The battle for the dungeons and dragons was the best war for maniacs

[ad_1]

After the unexpected success of Dungeons and dragons In the late 1970s, game designers Gary Gigax and Dave Arneson fought a decade of battle over who should be considered the real creator of D&D. Game historian John Peterson describes this struggle in his new book Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons.

“I was able to find enough sources on which most of the questions I found interesting could shed some light,” Peterson said in episode 489 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “Many don’t have definitive answers, but I think at least I can paint enough.”

Game Wizards it can come as a shock to many D&D fans. Peterson’s account is widely quoted from primary sources, including letters and legal documents, many of which refer to Gygax and Arneson as people with a profound mistake. “It’s not fun to write something that ends up being quite negative,” Peterson said. “But at the same time, I think it’s necessary. If you do not understand the nuances of these business and legal circumstances, there are only causes and consequences that you will not understand. ”

Peterson tried to treat all his characters with respect and sympathy. “Everyone makes mistakes and everyone has their ego and everything else,” he says. “But I think they were trying to get the most out of a situation that no one expected to find themselves in. Suddenly they are in it and what will they do? So I hope no one ends up in this as a villain. “

As for the question of who should be considered a real creator Dungeons and dragons, Peterson believes the game was obviously a group effort. “It is based on all these different sources and experiences, and all these different inputs that have entered it – whether it is Braunsteins, whether it is all these different phenomena that have occurred over time leading to D&D.” he says. “It is never right to break the invention of something of this kind of cultural significance for an individual.”

Listen to the full interview with John Peterson in Episode 489 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And see some highlights from the discussion below.

John Peterson for Dave Arneson:

“There were three awards that were given D&D [at the 1978 Origins Game Fair], including the award for “Best Role Playing Rules of All Time”. This is an award ceremony and not a big one, but the TSR staff will go up and pick up their trophy, thank the people and sit down. Arneson actually ran on stage to take this greatest trophy of role-playing rules, and there was little controversy. Should these trophies go to the company that released the game, or should they go to the designer? Arneson ran this entire advertising campaign to try to convince people that awards like this should go to designers, not companies. … But in the end there was not much sympathy, even among the publishers of Wargame in the industry, for his position, and in the end he did not receive all three trophies for himself. “

John Peterson for Gary Gaigax:

“Gygax was great personally. Everyone who met him – before he became “Gary Gigax” and everyone felt all this anger because of the success of D&D– just noted how eager he is to help, how he wants to sit and play games with you, to help you design games, to help you improve your own rules. He was a really friendly, sociable and friendly person. … Only after these skills start to be applied to medium business management, where there are now many people in the staff, there are many levels of management, there is a process and this group has to agree with this group and they have to go to perform this general strategy and you can not manage micro-everything, as soon as it became such a company, he just hated it. He wanted to go out. “

John Peterson on Satanic Panic:

“You see people [at TSR] saying things like, “Yeah, there’s all this gnashing of teeth about the occult, but the reason people find the occult to be convincing is that there might – just maybe – be something in it.” I don’t think they are. they had something more in mind with this than with, say, astrology. When you read your horoscope in the newspaper, is there anything in it? Probably not, but there was only this background level, especially from the 1970s, of crystals and New Ageism and American diluted spiritism. And I think they really wanted to get involved in that – or at least they knew it was part of the market. But Gigax and Arneson identified themselves as Christians – strongly – so as a result, I don’t think they really tried to take any provocative position on the possible truth of the occult.

John Peterson for Ben Riggs:

“Ben Riggs is publishing a book that will be published next year, which is called Killing the dragon. He focuses mostly – though not exclusively – on the period after that Game Wizards ends. … As soon as possible Game Wizards it was announced that many people who followed Ben, who knew his book was coming, were like, “Oh, my God. Is anyone trying to beat you? Is Peterson trying to sneak this before you? So we did a video for Gen Con this year, just to say, “Actually, we’re friends. We know that we both make these books forever, and we coordinated this to make sure they were on the same page. This is not going to be something like asking, “Is Riggs right or Peterson right? We hope we’ve aligned them as best we can.”