The co-creator of the popular role-playing game “Dungeons and Dragons,” Dave Arenson has passed away at the age of 61. Arenson passed away Tuesday after a long battle with cancer reports SciFi Wire. He is survives by his wife and daughter.
Arneson was an avid table-top gaming fan in the early 60’s. He was introduced to gaming by his parents, who bought him a copy of Avalon Hill’s “Gettysburg” game. Arneson met other gamers during his time at the University of Minnesota, where he began to modify and create his own games. He attended the second Gencon convetion, where he met Gary Gygax. Together, the two created “Dungeons and Dragons,” which has changed the face of the gaming industry. The two wrote the rules for the game in 1974, but couldn’t get any mainstream publishers to bite on the product. The two created TSR and published the book themselves using start-up money provided by a friend of Gygax.
Arneson left TSR in 1979 and filed a lawsuit against the company. As a part of the ultimate settlement of that suit, neither Arneson nor Gygax ever spoke about what drove them apart, although Arneson would later return to TSR when Gygax was briefly president of the company again in the mid-’80s. They were on good terms at the time of Gygax’s death last year.
In his post-D&D/TSR life, Arneson founded a computer game company 4D Interactive Systems, which is still in business. He did computer consulting. In the late ’90s, he became a teacher at Full Sail, a private university that teaches media and computer careers. He suffered a stroke in 2002, but kept teaching until 2008. Throughout these years he continued to work on his original Blackmoor role-playing campaign, publishing it in various paper forms and also creating an online role-playing community.
He is a member of Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame.
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