Celebrating Dave Arneson and his awesome setting Blackmoor is a privilege and an honor. People get all wound up about where ideas came from and what inspired them, but that is much less important than the ideas themselves.
Those ideas all came together in the fertile, active, brilliant childlike genius of Dave Arneson. He created the table top rpg, he created the dungeon crawl, he created Blackmoor and from it sprang his creation Dungeons & Dragons that he co-authored with Gary Gygax.
People have exhausted themselves bending over backwards and going through all kinds of contortions to give credit to anyone but Arneson and that continues to this day. As more and more information comes to light, the credit given to Gygax for things he did not do, becomes more ridiculous by the moment. Gygax had the drive to bring the game to market and he should be given full credit for that. Arneson invented table top role-playing games and he should be given credit for that. Yet people strain for gnats as they try to give credit to anyone other than Arneson.
But this is Blackmoor week, so forget all that for now and just celebrate the life of Dave Arneson and play a role-playing game, have fun, create something new, something unique. Be like Dave Arneson!
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