Gygax, Arneson, MAR Barker, and early gaming
I was going to mention something about the death of Gary Gygax, but everyone and his/her brother has already done so, and theferrett has even supplied a list of one-liners for use in commemorating the event. Nothing further need be said, I suppose.
But I will anyway. When I was in high school in the early '80s, and deeply into Dungeons and Dragons, they used to hold a gaming convention in the Minneapolis area - once it was somewhere downtown, a few times it was at the Earle Brown Center in Brooklyn Center. At any rate, it had a pretty good showing, all of it geared toward paper-and-dice gamers of one sort or another. There were numerous D&D games, full-scale miniature battles in historical or fantasy milieus, a decent marketplace where you could get nice crystal-type dice, D&D manuals, and so on - remember that in 1981, this stuff was not readily available on the (nonexistent) Internet, nor were there gaming shops all over the place where you could pick up cool stuff easily. I remember one year spending pretty much the entire weekend playing the artillery commander of a Byzantine army besieging some kind of castle.
But I digress. Some of the bright lights of Minnesota gaming, to the extent that's not an oxymoron, used to show up - folks like M.A.R. "Phil" Barker, creator of Tekumel and the Empire of the Petal Throne, and of course, Gary Gygax's former partner in creating Dungeons and Dragons, Dave Arneson. Although I never knew the details, and I never believed anyone who claimed to know the details (the court settlement forbade either Gygax or Arneson from discussing the terms), I still always kinda thought Dave got screwed, when you get right down to where the bear pooped in the buckwheat.
Anyhow, I played under Arneson in his famous campaign milieu Blackmoor, at a couple of MinnCons in the '80s. I later re-encountered Arneson at a Fort Snelling Civil War event in the late '90s, where he interviewed me and a number of another Minnesota CW reenactors for a project he was doing for the US Civil War Center at Louisiana State University. Dave is a longtime CW buff and an early member of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, Inc., a reenactment group dedicated to the memory of the original 1st Regiment of Minnesota Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.
I also once had a chance to join a regular, weekly campaign group playing in the Tekumel world under MAR "Phil" Barker himself, at his home in Minneapolis, but I passed it up on the grounds that I was pretty busy with family and job and couldn't afford to get back into the gaming addiction and commit to an every-week game. I regret that, a little, although I think I made the right decision. Phil Barker is an interesting guy.
But I will anyway. When I was in high school in the early '80s, and deeply into Dungeons and Dragons, they used to hold a gaming convention in the Minneapolis area - once it was somewhere downtown, a few times it was at the Earle Brown Center in Brooklyn Center. At any rate, it had a pretty good showing, all of it geared toward paper-and-dice gamers of one sort or another. There were numerous D&D games, full-scale miniature battles in historical or fantasy milieus, a decent marketplace where you could get nice crystal-type dice, D&D manuals, and so on - remember that in 1981, this stuff was not readily available on the (nonexistent) Internet, nor were there gaming shops all over the place where you could pick up cool stuff easily. I remember one year spending pretty much the entire weekend playing the artillery commander of a Byzantine army besieging some kind of castle.
But I digress. Some of the bright lights of Minnesota gaming, to the extent that's not an oxymoron, used to show up - folks like M.A.R. "Phil" Barker, creator of Tekumel and the Empire of the Petal Throne, and of course, Gary Gygax's former partner in creating Dungeons and Dragons, Dave Arneson. Although I never knew the details, and I never believed anyone who claimed to know the details (the court settlement forbade either Gygax or Arneson from discussing the terms), I still always kinda thought Dave got screwed, when you get right down to where the bear pooped in the buckwheat.
Anyhow, I played under Arneson in his famous campaign milieu Blackmoor, at a couple of MinnCons in the '80s. I later re-encountered Arneson at a Fort Snelling Civil War event in the late '90s, where he interviewed me and a number of another Minnesota CW reenactors for a project he was doing for the US Civil War Center at Louisiana State University. Dave is a longtime CW buff and an early member of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, Inc., a reenactment group dedicated to the memory of the original 1st Regiment of Minnesota Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.
I also once had a chance to join a regular, weekly campaign group playing in the Tekumel world under MAR "Phil" Barker himself, at his home in Minneapolis, but I passed it up on the grounds that I was pretty busy with family and job and couldn't afford to get back into the gaming addiction and commit to an every-week game. I regret that, a little, although I think I made the right decision. Phil Barker is an interesting guy.