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107-834: Shackled City is primarily set in the city of Cauldron. Cauldron itself is nominally located in the World of Greyhawk , although the series is designed to be easily adapted to other D&D campaign settings . The Adventure Paths were widely lauded throughout the gaming industry, and the collected issues of Shackled City , including extensive background and location notes on Cauldron and its residents, were nominated for and received multiple ENnies in 2006. The adventures are designed to begin with first level characters and to end with characters at or near twentieth level, taking them through twelve distinct adventures that span basic dungeon crawls , urban adventures, political intrigue, and even extra-planar excursions. The Adventure Path consists of

214-484: A cameo appearance in the Dungeons & Dragons movie as one of many mages throwing fireballs at a dragon , although the scene was deleted from the completed movie. Arneson married Frankie Ann Morneau in 1984; they had one daughter, Malia, and two grandchildren. Arneson died on April 7, 2009, after battling cancer for two years. According to his daughter, Malia Weinhagen, "The biggest thing about my dad's world

321-460: A campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game . Although not the first campaign world developed for Dungeons & Dragons — Dave Arneson 's Blackmoor campaign predated it by about a year —the world of Greyhawk closely identified with early development of the game beginning in 1972, and after being published it remained associated with Dungeons & Dragons publications until 2008. The world itself started as

428-641: A military history buff and pulp fantasy fan, was a central, founding figure in the Castle & Crusade Society . The C&C Society, as it was known, served enthusiasts of miniature wargaming in the Middle Ages and published an occasional newsletter known as the Domesday Book . Following up on a promise he made in Domesday Book #5, Gygax presented the "Great Kingdom" map c. June 1971 in Domesday #9, to be used as

535-498: A 34" x 44" (86 cm x 112 cm) two-piece color map of the Flanaess. Reviewers were generally impressed, but some remarked on the lack of a pantheon of Greyhawk-specific deities, as well as the lack of any mention of the infamous dungeons of Castle Greyhawk. Game designer Jim Bambra found the original set "disappointing", because "there is only so much information you can cram into a 32-page booklet, particularly when covering such

642-575: A demonstration of Blackmoor and Dungeon! While meeting at Gygax's house, Dave Arneson ran the Lake Geneva gamers through their first session of Blackmoor . Rob Kuntz describes Dave Arneson as the referee, and the Lake Geneva players as being Gary Gygax, Ernie Gygax, Terry Kuntz , and himself. Kuntz describes Dave Megarry as the de facto leader of the group, as he understood the Blackmoor game and campaign world. In Wargaming magazine, Rob Kuntz wrote

749-505: A dungeon setting. He and Arneson agreed to co-develop a set of rules, and Gygax quickly developed a castle and dungeon of his own, "Castle Greyhawk", set within his portion of the Great Kingdom map. Castle Greyhawk is sometimes considered the first dungeon in Dungeons & Dragons and pioneered the roots of the mega-dungeon format of gaming. Two of his children, Ernie and Elise, were

856-580: A fantasy supplement for the Chainmail ruleset for medieval miniatures that he was co-writing with Jeff Perren . Released in the late spring of 1971, this booklet included rules for fantasy monsters, wizards and magical weapons. Around the same time, in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Dave Arneson , impressed by the " Braunstein " role-playing games of fellow wargamer David Wesely , developed the Barony of Blackmoor as

963-450: A few evil deities to provide some villainy. In Chapter 2 of The Gnome Cache , which appeared in the second issue of The Dragon , a shrine to St. Cuthbert (spelled St. Cuthburt ) was mentioned, which was the first published reference to a Greyhawk deity. In 1976, Gygax invited the science fiction/fantasy writer Andre Norton to play Dungeons & Dragons in his Greyhawk world. Norton subsequently wrote Quag Keep , which involved

1070-525: A few of the adventure modules, were published by TSR. Although Gygax originally intended to immediately publish more details of Greyhawk in Dragon on a regular basis, other projects intervened, and it was not until the August 1981 issue of Dragon that Len Lakofka , in his column "Leomund's Tiny Hut", outlined methods for determining a character's place of birth and languages spoken. Gygax added an addendum concerning

1177-503: A fractious place where chaos and evil were in the ascendant and courageous champions would be needed. In order to explain how his world had arrived at this state, he wrote an outline of a thousand years of history. As a military history buff, he was very familiar with the concept of waves of cultural invasions, such the Picts of Great Britain being invaded by the Celts , who were in turn invaded by

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1284-422: A freelance artist in Lake Geneva, developed a full color map on a hex grid. Gygax was so pleased with the result that he quickly switched his home Greyhawk campaign over to the new world he had created. Ultimately, the original Castle Greyhawk was never published for public play, instead with many of the elements of Gygax's original campaign becoming the seed for other adventures. In the late 1960s, Gary Gygax ,

1391-590: A game setting for the Society. Members thereafter began claiming territories, including member Dave Arneson , who was an officer of the organization, and frequent contributor to the newsletter. Arneson claimed a territory he named Blackmoor , a setting he had already begun developing in his home campaign, and Gygax reserved for himself a territory on lake Nyr Div. In addition to historically-based medieval wargaming, both Gygax and Arneson were enthusiasts of adding fantasy elements to their games. To this end, Gygax created

1498-528: A group of gamers who travel from the real world to Greyhawk. It was the first novel to be set, at least partially, in the Greyhawk setting, and according to Alternative Worlds , the first to be based on D&D . Quag Keep was excerpted in issue #12 of The Dragon (February 1978) just prior to the book's release. From 1976 to 1979, Gygax also shared some glimpses of his home campaign with other gamers when he set several TSR Dungeons & Dragons adventures in

1605-426: A land inhabited in part by fantastic monsters. As the game quickly grew and characters developed, Arneson devised scenarios where they would quest for magic and gold, escort caravans, lead armies for or against the forces of evil, and delve into the dungeons beneath Castle Blackmoor (which was represented by a Kibri kit model of Branzoll Castle ). To explain his inspiration for the game, Arneson said: I had spent

1712-556: A large area". Before the folio edition was released, Gygax planned to publish supplementary information, using his column "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" that appeared on a semi-regular basis in TSR's Dragon Magazine . In the May 1980 issue, Gygax gave a quick overview of the development of his new The World of Greyhawk folio. For players who planned to use large scale army tactics, he gave details of

1819-765: A manner similar to "what if" scenarios recreated in wargames. In the late 1960s Arneson joined the Twin Cities Military Miniatures Group , a group of miniature wargamers and military figurine collectors in the Minneapolis - St. Paul area that included among its ranks future game designer David Wesely . Wesely asserts that it was during the Braunstein games he created and refereed, and in which other Twin Cities Military Miniatures Group members participated, that Arneson helped develop

1926-403: A map of North America, adding new cities and regions as his world slowly grew through ongoing adventures. The city and castle of Greyhawk were placed near the real-world position of Chicago, his birthplace; various other places were clustered around it. For instance, the rival city of Dyvers he placed in the area of real-world Milwaukee. Gygax also continued to develop the dungeons underneath

2033-471: A map to sixteen ogres and destroyed them with a wish from a sword we had procured from the hapless troll earlier. After playing in the Blackmoor game Arneson refereed, Gygax almost immediately began a similar campaign of his own, which he called " Greyhawk ", and asked Arneson for a draft of his playing-rules. The two then collaborated by phone and mail, and playtesting was carried out by their various groups and other contacts. Gygax and Arneson wanted to have

2140-525: A new edition of his own Adventures in Fantasy role-playing game (1981). The company also published several Tékumel related books, owing to Arneson's friendship with author M. A. R. Barker . Adventure Games was profitable, but Arneson found the workload to be excessive and finally sold the company to Flying Buffalo . Arneson sold the rights to Adventure Games to Flying Buffalo in 1985; because Arneson owned part of Flying Buffalo, he wanted to let them handle

2247-417: A new fantasy world of Yarth. The Flanaess is the eastern part of the continent of Oerik, one of the four continents of Oerth, acting as the setting of dozens of adventures published between the 1970s and 2000s. In late 1972, Dave Arneson demonstrated a new type of game to a group of gamers in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, including game designer Gygax. Gygax agreed to develop a set of rules with Arneson and get

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2354-512: A new magical spell for the game, he would sometimes use the name of a wizard character from his home campaign to add verisimilitude to the spell name, such as Melf's acid arrow , Melf being a character created by his son Luke. Some of the characters who became synonymous with Greyhawk at that time included: Gary Gygax wrote a short story titled "The Expedition Into the Black Reservoir", subtitled "A Dungeon Adventure at Greyhawk Castle", which

2461-469: A new world for them afterward. With the release of the AD&;D Players Handbook in 1978, many players were intrigued by the connection of Greyhawk characters to magical spells such as Tenser's floating disc , Bigby's crushing hand , and Mordenkainen's faithful hound . The AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide , released the following year, also made references to the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk. Players' curiosity

2568-406: A pantheon of deities custom-made for humans in the world of Greyhawk. In addition to his original Greyhawk deities, St. Cuthbert and Pholtus, Gygax added seventeen more deities. Although later versions of the campaign setting would assign most of these deities to worship by specific races of humans, at this time they were generally worshiped by all humans of the Flanaess. Shortly after the release of

2675-474: A part of an evil country; and still others might take a neutral stance and simply try to collect gold and treasure from both sides. TSR originally intended to publish The World of Greyhawk (TSR 9025) early in 1979, but it was not released until August 1980. The World of Greyhawk consisted of a 32-page folio (the first edition is often called the World of Greyhawk folio to distinguish it from later editions) and

2782-510: A place named 'Blackmoor'." On October 30, 2010, Full Sail University dedicated the student game development studio space as "Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Studios" in Arneson's honor. Since the release of the history of Braunstein in 2008 and Playing at the World in 2012, a scholarly work by Jon Petersen, the role of Dave Wesely and Dave Arneson was restored in the broad conversation on the origins of

2889-438: A player, and appointed Rob to be co- Dungeon Master of Greyhawk. This freed up Gygax to work on other projects, and also gave him an opportunity to participate as a player, creating characters like Yrag and Mordenkainen . In order to make room for Rob Kuntz's dungeons, Gygax scrapped his bottom level and integrated Rob's work into the Greyhawk dungeons. Gygax and Kuntz continued to develop new levels for their players, and by

2996-407: A player, often going one-on-one with Rob Kuntz as Dungeon Master, Gygax immersed his own characters in politics and large-scale battles. Knowing that there would be some players looking for a town in which to base their campaign, and others interested in politics or warfare, Gygax tried to include as much detail as possible about each region, including a short description of the region and its people,

3103-538: A role-playing game that attempted to recapture the "original spirit of the Role Playing Fantasy Game" that Arneson had envisioned in the early 1970s, instead of what D&D had become. In the early 1980s he established his own game company, Adventure Games – staffed largely by Arneson's friends, most of whom were involved in an American Civil War reenactment group – that published the miniatures games Harpoon (1981) and Johnny Reb (1983), as well as

3210-463: A second level for the dungeon. At the next play session, Ernie and Elise were joined by Gygax's friends: Don Kaye , Rob Kuntz , and Terry Kuntz . About a month after his first session, Gygax created the nearby city of Greyhawk, where the players' characters could sell their treasure and find a place to rest. As Gygax and Arneson worked to develop and publish the rules for Dungeons & Dragons through TSR , Gygax continued to design and present

3317-469: A setting for Braunstein style games. Arneson based his game around the village, castle and dungeons of Blackmoor. The castle itself was represented on the table by an actual plastic kit model of a medieval castle. Arneson informed the players that instead of controlling regiments, they would each take one individual character into the castle of the Barony of Blackmoor to explore its dangerous dungeons. Arneson drew from numerous sources but quickly incorporated

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3424-500: A short summary of their first Blackmoor session: Gary, myself and a few other local wargamers were the first "lucky" fellows from Lake Geneva to experience the rigors of Blackmoor. This idea caught on deeply with Gary after an exciting adventure in which our party of heroes fought a troll , were fireballed by a magic-user, then fled to the outdoors (being chased by the Magic-user and his minions), fought four (gulp!) Balrogs , followed

3531-442: A simple dungeon under a castle designed by Gary Gygax for the amusement of his children and friends, but it was rapidly expanded to include not only a complex multi-layered dungeon environment, but also the nearby city of Greyhawk, and eventually an entire world. In addition to the campaign world, which was published in several editions over twenty years, Greyhawk was also used as the setting for many adventures published in support of

3638-582: A single volume in 1972 by Guidon Games with a revised edition by TSR Hobbies in 1975. Following the departure of David Wesely to service in the Army Reserves in October 1970, Arneson and his fellow players in the Twin Cities began to imagine alternate settings for "Braunstein" games. Arneson developed a Braunstein in which his players played fantasy versions of themselves in the medieval Barony of Blackmoor,

3745-489: Is a rare exception, consisting of 12 parts." The expanded hardcover edition of the Shackled City Adventure Path won three ENnie awards at the 2006 Gen Con game fair, taking home the gold award for "Best Adventure" and "Best Campaign Setting/Supplement", as well as the silver award for "Best Cartography". Greyhawk Greyhawk , also known as the World of Greyhawk , is a fictional world designed as

3852-551: Is he wanted people to have fun in life." Arneson received numerous industry awards for his part in creating Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games. In 1984 he was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design's Hall of Fame (also known as the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame ) and in 1999 was named by Pyramid magazine as one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons , "at least in

3959-626: The Drow series and the Giant series respectively. Numerous projects were planned to add more depth and detail to the setting after the publication of the initial folio, but many of these projects never appeared for various reasons. In 1983, TSR published an expanded boxed set of the campaign world, World of Greyhawk , which is usually called the Greyhawk boxed set to differentiate it from other editions. According to game designer Jim Bambra , "the second edition

4066-745: The Blackmoor setting. Goodman Games published and distributed Dave Arneson's Blackmoor in 2004, and Goodman published additional products for Blackmoor over the next year. Code Monkey Publishing released Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The First Campaign (2009) for 4th edition D&D . In 1988, Arneson stated his belief that RPGs, whether paper or computer, were still "hack and slash" and did not teach novices how to play, and that games like Ultima IV "have stood pretty much alone as quirks instead of trend setters" as others did not follow their innovations. He hoped that computer RPGs would teach newcomers how to role play while offering interesting campaigns and said that SSI 's Gold Box games did not innovate on

4173-606: The Romans . In creating a similar pattern of history for his world, Gygax decided that a thousand years before his campaign began, the northeast corner of the continent had been occupied by a peaceful but primitive people called the Flannae, whose name was the root for the name of that part of Oerik, the Flanaess . At that time, far to the west of the Flanaess, two peoples were at war, the Bakluni and

4280-411: The board wargame Gettysburg by Avalon Hill . After Arneson taught his friends how to play, the group began to design their own games, and tried out new ways to play existing games. Arneson was especially fond of naval wargames . Exposure to role-playing influenced his later game designs. In college history classes he role-played historical events and preferred to deviate from recorded history in

4387-572: The original Dungeons & Dragons set in 1974, with the initial print run of 1,000 selling out within a year and sales increasing rapidly in subsequent years. Further rules and a sample dungeon from Arneson's original campaign (the first published RPG scenario in a professional publication) were released in 1975 in the Blackmoor supplement for D&D , named after the campaign-setting. Blackmoor presented new character classes for monks and assassins , additional new monsters, and "The Temple of

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4494-490: The player characters . Arneson discovered wargaming as a teenager in the 1960s, and he began combining these games with the concept of role-playing . He was a University of Minnesota student when he met Gygax at the Gen Con gaming convention in the late 1960s. In 1971, Arneson created the game and fictional world that became Blackmoor , writing his own rules and basing the setting on medieval fantasy elements. Arneson took

4601-546: The 1990s, he was invited to Brazil by Devir, a game publisher. He became friends with the owner of the publishing company and he gave him his D&D woodgrain box and some of his books as a gift. In 1997, after Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR, Peter Adkison paid Arneson an undisclosed sum to free up D&D from royalties that were still owed to Arneson; this allowed Wizards to retitle Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to simply Dungeons & Dragons . Around 2000, Arneson

4708-657: The Braunsteins after Wesely was drafted into the Army, and he often ran these scenarios using different eras and settings. Arneson had also become a member of the International Federation of Wargamers by this time. In 1969 Arneson was a history student attending the University of Minnesota and working part-time as a security guard. He attended the second Gen Con gaming convention in August 1969 (at which time wargaming

4815-586: The Frog", the first published role-playing adventure scenario intended for other people to run. Arneson formally joined TSR as their Director of Research at the beginning of 1976, but left at the end of the year to pursue a career as an independent game-designer. In 1977, despite the fact that he was no longer at TSR, Arneson published Dungeonmaster's Index , a 38-page booklet that indexed all of TSR's D&D properties to that point in time. TSR had agreed to pay Arneson royalties on all D&D products, but when

4922-420: The Great Kingdom map, which included local areas based on real-world maps, Gygax decided to create an entirely new and greatly expanded version of Oerth . Needing many more original names for all of the geographical and political places on his map for the new and expanded areas, Gygax sometimes resorted to wordplay. He had previously used Perrenland on the Great Kingdom map, named after Jeff Perren , who co-wrote

5029-691: The Greyhawk campaign. Although it detailed new spells and character classes that had been developed in the dungeons of Greyhawk, it did not contain any details of their Greyhawk campaign world. The only two references to Greyhawk were an illustration of a large stone head in a dungeon corridor titled The Great Stone Face, Enigma of Greyhawk and mention of a fountain on the second level of the dungeons that continuously issued an endless number of snakes. The 2004 publication 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons suggested that details of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign were published in this booklet, but Gygax had no plans in 1975 to publish details of

5136-424: The Greyhawk world, since he believed that new players of Dungeons & Dragons would rather create their own worlds than use someone else's. In addition, he did not want to publish all the material he had created for his players; he thought he would be unlikely to recoup a fair investment for the thousands of hours he had spent on it. Since his secrets would be revealed to his players, he would be forced to recreate

5243-637: The Oeridians, the Aerdi, began to set up an empire. Several centuries later, the Aerdi's Great Kingdom ruled most of the Flanaess. The Aerdi overkings marked the beginning of what they believed would be perpetual peace with Year 1 of a new calendar, the Common Year (CY) Reckoning . However, several centuries later, the Empire became decadent, with their rulers losing their sanity, turning to evil, and enslaving their people. When

5350-509: The Stick #644, and Dork Tower for April 8, 2009. Video game publisher Activision Blizzard posted a tribute to Arneson on their website and on April 14, 2009, released patch 3.1 of the online role-playing game World of Warcraft , The Secrets of Ulduar , dedicated to Arneson. Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online added an in-game memorial altar to Arneson in the Ruins of Threnal location in

5457-536: The Suloise. The war reached its climax when both sides used powerful magic to obliterate each other, in an event called the Twin Cataclysms. Refugees of these disasters were forced out of their lands, and the Suloise invaded the Flanaess, forcing the Flannae to flee to the outer edges of the continent. Several centuries later, a new invader appeared, the Oeridians, and they in turn forced the Suloise southward. One tribe of

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5564-477: The castle. By the time he was finished, the complex labyrinth encompassed thirteen levels filled with devious traps, secret passageways, hungry monsters, and glittering treasure. Although details of these original Greyhawk dungeons have never been published in detail, Gygax gave some glimpses of them in an article he wrote for the European fanzine Europa in 1975: Anyone who made it to the bottom level alive met Zagyg,

5671-470: The class "Rules of the Game", a class in which students learned how to accurately document and create rule sets for games that were balanced between mental challenges for the players and "physical" ones for the characters. He retired from the position on June 19, 2008. Arneson continued to play games his entire life, including D&D and military miniature games, and regularly attended an annual meeting to play

5778-441: The company came out with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ( AD&D ) in 1977, it claimed that AD&D was a significantly different product and so did not pay him royalties for it. In response, Arneson filed the first of five lawsuits against Gygax and TSR in 1979. In March 1981, as part of a confidential agreement, Arneson and Gygax resolved the suits out of court by agreeing that they would both be credited as "co-creators" on

5885-551: The continent of Oerik and asked TSR's printing house about the maximum size of paper they could handle; the answer was 34 x 22 inches (86 cm x 56 cm). He found that, using the scale he desired, he could fit only the northeast corner of Oerik on two of the sheets. This corner of Oerik became known as "the Flanaess", so named in Gygax's mind because of the peaceful people known as the Flannae who had once lived there. Gygax also added many more new regions, countries and cities, bringing

5992-443: The dungeons and environs of Castle Greyhawk to his circle of friends and family, using them as playtesters for new rules and concepts. As the players began to explore more of the world outside of the castle and city, Gygax developed other regions and cities for them. With play sessions occurring seven or more times a week, Gygax did not have the time or inclination to create the map for a whole new world; he simply drew his world over

6099-408: The early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the role-playing game (RPG) genre, pioneering devices now considered to be archetypical, such as cooperative play to develop a storyline instead of individual competitive play to "win" and adventuring in dungeon , town, and wilderness settings as presented by a neutral judge who doubles as the voice and consciousness of all characters aside from

6206-408: The early to mid-1970s in the original campaign and parallel and intertwined games run by John Snider , whose ruleset developed from these adventures and was intended for publication by TSR from 1974 as the first science fiction RPG. Arneson described Blackmoor as "roleplaying in a non-traditional medieval setting. I have such things as steam power, gunpowder, and submarines in limited numbers. There

6313-561: The fact that Gygax was increasingly involved in other areas of the company, meant that of the seventeen Greyhawk adventures published in the two years after the folio edition, only four were written or co-written by Gygax: In 1981, TSR also published the super-modules D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth and G1-2-3 Against the Giants , both being compilations of previously published modules from

6420-550: The fantasy material in the Chainmail rules, written by Gygax and Jeff Perren and published in the spring of 1971, but after a short and unsatisfactory trial of the Fantasy Combat table found therein, he developed his own mix of rules, including adapted elements from his revision of Civil War Ironclad game. The gameplay would be recognizable to modern D&D players, featuring the use of hit points , armor class , character development, and dungeon crawls . This setting

6527-517: The fantasy supplement of Chainmail into his games. After about a year and half of play, Arneson (Blackmoor) and fellow gamer David Megarry ( Dungeon! boardgame) traveled to Lake Geneva in November or December 1972 to pitch their respective games to Gygax, who at that time was a representative of the Guidon Games company. Gygax was immediately intrigued by the concept of individual characters exploring

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6634-466: The first players, and during their first session, as Tenser and Ahlissa , they fought and destroyed the first monsters of the Greyhawk dungeon; Gygax recalled them as being either giant centipedes or a nest of scorpions. During the same session, Ernie and Elise also found the first treasure, a chest of 3,000 copper coins which was too heavy to carry, much to the children's chagrin. After his children had gone to bed, Gygax immediately began working on

6741-650: The first time. When Gygax was forced out of TSR, Arneson's projects were dropped from the company before a planned fifth module could be published. Gygax and Arneson again went their separate ways. In 1986 Arneson wrote a new D&D module set in Blackmoor called "The Garbage Pits of Despair", which was published in two parts in Different Worlds magazine issues #42 and #43. Arneson and Dustin Clingman founded Zeitgeist Games to produce an updated d20 System version of

6848-602: The folio edition, TSR released the adventure module C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan , designed to familiarize players with the Olman race of the Amedio Jungle . Largely based on Aztec and Incan cultures, this adventure introduced the first published deities of the Greyhawk campaign: Mictlantecuhtli , god of death, darkness, murder and the underworld; Tezcatlipoca , god of sun, moon, night, scheming, betrayals and lightning; and Quetzalcoatl , god of air, birds and snakes. This area

6955-478: The following scenarios: During the course of the adventure, the city is nearly destroyed by an eruption of the volcano under it, which is triggered by magical forces. Shattered, but still inhabited, the city of Cauldron still exists at the end of the adventure. The reviewer from Pyramid noted that: "Traditionally, the roleplaying scenario comes in just a few parts, typically a trilogy or quartet. Rarely do they come longer, although The Shackled City Adventure Path

7062-531: The foundations of modern role-playing games on a 1:1 scale basis by focusing on non-combat objectives—a step away from wargaming towards the more individual play and varied challenges of later RPGs. Arneson was a participant in Wesely's wargame scenarios and, as Arneson continued to run his own scenarios, he eventually began to include ideas from sources such as The Lord of the Rings and Dark Shadows . Arneson took over

7169-419: The game published, but Guidon Games and Avalon Hill rejected it. Arneson could not afford to invest in the venture. Gygax felt that there was a need to publish the game as soon as possible, since similar projects were being planned elsewhere, so rules were hastily put together, and Arneson's own final draft was never used. Despite all this, Brian Blume eventually provided the funding required to publish

7276-473: The game published; the game eventually became known as Dungeons & Dragons . Gygax designed a set of dungeons underneath the ruins of Castle Greyhawk as a testing ground for new rules, character classes and spells. In those early days, there was no Flanaess; the world map of Oerth was developed by Gygax as circumstances dictated, the new cities and lands simply drawn over a map of North America. Gygax and Kuntz further developed this campaign setting, and by 1976,

7383-403: The game to Gygax as the representative for game publisher Guidon Games , and the pair co-developed a set of rules that became Dungeons & Dragons ( D&D ). Gygax and Donald Kaye subsequently founded Tactical Studies Rules in 1973, which published Dungeons & Dragons the next year. Arneson moved to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to work for TSR Hobbies in 1976, but left before the end of

7490-401: The game, as well as for RPGA 's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign from 2000 to 2008. The World of Greyhawk is located on a planet called Oerth. Oerth has an axial tilt of 30 degrees, which causes greater seasonal temperature variation than on Earth and is controlled by wizardly and divine magic that shifts weather patterns to be more favorable to the populace. Castle Greyhawk

7597-514: The game. They also created an in-game item named the "Mantle of the Worldshaper" that is a reward for finishing the Threnal quest chain that is narrated by Arneson himself. The Mantle's description reads: "A comforting and inspiring presence surrounds you as you hold this cloak. Arcane runes run along the edges of the fine cape, and masterfully drawn on the silken lining is an incredibly detailed map of

7704-540: The genre as much as he had hoped. Arneson stepped into the computer industry and founded 4D Interactive Systems, a computer company in Minnesota that has since dissolved. He also did some computer programming and worked on several games. He eventually found himself consulting with computer companies. Arneson wrote the 1989 adventure DNA / DOA , the first adventure published for the FASA fantasy/cyberpunk game Shadowrun , which

7811-414: The insane architect of the dungeons. Zagyg is a reverse homophone of Gygax , and it was Gygax's inside joke that the person who had designed the dungeon—himself—must be insane. Only three players ever made it to the bottom level and met Zagyg, all of them during solo adventures: Rob Kuntz (playing Robilar ), Gygax's son Ernie (playing Tenser ), and Rob's brother Terry (playing Terik). Their reward

7918-449: The lands within a radius of 50 miles had been mapped in depth, and the lands within a radius of approximately 500 miles were in outline form. Following yet more work, in 1978 Gygax agreed to publish his world and decided to redevelop Oerth from scratch. Once he had sketched out the entire planet to his satisfaction, one hemisphere of Oerth was dominated by a massive continent called Oerik. Gygax decided to concentrate his first efforts on

8025-422: The number of Greyhawk deities to an even fifty. For the next eight years, Greyhawk would be primarily defined by the information in this publication. Dave Arneson David Lance Arneson ( / ˈ ɑːr n ɪ s ən / ; October 1, 1947 – April 7, 2009) was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons , with Gary Gygax , in

8132-488: The number of political states to 60. Needing original placenames for all of the geographical and political places on his map, Gygax sometimes resorted to wordplay based on the names of friends and acquaintances. For instance, Perrenland was named after Jeff Perren , who co-wrote the rules for Chainmail with Gygax; Urnst was a homophone of Ernst (his son Ernie); and Sunndi was a near-homophone of Cindy, another of Gygax's children. From Gygax's prototype map, Darlene Pekul ,

8239-488: The original World of Greyhawk folio (1980), Gygax was asked to produce a map of the world and decided to create something new which still featured many of the locales from his original world of Oerth but with new geography. Gygax also connected Dave Arneson 's Blackmoor to his world by including a country by that name in Oerth. In his later novel Dance of Demons (1988), Gygax destroyed Greyhawk's Oerth and replaced it with

8346-543: The original Blackmoor in Minnesota. Arneson wrote for Computer Gaming World magazine in the 1980s and early 1990s. He wrote columns on his opinion of the role-playing game genre and reviews of computer games such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1985), Zork Zero (1988), Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep (1989), Uncharted Waters (1990), and Renegade Legion: Interceptor (1990). During

8453-433: The overking Ivid V came to the throne, the oppressed peoples rebelled. It was at this point, in the year 576 CY, that Gygax set the world of Greyhawk. As Gygax wrote in his World of Greyhawk folio: "The current state of affairs in the Flanaess is confused indeed. Humankind is fragmented into isolationist realms, indifferent nations, evil lands, and states striving for good". Gygax did not issue monthly or yearly updates to

8560-583: The packaging of D&D products from that point on, and Arneson would receive a 2.5% royalty on all AD&D products. This provided him with a comfortable six-figure annual income for the next twenty years. This did not end the lingering tensions between them. Arneson wrote a new version of the Blackmoor setting for publication by Judges Guild in The First Fantasy Campaign (1977). In 1979 Arneson and Richard L. Snider , an original Blackmoor player, co-authored Adventures in Fantasy ,

8667-556: The physical appearances of the main Greyhawk races. In the November 1981 issue, Gygax gave further details of racial characteristics and modes of dress. In the December 1982 issue, David Axler contributed a system for determining weather in the world of Greyhawk. Gygax later said he thought a system of fourteen charts for determining the weather was too cumbersome, and he personally did not use it in his home campaign. The folio edition had thirty two pages, and information about each region

8774-468: The players wanted Gygax to create and customize a specific deity so that cleric characters could receive their powers from someone less ambiguous than the gods . Gygax jokingly created two gods: Saint Cuthbert —who brought non-believers around to his point of view with whacks of his cudgel —and Pholtus , whose fanatical followers refused to believe that any other gods existed. Because both of these deities represented aspects of Good, Gygax eventually created

8881-435: The previous two days watching about five monster movies on channel 5's 'Creature Feature' weekend, reading several Conan books (I cannot recall which ones, but I always thought they were all pretty much the same), and stuffing myself with popcorn, doodling on a piece of graph paper. At the time, I was quite tired of my Nappy ( Napoleonic ) campaign with all its rigid rules and was rebelling against it. Arneson drew heavily upon

8988-503: The private armies that were commanded by some prominent Greyhawk characters from his original home game: Bigby , Mordenkainen , Robilar , Tenser and Erac's Cousin . Gygax also mentioned some of the planned Greyhawk publications he was overseeing: a large-scale map of the city of Greyhawk; some adventure modules set in Greyhawk; a supplementary map of lands outside the Flanaess; all fifty levels of Castle Greyhawk's dungeon; and miniatures army combat rules. None of these projects, other than

9095-469: The realm of adventure gaming". He was honored as a "famous game designer" by being featured on the king of hearts in Flying Buffalo's 2008 Famous Game Designers Playing Card Deck. Three days after his death, Wizards of the Coast temporarily replaced the front page of the Dungeons & Dragons section of their web site with a tribute to Arneson. Other tributes in the gaming world included Order of

9202-459: The remaining forty three regions in the March, July and September 1982 issues. In the August 1982 issue of Dragon , Gygax gave advice on how to adapt deities from the previously published Deities and Demigods for worship by non-human races in the Greyhawk world. A few months later, he published a five-part series of articles in the November 1982 through March 1983 issues of Dragon that outlined

9309-430: The rest of his company's stock and intellectual property after shutting down Adventure Games. While Gary Gygax was president of TSR in the mid-1980s, he and Arneson reconnected, and Arneson briefly relinked Blackmoor to D&D with the "DA" (Dave Arneson) series of modules set in Blackmoor (1986–1987). The four modules in the series, three of which were written by Arneson, detailed Arneson's campaign setting for

9416-622: The rules for Chainmail with Gygax, but for the new Greyhawk map he added many more such names of friends and acquaintances. For instance, Urnst was a homophone of Ernst (his son Ernie) and Sunndi was a near-homophone of Cindy, another of Gygax's children. Gygax gave only the most basic descriptions of each state; he expected that DMs would customize the setting in order to make it an integral part of their own individual campaigns. His map included arctic wastes, desert, temperate forests, tropical jungles, mountainous cordillera, seas and oceans, rivers, archipelagos and volcanoes. Gygax set out to create

9523-593: The state of affairs as presented in the folio since he saw 576 CY as a common starting point for every home campaign; because each would be moving forward at its own pace, there would be no practical way to issue updates that would be relevant to every Dungeon Master. Gygax was also aware that different players would be using his world for different reasons. When he was the Dungeon Master of his home campaign, he found that his players were more interested in dungeon-delving than politics, but when he switched roles and became

9630-579: The time the Greyhawk home campaign drew to a close in 1985, the castle dungeons encompassed more than fifty levels. While many players participating in the Gygax and Kuntz home campaign were occasional players, sometimes not even naming their characters, others played far more frequently, and several of their characters became well known to the general gaming world before publication of the Greyhawk campaign setting. Some of these characters became known when Gygax mentioned them in his various columns, interviews, and publications. In other cases, when Gygax created

9737-452: The title of its ruler, the racial makeup of its people, its resources and major cities, and its allies and enemies. For the same reason that he had created a variety of geographical, political and racial settings, he also strove to create a world with some good, some evil, and some undecided areas. He felt that some players would be happiest playing in a mainly good country and fighting the evil that arose to threaten it; others might want to be

9844-416: The world of Greyhawk: In addition, Lawrence Schick set his 1979 TSR adventure S2 White Plume Mountain in Greyhawk. Despite fan curiosity, the original Castle Greyhawk was never officially published outside of Gygax's home campaign. In 1975, Gygax and Kuntz published a booklet called Supplement I: Greyhawk , an expansion of the rules for Dungeons & Dragons based on their play experiences in

9951-523: The year. In 1979 Arneson filed suit to retain credits and royalties on the game. He continued to work as an independent game designer, including work submitted to TSR in the 1980s, and continued to play games for his entire life. Arneson also did some work in computer programming, and he taught computer game design and game rules design at Full Sail University from the 1990s until shortly before his death in 2009. Arneson's role-playing game design work grew from his interest in wargames . His parents bought him

10058-575: Was a character that had been created by Gygax's childhood friend Don Kaye before Kaye's untimely death in 1975. The fourth, a hero-deity named Kelanen , was developed to illustrate the "principle of advancement of power". Of the ten adventures set in Greyhawk published by TSR before the folio edition, all but one had been written by Gygax. However, the new availability of information about Gygax's campaign world and TSR's desire to make it central to Dungeons & Dragons encouraged many new writers to set their adventures in Greyhawk. This, combined with

10165-565: Was condensed into a short paragraph or two. Gygax realized that some players needed more in-depth information about the motivations and aspirations of each region, and the history of interactions with surrounding regions. With this in mind, Gygax decided to publish a much longer description of each region in Dragon . The first two articles, covering seventeen regions, appeared in the December 1981 and January 1982 issues. Due to his involvement in many other TSR projects, Gygax handed responsibility for completion of this project to Rob Kuntz, who covered

10272-630: Was even a tank running around for a while. The emphasis is on the story and the roleplaying." Details of Blackmoor and the original campaign, established on the map of the Castle & Crusade Society 's "Great Kingdom", were first brought to print briefly in issue #13 of the Domesday Book , the newsletter of the Castle & Crusade Society in July 1972, and later in much-expanded form as The First Fantasy Campaign , published by Judges Guild in 1977. In November 1972, Dave Arneson and Dave Megarry traveled to Lake Geneva to meet with Gary Gygax, to provide

10379-503: Was fleshed out over time and continues to be played to the present day. Many of the fantasy medieval foundations of D&D , as well as the concept of adventuring in "dungeons" originated with Blackmoor , which also incorporated time travel and science fiction elements. These are visible much later in the DA module series published by TSR (particularly City of the Gods ), but were also present from

10486-564: Was further explored in The Scarlet Brotherhood (1999), which expanded the Olman pantheon, and newly introduced the Touv people, including their nine gods. Also included in the March 1983 issue of Dragon was an article detailing four unique Greyhawk characters. The first two quasi-deities — Heward and Keoghtom—had been created by Gygax as non-player characters (NPCs). The third, Murlynd ,

10593-401: Was further piqued by the ten Dungeons & Dragons modules set in Greyhawk that were published between 1976 and 1979. Several of Gygax's regular columns in Dragon magazine also mentioned details of his home campaign and characters that inhabited his world. Gygax was surprised when he found out that players wanted to use Greyhawk as their campaign world. Rather than using his own version of

10700-501: Was much larger than the first and addressed itself to making the World of Greyhawk setting a more detailed and vibrant place". This edition quadrupled the number of pages from the original edition to 128, adding significantly greater detail. One major addition was a pantheon of deities: in addition to the nineteen deities outlined by Gygax in his Dragon article, another thirty-one new deities were added, though only three received full write-ups of their abilities and worshipers. This brought

10807-418: Was organized religion. Since his campaign was largely built around the needs of lower-level characters, he did not think specific deities were necessary, since direct interaction between a god and a low-level character was very unlikely. Some of his players took matters into their own hands, calling upon Norse or Greek gods such as Odin or Zeus , or even Conan's Crom in times of dire need. However, some of

10914-464: Was published in the August 1974 issue of Chicago small press magazine El Conquistador . In the first issue of The Dragon published in June 1976, Gygax prefaced Chapter 1 of his serialized novella The Gnome Cache with a note that the story's setting, Oerth , was very similar to Earth in terms of geography. One facet of culture that Gygax did not address during the first few years of his home campaign

11021-564: Was released the same year. Living in California in the late 1980s, Arneson had a chance to work with special education children. Upon returning to Minnesota, he pursued teaching and began speaking at schools about educational uses of role-playing and using multi-sided dice to teach math. In the 1990s, he began working at Full Sail , a private university that teaches multimedia subjects, and continued there as an instructor of computer game design until 2008. At Full Sail University he taught

11128-568: Was still the primary focus) and it was at this event that he met Gary Gygax , who had founded the Castle & Crusade Society within the International Federation of Wargamers in the 1960s at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin . Arneson and Gygax also shared an interest in sailing ship games and they co-authored the Don't Give Up the Ship naval battle rules, serialized from June 1971 and later published as

11235-504: Was the most famous dungeon in Oerth, the home campaign world of Gary Gygax. Players in the earliest days of this campaign mostly stayed within Castle Greyhawk's dungeons, but Gygax envisioned the rest of his world as a sort of parallel Earth, and the original Oerth (pronounced 'Oith', as with a Brooklyn accent) looked much like the real-world Earth but filled with imaginary cities and countries. Several years later, when TSR produced

11342-498: Was to be instantly transported to the far side of the world, where they each faced a long solo trek back to the city of Greyhawk. Terik and Tenser managed to catch up to Robilar along the way, and the three journeyed back to Greyhawk together. By this time, a dozen players crowded Gygax's basement every night, with over 20 at times on weekends and the effort needed to plan their adventures took up much of Gygax's spare time. He had been very impressed with Rob Kuntz's imaginative play as

11449-525: Was working with videographer John Kentner on Dragons in the Basement (unreleased), a video documentary on the early history of role-playing games. Arneson describes the documentary: "Basically it is a series of interviews with original players ('How did D&D affect your life?') and original RPG designers like Marc Miller ( Traveller ) and M.A.R. Barker ( Empire of the Petal Throne )." He also made

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