sandbox until about age 11 or 12, pretty painted metal figs were a natural progression. (It’s a good thing she never knew of my habit of blowing them up with ladyfinger firecrackers, or shooting same out of the little Marx plastic cannons. Did you know that just one slow shot/fast fuse will ruin a plastic barrel? Plus, I stole the firecrackers from her; she loved firecrackers. Wonder where I inherited my love of explosives and fireworks...?) 

My board game preferences were fairly equally divided between WWII armor and pre-gunpowder titles (the latter mostly SPI, exc for ALEXANDER). When I discovered CM, I was hooked.
 

Back then, most games rules had a line in the back of the book that encouraged players with questions to write them out and send them off with an SASE [self addressed stamped envelope] to get an answer. Well, I had too many questions and not enough patience to wait for answers. Being an enterprising gamer (who was also a 24 year old Nam vet and not too enamored of going through channels) I got the Tactical Studies Rules phone number from long distance and decided to call up one night after the rates went down . . . 

Needless to say, Tactical Studies Rules was Gary’s house, so naturally I got him. I think we realized we were kindred spirits fairly quickly. We became "phone friends" rather soon, and I called a few times to ask questions and just to talk with someone that shared some of my interests. He told me of the con they had in LG [Lake Geneva, Wisconsin] each year, and I ended up journeying to LG for GenCon in ’74. He also mentioned this new game of theirs where you ran around underground killing things, all in your mind’s eye.
 

I was attending Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and my wife and I were from Moline, IL. I combined a trip from SIU to home, dropped the wife and daughter and trekked on up to LG with absolutely no idea of what to expect. I found Twitcher’s Heaven!!!!!

SIDEBAR STORY  

I still frequently use the sobriquet "twitcher" when referring to gamers in general, but it has a specific meaning that is not particularly complimentary; that said, I often consider myself to be one. I first heard the term from Glenn Kidd of Ral Partha. In his parlance, a twitcher was found at game conventions in high concentrations. As an example, a twitcher might be an ancients miniatures buff (tho’ board gamers might also exhibit the behavior). Perhaps he specialized in Assyria; he undoubtedly read everything about Assyrian arms and warfare he could find. He was into the nitty gritty. The old Society of Ancients Rules were the most precise, anal-retentive and trivialized rules published BITD. They gave a unit with 2.5 foot swords a different combat value than a unit with 3 foot swords, all based on that six inches of sword. Well, our Assyrian twitcher friend would be likely to argue that Assyrian chariots as listed were simply too slow, because as anyone that knew anything about ancient chariots just knew that they had a primitive form of leaf-spring suspension and therefore should be 13.6% faster than any other contemporary chariot. Now while our pal is getting really into this, his favorite period and people, and becoming highly energized as he makes his point, before you know it, he is fairly "twitching" with excitement and... Well, you see where the name comes from now.

Back then, GC [GenCon] was held in Horticultural Hall, a pretty, pretty small and unbelievably hot venue too small for the crowd by about 20%. That hot part was particularly unfortunate as it seems that every gaming get-together has at least one attendee that tips the scales at close to 400 pounds and smells as though he can’t find a shower large enough but once a week, and that last time 4 days ago. (Why is that?) Every direction I looked, I saw a game in play: board games, miniatures and even that new "D&D" thingie. What bliss! I had never seen this many gamers at once.
 

I signed up for a couple of Ancients miniatures games, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. I won the trophy in both and thought I’d died and gone to heaven. (Remind me some day to tell of the power of a "psych-out" cigar....) Then this big, but young, kid (who I later learned was Rob K) came up and down the aisles soliciting adventurers. The only reason I call him a kid is that I was one of the older attendees that was playing. I had graduated HS, spent 4 yrs in the USN [United States Navy], spent a year in Nam, and completed a couple of years of college. Hell, he was younger by several years. Anyway, with time to kill, absolutely no prospect for staying for the next day (no vacancies for miles and miles around), and having met face-to-face with Gary, I said Sure!, and off I went. Several hours later my dwarf character had been adopted by a dying dwarf-king and made his heir, been captured by nasty buggers and carted of to stand in front a a huge machine, encased in Lucite-like material and minced into little bits with a laser-beam. Hell Yes! I was hooked. I immediately went and bought a brown-box set and a bag of goofy dice, planning to read up on the books and somehow con my college game club into giving it a shot. I had to leave that night while they were watching Jeff’s copy of Aleksander Nevsky on the wall of the Hall, but promised Gary to stay in touch and keep him up to date on the adventures of my game club. Little did I know that just about one year later I would be becoming Gary’s first full-time, salaried employee and responsible for the second supplement to D&D, Blackmoor.  

An Insidious Infection 

As I was driving back to the Quad Cities, the germ of an idea was beginning to sprout in my still over-excited mind on what to prepare for my group to explore in their first foray into RPG’ing. It stayed a germ for several weeks.
 

When I got back home to S. Ill, I began to read through the three books.
 

It’s amazing what you can figure out happened to you after the books get read. Several "Oh, yeah!" moments accompanied by a palm to the forehead, a couple of muttered "Wish I’d known that" mumblings and a few "Well now it makes sense" wonderings later, and I had a pretty good handle on the game. Or so I thought.
 

Now while this was going on over the course of a couple of weeks (remember that I was married, had a kid, going to college full time and managing a pinball arcade and promoting pinball tournaments all at the same time, my plate was very full), the guys at the club kept grilling me on what I’d done at GenCon. I brought in my trophies and bragged on them some, but the guys already knew I was a good miniatures player which is why I had to referee so often. They kept wanting to know what else I had done, and I had been sort of vague about this "playing in your head" stuff.
 

As there was only one older frequent gamer in the club (he was the faculty advisor/liaison we needed to get free rooms in the Student Center), and the only other guy around my age was Tom Wham who was a rather infrequent participant at that time, I could usually coerce the group into doing what I wanted. I guess it might have had something to do with the fact that they weren’t too sure I wouldn’t go "Flashback to the paddies" on them if frustrated. (I figured why spoil a good thing?) So, for a couple of weeks in advance, I told them that on a certain Sat. we would be doing this new "in your head" thing.
 

If you can remember into the far distant past when you started your very first D&D game, you can remember how long it took to get going, HOURS! Hours of explanations, rolling dice, explaining various characteristics, on and on. We started that morning at about 9:30 and didn’t quit for 9 hours. We managed to explore one level of that first dungeon that was about 4000 by 3000 feet, and might have had 15 or 18 rooms and caverns. And we were hooked; me as a DM and them as PCs!
 

Several things come to mind from that first Saturday, the primary ones are group synergy, time spent devising vs. time spent exploring, and PC personalities.
 

Let me start with the latter. I am ashamed in some ways to admit it, but several of my first gamers’ names are lost to me. I mean their real names, their PC names or D&D nicknames will be with me always. If, on my deathbed I am to utter something cryptic, it won’t be "Rosebud". It might be Werebear, or Hogbait, or Hobbit, Crazy Neil or Deathless Bob. They were all players in my first campaign. They all had their own style of playing.
 

I learned that I could spend countless hours drawing on graph paper, rolling dice and otherwise creating ever more sophisticated levels, only to have the group trash them in two hours, That is a result of one of the truly beautiful aspects of role-playing: the synergy of the group. Every player brings something different to the table and collectively that mega-mind that the players create is awesome in its thinking capacities. Someone in the group is bound to see straight to the heart of something you felt was obscure and obtuse and bound to give the PC’s fits; Every time.
 

Much has been said about the social and therapeutic values of the collective socialization and cooperation that goes on in RPGs. Much should be said, for it is a most remarkable byproduct. Never was it more apparent in my first campaign, or in every tournament we put on as TSR afterwards that did not allow a whole pre-formed group to sign up. It is true that we all bring a slightly different set of skills to the party. I found that with my first group, someone ALWAYS stumbled onto, or even immediately perceived a solution to a problem I posed them. One might see what the dilemma was, and another intuit immediately how it might be best solved.
 

Werebear was a guy that thought it would be most marvelous to morph into a large nasty bear when circumstances warranted. God love him, he kept his lycanthropy even after he found out he couldn’t always control it. Hogbait (who later became a States Attorney for Illinois) was a fun player that was easily talked into dumb things or often just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got his handle trying to figure out what might be on the other side of a door; someone in the group sensed a threat, and Crazy Neil lobbed a fireball that toasted the two giant hogs, as well as Hogbait when he was caught in the blast radius. Hobbit was a rail-thin skinny guy about 6’2" that wanted to be a hobbit thief. Well, what the hell, that was no more bizarre than the 300 pounders that think they are elves and hobbits, right? The thing was, he was GOOD! Never once failed a saving throw, never once failed to figure out how to open something, or disable a booby-trap or anything. It was eerie the way he rolled dice. Even if I rolled them, he made the throw. He became the highest level PC ever in one of my campaigns,12th level thief. And I was a stingy DM, let me tell you. Crazy Neil was just that, crazy. He was a nerd’s nerd, an original geek that we all liked. But stoooopid! He was a genius Astronomy and Astrophysics major that had to be told to come in out of the rain. Neil liked to morph. He ruined more than one set of armor by morphing into something too large without removing it. His grandest morph was when he was in a 10 X 12 room with two other PCs and morphed into a gold dragon, killing himself and the two PCs. Then there was Deathless Bob. His is a story so bizarre that it deserves its own telling at a later date.
 

By New Year’s, we realized the mistakes and stupidities we had doe in the past 6 months, so we started over completely. We used an average die for starting levels (Hobbit started as a 2nd and made 12th in the following 8 months). I drew up the Ruins of Kwalishar Campaign, and the good old SIU SGS was never the same.
 

All this time, I was frequently talking to Gary and regaling him with stuff that was going on in the campaign, and we were discussing the fact that about the time I was due to graduate, TSR might be in a position to hire someone to be editor and all around flunky... The writing was on the wall. 

The Basket, 

or,
You Want me to make what out of that?

In Sept of 1975, I became the first full time employee of TSR (which was Tactical Studies Rules at the time). I joined Gary and Brian Blume (owners) on the payroll at the princely sum of $100 per week; this was what each of us drew. They, however, had some royalties to look forward to. Rob and Terry Kuntz were part-timers; even if I remembered what they got paid, which I don’t, it would not be kosher for me to tell. Rob also had royalties coming in for GH [I believe that this is an abbreviation for Greyhawk]. That year, I would guesstimate that we did a little over $100K, most of which was selling other people’s product. We sold a lot of MiniFigs back then.

Our work area was a "table" made from a sheet of plywood in Gary’s basement; we worked around the furnace and oil tank in near Stygian darkness. (Well, not quite that dark, but it was always a bit of shock on the pupils when we came up.)

After a couple of weeks filling orders, assembling D&D boxed sets, talking about Strategic Review plans, etc., I got a rude surprise one morning.

(Now I realize how young some of you reading this are. Many of you have never seen clothes baskets made of anything but plastic or seen apples sold in anything but cardboard containers. However, in the murky distant past, there were baskets called "bushel baskets". They actually held a bushel of dry stuff like apples or wheat or oats or stuff like that. There were also half-bushel baskets, baskets that would hold a peck and some that held 1.5 or even two bushels. I admit that I was always a bit hazy on these exact sizes and volumes; at my house growing up they were referred to as baskets, small baskets, big baskets, etc. It is what Moms used for laundry and everyone used to throw stuff in, if you had the luxury of having extras. They were made of thin slats of wood loosely woven together.)

Upon going into work that fateful morning I was greeted by the grinning visages of Brian and Gary, looking like siblings from the same litter of Cheshire cats. Sensing that something was up, and that it undoubtedly involved me, and that furthermore, I might not be thrilled about it, I got ready to fill that day’s orders. At that point, I was handed one of the aforementioned baskets, filled with what I mistook to be orders. Seldom have I been so wrong. Over the sound of Brian nearly chortling to death, Gary informed me that they were now going to find out just how well I could edit. The basket contained what was destined to become Supplement II of D&D: Blackmoor

Sifting through about 50 odd sheets of mostly handwritten material and charts, I asked for clarification. Again I was informed that what I held in my hands was the next supplement to D&D.

Supplements: A word about supplements is in order here, as they were explained to me and came to be.

The first three books laid the groundwork for playing the game. They are all I used from GenCon ’74 until GC 75’ when I picked up GH.

Supplements did what the name implied: i.e., add more stuff; they also clarified and corrected inconsistencies and contradictions. (They also made a few contradictions and clouded a few things, too, but that’s another story.) You have to remember that D&D was a growing, evolving entity and it was through the supplements that this occurred. With the metamorphosis into Basic and Advanced, the first stage of growth was completed.

I was told that they wanted a manuscript ready to go to the printer in about 6 weeks or so, IIRC. Naive fool that I was, I said sure. I did have to empty the basket that day because Gary’s wife needed it for laundry, so I stacked all the papers and stuffed them into one of those expanding folders with the ties at the top. I took it home that night and let it sit for about a week. Hey, we had other stuff going on, like a SR issue at the printer.

So here I am, next week, and I sit down to go through the file. Uh oh, something seems to be amiss. I tried sorting the stuff; I re-sorted the stuff. I cataloged, alphabetized, prioritized and sanitized,all to no avail. This was a file folder full of repetitions, contradictions, duplications and complications. But not a supplement. I found three different versions of one idea, and two different approaches to another that are at odds with each other, as well as previously published guidelines. After two evenings of trying to make heads or tales of anything at all, I went to Gary and told him something to the effect that I couldn’t make heads or tails of the whole mess. And he replied something to the effect that it just needed some editing. About this time, I realized I was in deep dung.

In journalism school and classes they teach that editing is the collecting, preparing, and arranging of materials for publication, or, the revising or correcting, of a manuscript. Well, there was damned little to revise or correct as the preparing and arranging had yet to happen. What I had was some ideas, more like notes, on how to do various things. Problem was, several of them contradicted themselves and each other; a good many were not developed. I am sure that they must have meant something to Dave, but only he knew what. When I made an effort to get clarifications and explanations, I got none, or worse, what I got in response to my questions were responses that intimated that I must be mentally deficient if I couldn’t understand them. Finally I said to hell with that and threw most of the crap away, determined to start over and do it my way.

Another thing that supplements did was try to counter some of the foolishness that was going on in the fanzines. They would make some preposterous proposal, and we would give the public the "company line" on how to do something.

In Blackmoor, we supplied something entirely new; a concrete example of how to construct a major edifice in a campaign. I refer, of course, to the Temple of the Frog. TotF was Dave’s creation. All I did was legitimate editing; I made it read better and looked out for inconsistencies such as any DM might make in something like that.

TotF was the only part of BM that was Dave’s alone. In fact, if the whole of the book were analyzed, Dave wrote the TotF segment, and I wrote about 65 or 70% of the rest. Gary, Brian and Rob, and Terry, too, contributed the rest. Some of the ideas might have been Dave’s, but the execution, expansion and explanation were ours. (I am confident that Gary will back me up on this. Rob was a great help to me on this because he was very handy to bounce ideas off of, and a good sport about it. I was afraid of going to Gary too much for fear he would think he had hired a boob or incompetent.)

So BM got published with Dave’s name on it and I wrote an intro. I had no problem with this. I was an employee and got a salary for editing. Royalties went to authors. In retrospect, I should have held out for a portion of the royalties. I’m perfectly cool with it, don’t misunderstand. That hindsight thing is a bitch.

BM was a great learning experience for me. What I learned on it would serve me in good stead in future supplements. (Except for psionic combat. I LOVED psionic combat and had great fun devising it with all of its tables and charts. Apparently I was in the tiny minority. I guess mental combat was too esoteric for most D&Ders; not enough of them shared my fondness for the Dr. Strange Marvel comics and Mindflayers. God, I loved Mindflayers; they were all over my dungens. I just loved the idea of turning an annoying PC into a gibbering idiot.. Oh well, live and learn...) 

Gary Gygax: "Tim failed to mention that after completing his assignment he informed Brian and me that if he was handed another "basket" like that he turned into a D&D game supplement, we could find a new magazine editor.

As for the psionics, that can of worms was my doing. I had created the mind flayer as a fine monster, and I should have left well enough alone; but no! I had to add mental powersm send the initial draft around. I soon hated the whole business, but Len Lakofka and his group in Chicago loved the concept, and Tim was enthused about the addition as well. so, as said Pilate, I washed my hands of the matter."

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[I'm going to wrap up this clean up with these two comments by Greg Svenson and Tim Kask.]

Greg Svenson: "As one of the original players in Mr Arneson's Blackmoor group in the Twin Cities during the early 70's, I can hardly believe what I am reading here! If I am to believe what I have read here, we (the group in the Twin Cities) were playing a new and different game after D&D was published then we were playing before. It just isn't true! While there were some differences, we were playing essentially the same game before and after D&D was published! 

The biggest differences that I recall were that our six attributes changed from two d6 to three d6, that we started using the d4, d8 and d12s (I have always attributed that to David Wesley finding a cheap source of multi-sided dice in a catalog for science teachers). The changes in our play mostly were because we now had our own little brown box and could look up our foes HD, DD and AC speeding up play. And we could look up for ourselves when we had enough experience to level up.  

The big changes didn't come until the suppliments like "Greyhawk" came out and Dragon magazine was released. The introduction of new player classes and multi-class characters were exciting developments.  

I will always view Mr Arneson as the creator of D&D."

[At this point the thread devolved for a while into a "why do you hate Dave" and "fuck Dave yo!" conversation. After things died down a bit Mr. Kask wrote the following]

Tim Kask: "I guess it is time to explain what has been perceived as a personal animus that I have for Dave Arneson, who some seem to think is some sort of persecuted saint, particularly on another site that seems to have declared jihad.

From the very first time I met him, I got the impression of a smirky, superior-to thou attitude of a person who could barely be bothered to recognize your very existence. The first couple of years I was part of TSR, I never had any sort of inflated opinion of myself, my abilities or my being part of TSR; TSR was still the upstart, new kid on the block. As anyone who knew me BITD [back in the day] can attest, I was a very gregarious and overtly friendly fellow. Without resorting to name-dropping, I can simply state that I feel very fortunate to have been friends with, or at the very least on excellent speaking terms with a good number of the founding fathers and leading lights of the gaming business. I seriously doubt that anyone that knew me back then will tell you that I had any sort of ego problems or inflated opinion of myself. For whatever reason, he barely deigned to acknowledge my very existence. (I certainly didn't feel that any sort of recognition was due me except in the most rudimentary human-to-human way.)  

I was never once invited to play in any game of his. That hasn't made me bitter or envious or feel slighted, only puzzled. Why he felt like this I have absolutely no idea. Perhaps he thought I was a threat to his repute--I honestly don't know. I did have a rep of being a very good and very skillful gamer; I won all the miniatures tournaments that I entered at GenCon before going to work in LG, and was damned hard to beat in any boardgame I played. Hell, Gary saw that and I think that was part of the reason I got hired. The couple of occasions when I asked if I could play, I was told the game was already filled--who knows? Maybe it was. It was no big deal to me at the time. I was much more DM oriented than PC oriented then anyway...  

The main cause of my animus has to do with DRAGON magazine. For some reason, Dave came to work in LG about the time TD [The Dragon as the magazine was originally titled] was getting up and running. When the first issue to come out after his arrival did, all I got were tepid, snarky and vague remarks as feedback, with some bizarre reference to "doughnuts".  

Next issue, same story and more gibberish about doughnuts.  

Following issue got more of the same.  

Finally, Dave Sutherland, with whom DA shared an office space, gave me the explanation about the doughnuts. It seems that on the night that each issue came from the printer, DA would take it home and pore over it looking for typos and anything else he perceived to be printing errors. As he circled each one, it became a doughnut.  

About the fourth issue while he was still there, he had the unmitigated effrontery to present me with a box of cheap doughnuts in "recognition" of the latest issue.  

I freely admit that THE DRAGON was a labor of love, second in my affections only to my family. I worked on it like a dog: writing, editing, re-writing, proofing, paste-up, art selection, photo-cropping--I did it all and loved everty minute.  

When Dave gave me his smirky brush-off of the latest issue, I asked him very earnestly and honestly if he would like to help me proof it. I explained how hard it is to proof your own writing (God knows he should have known that) and that once you missed something, you were 80 to 90 percent unlikely to catch it on a subsequent proofing. (Stats from a Journalism course I took, not my own numbers.)  

The barely civil response I got was that he was far too busy (doing what I have no idea as I never saw anything he produced during that time make it into print or production) and that as I was so obviously so bad at it that I should find someone else forthwith.  

The Toad reference comes from his physiognomy at the time. Dave was very, very pale, and possessed no visible chin. His jowls ran from his cheeks to his collarbone. (Not his fault, I know; God has a perverse sense of humor when it comes to looks. And God knows I am no handsome devil myself.) Whenever Dave got snarky, he would make bug-eyed faces much like a toad might look just before he inflates his neck. Hence, the nickname in my mind.  

So now you know the rest of the story.