Why D&D’s Co-Creator Didn’t Get Hired by Wizards of the Coast
Dave Arneson’s Plans for the Game in ‘97 Were Not Great
Image used with permission of the Arneson Archive.
While writing my book of D&D history, Slaying the Dragon, I discovered a number of fascinating historical documents hidden from public view until now. Over the coming months, I’m going to be sharing some of these captivating items with you…
More often than we would like to admit, the underdog doesn’t deliver. They miss the ball, fail to sell the screenplay, lose the rap battle, and the frog, though kissed, does not turn into a prince.
Or they write the CEO a proposal asking to be put in charge of a cherished brand and don’t land the job.
Twice.
When TSR, the first company to publish Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), was nearing bankruptcy, it was purchased by Wizards of the Coast (Wizards). As detailed in my previous post, while the deal was being negotiated, D&D co-creator Dave Arneson asked Wizards CEO Peter Adkison to be put in charge of TSR. When his first letter brought no response, Arneson wrote a second, seven-page letter to Adkison a mere 13 days later in which he laid out his vision of what to do with the brand. (He also begins by again misspelling Peter Adkison’s name again. He is now Peter Adkinson.)
This is the second letter in a row where Arneson couldn’t figure out how to properly spell the name of the man he’s asking to put him in charge of a multi-million dollar corporation. It’s Adkison btw.
And that vision was one of… navel-gazing banalities? The obvious and underwhelming?
I’ll take this opportunity to say flat out that any misspellings or weird punctuation, spacing, or capitalization below are transcribed exactly as it appears in his letter.
The letter reads:
I’ll take this opportunity to say flat out that any misspellings or weird punctuation, spacing, or capitalization below are transcribed exactly as they appears in his letter.
“Well I told myself not to but I keep thinking about TSR etc. And so I started making some calls and gathering some information (Call it ‘Dungeon Wandering’). Yeah I know that the deal is far from settled but I can’t help it.. For the first time in a decade it looks like I can actually get involved with D&D again. What can I say, I am excited about it. Here is what I have come up with;”
My heart already bleeds for Arneson. The man has never received his due as D&D’s co-creator. He never made CEO. He wasn’t on Futurama. TSR and Gary Gygax did him dirty. (This has been explored in my prior post and in Game Wizards by Jon Peterson.)
This letter is Arneson’s moment. If he wants to make D&D for a living again, he has to put points on the board, and he has to do it with this letter. Now. But he hasn’t even bothered to check his punctuation!
Six pages of his research and plans follow. Here’s a summary, but I’m pasting the letter below if you want to thrill to every misspelled word.
In the main, Arneson’s thoughts are nothing you wouldn’t have heard hanging around a game store in the spring of 1997. He said that all of TSR’s projects were “dead in the water,” which the whole world knew as the company hadn’t published anything for months.
He said that TSR should be moved to Wizards’ hometown of Seattle/Renton, but that Wizards would have a hard time getting TSR veterans to make that move.
He said that the Book Department had lost authors because it would neither pay authors what they deserved, nor develop them into stars. All true, but likely nothing Adkison hadn’t thought of already.
Some things Arneson was plumb wrong about. For example, he said the “strongest part of the TSR line are it’s ‘worlds’ and D&D.” D&D yes, the worlds, though often works of brilliance in terms of writing and game design, were one of the things that killed the company by taking fans of D&D and transforming them into fans of settings. (This, and the rest of the saga of the downfall of TSR is detailed in my book.)
But Arneson was a computer guy.
He had gone on to a career in the computer industry, and did have a section in the letter titled, “COMPUTER STUFF”. Maybe this was where he kept his aces…
Under “COMPUTER STUFF” the co-creator of D&D wrote:
But Dave! Dave… Why are you wasting word count on this? You co-created a new medium and but you couldn’t pitch a Blackmoor video game? I agree it’s low-hanging fruit, but it’s better than this!
“Needs to be developed. LOTS of potential here. LOTS! TSR has been dumb about this from the beginning. (Dave starts hopping up and down shouting I CAN DO IT! PLEASE LET ME DO IT!!)”
Despite running seven pages, Arneson himself seemed to sense the scantiness of his proposals. In ending his letter, he asks, “OK so have I said anything concrete? Well a few things, but mostly these are just observations.”
This is all you could do Dave to sell yourself in 1997?
Arneson says this letter is just observations. And indeed, observations there were. But observation is not vision. It is not leadership. It is most certainly not innovation.
Arneson failed in his task. (He failed his dream?) He would not be put in charge of D&D.
In contrast, look what Wizards did.
Peter Adkison was the first D&D nerd to have total control over the game since Gary Gygax. He put himself in charge of 3rd edition, and then oversaw a team of brilliant gaming minds including Bill Slavicsek, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich Baker, and Jonathan Tweet as they actually produced the game.
Furthermore, Ryan Dancey was the vice-president in charge of the D&D brand at Wizards. He noticed that the 50 best-selling RPG products at Wizards produced 80% of the profit and 80% of the revenue. He directed that marketing should be used to drive the sales of those products. In his case, observation led to immediate action.
Dancey also set Lisa Stevens to the task of discovering how TSR failed, and she correlated the proliferation of campaign settings to a drop in sales. (Stevens, of course, went on to found a little RPG company called Paizo. Observation again led to action.) Dancey was also the leading proponent of the Open Gaming License, which allows anyone in the world to make material for D&D, within certain limits.
This incredible team, which was an amalgamation of folks from Wizards, TSR, and other gaming companies such as Five Rings Publishing and White Wolf, changed D&D forever, and in my blunt estimation, for the better.
And there is not a whisper nor glimmer nor scent of any of those innovations in Arneson’s letter.
It is common for the first leaders of a revolution to quickly be found wanting. They take their movements as far as they can and then are fed to the guillotine.
Or perhaps it is that if you want to be remembered by history, you must either be the first or the best. And having co-created the first role-playing game, the great work of Arneson’s life was finished. Yet it is so sad to think of him watching others take his creation to heights he could not reach himself.
I asked Wizards’ first CEO Peter Adkison if he remembered these 1997 letters from Arneson. Adkison said he “only had the vaguest recollection of Dave and Gary each offering to come to work for Wizards.” He said, “I declined as gracefully as possible. At the time, I was pretty sure that wouldn’t have turned out well. And now, I’m absolutely certain.”
Would you like to know more?
Buy my book on the failure of TSR and its sale to Wizards of the Coast here!
Read about the first letter Dave Arneson sent to Peter Adkison here!
