David "Dave" Lance Arneson (October 1, 1947 – April 7, 2009) was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work in developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons", using a neutral judge and having conversations with imaginary characters to develop the story...
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David "Dave" Lance Arneson (October 1, 1947 – April 7, 2009) was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work in developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons", using a neutral judge and having conversations with imaginary characters to develop the storyline, were fundamental to the development of the genre.
Arneson discovered wargaming as a teenager in the 1960s, and began combining these games with the concept of roleplaying. He was a University of Minnesota student when he met Gygax at the Gen Con gaming convention in the late 1960s. In 1970, Arneson created the game and fictional world that became Blackmoor, writing his own rules and basing the setting on medieval fantasy elements. Arneson brought the game to show Gygax the following year, and the pair co-developed a set of rules that...
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