Blackmoor Week Day One and Dave Arneson Game Day

It is that time of year again, soon the leaves will be turning a multitude of beautiful colors (Temperate Zone Northern Hemisphere). :)  It is fitting that Dave Arneson was born on October 1st, since he superseded all the staid gray scale world of games with a new type of game that has limitless variations. Namely Blackmoor, from which came Dungeons & Dragons.

This week we celebrate Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day to recognize the man that changed the face of gaming forever, a man who had not forgotten the childhood games of make believe that children automatically are able to play without even thinking about it, but that by and large adults forget and lose and with it goes something vital that makes children seem so much more alive than adults. 


   David "Dave" L. Arneson                                              David Wesely

You cannot talk about the beginning of role playing and Dave Arneson without also talking about David Wesely. These two men became friends playing wargames and many other games. Wesely invented a game he called a Braunstein. The whole story is told other places, but the gist of the story is that Wesely created an opportunity that, at the time, he was not aware of what he had done, but Dave Arneson, as a player intuitively grasped the concept and ran with it, but he was only able to do that because Wesely when during an unexpected (by Wesely) bit of character creation by Arneson, stifled his first impulse and said "Yes." And that "Yes" was in answer to the player question "Here is what I want to do." 

This was the break through moment in gaming when Arneson made the intuitive leap that went way beyond what Wesely had intended, but fortunately Wesely in trying to find his way with these games he had been experimenting with decided to say "Yes!"Now Arneson said Wesely created role playing, but in my opinion it was more a 50/50 thing that was the result of synergy between these two men led to a serendipitous event that changed the gaming world forever. 

(There is no point arguing about who contributed more to this event. Even if we could determine the answer[we can't], it is irrelevant since it was the synergy between them that lead to the event. That is both were required. Just as later on getting Dungeons & Dragons into print required both Arneson and Gygax.)

Wesely went off to the military, but Arneson continued to run the Braunsteins and eventually created Blackmoor and fantasy role playing games. All role playing games owe their existence to this moment between these two friends and Arneson hard work (with his gaming group) in turning it all into a game that not only he, but his friends could also run. A multi-genre game engine of which underlies all role playing games and of which Dungeons & Dragons is one branch of a very large tree.