The late Dave Arneson (left) at a convention with former REHupan (and currently popular writer) Mike Stackpole.

The death of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson last week brings to a close another chapter in the early history of role-playing games. What perhaps isn’t well known is the degree to which Arneson imbued D&D with a distinctly Howardian scarlet glow, an episodic sense of adventure that immediately reminds one of those original Weird Tales-era Conan stories. Here is Indy Cavalier, writing about Arneson in The Cimmerian V4n5 for October 2008:

Dave Arneson — D&D’s other creator, who has habitually avoided the spotlight shining on Gygax — also credits Howard’s Conan as an influence. Arneson was a tabletop miniatures wargamer who expanded on Gygax’s Chainmail miniatures rules, giving personalities and statistics to the small lead soldiers who delved into a keep to steal supplies. Arneson says his part in creating a breakthrough in the wargaming/fantasy aspects of role-playing (and the mapped-out dungeon) happened thusly: “I had spent the previous day watching about five monster movies on Creature Feature weekend, reading a Conan book (I cannot recall which one but I always thought they were much the same), and stuffing myself with popcorn, doodling on a piece of graph paper.” At Gen Con 1995, I asked Mr. Arneson directly about Howard’s influence on the creation of Dungeons & Dragons. He said he had read the first six books in the Conan series and felt they were all pretty much the same. But he was attracted to the “looting, pillaging and killing” aspect of the Conan character, and “the hero fighting critters.”

“The hero fighting critters.” That’s the kind of playfulness that lies at the heart of the success of D&D, and of RPGs in general, over the last forty years. Sometimes I feel that modern fantasy fiction has lost much of that, concerned as it is with portraying realistic civilizations awash in political intrigue and bitter anti-heroes at the expense of both heroes and critters. In a way, fantasy is currently in its dystopian phase, where every sub-created world reeks of Blade Runner-esque decay and dissolution. I think the time is ripe for a recalibration towards a less bleak and more traditionally robust civilizational worldview.

From such sources, as well as just about any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which to grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!

–Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide, Appendix N

A little more than a year has passed since we lost Gary Gygax, creator of the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy roleplaying game and an imaginative giant, “one of the seminal influences in fantasy in the twentieth century,” according to Leo Grin, publisher of The Cimmerian.

Gygax’s death was and is still keenly felt for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he created a game of unbridled imagination that is still going strong more than three decades after its inception, surviving the rise of computer “roleplaying” games, misguided attacks by the media, and even misplaced religious fervor. D&D continues to be played by youths as well as adults who never lost their love for the game nor suffered the unfortunate calcification of their imagination.

But Gygax’s other legacy is his role as a champion of fantasy fiction. He helped to introduce a generation of gamers to the pleasures of fantasy fiction (I count myself in this group ). Even those who have since moved on from D&D paused to honor and remember Lake Geneva’s most famous resident for fostering in them a lifelong love of reading following his death on March 4, 2008.

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I’ve been watching this development quite closely for a while, now, as it kinda closes a loop for my own personal development. Since I came to REH by way of Conan, by way of gaming, it’s somehow appropriate that I comment on the game, by way of Conan, by way of REH. This is what Kurt Vonnegut uncharitably called “[fill in the blank] disappearing up its own asshole.” It’s a good term, though. I’m going through the looking glass. That’s right, I’m going to join the 100,000 some odd players, gamers, hard-core sword freaks, and thirteen year olds who skirted around the Mature Content warning to play the Age of Conan MMORPG game as a Robert E. Howard fan. I’ve done my pre-order for the Deluxe edition, with extra bells and whistles, as well as extra in-game goodies for folks who want to shell out the extra cash. They are promising me a war rhino. I have no idea what the thinking is behind that. Where the hell am I supposed to put it? In my bag of holding? Come on.

I’m also attempting to wrangle a new, souped-up computer (I needed one, anyway) to allow me to safely play the game with no lag time (crucial in big battles). In the interest of offering up a somewhat balanced review of my playing experience, I’ll be throwing up a daily report here whenever I play the game: my initial impressions, experiences, and even player interactions. I have no idea whether or not it will help you decide to try the game, but I will try to be pithy, in any case.

I’m not a stranger to online gaming; I just don’t like it all that much. Oh, the games themselves are fine. But I’ve found that, with only a handful of exceptions, the majority of the online gaming community are a passel of heathens and savages, ill-mannered little troglodytes that kvetch and bellyache about everything that can actually hold a teenager’s interest and opinion in the game. Power gamers, the lot of them. They all want an axe that does eleventy-hundred points of damage that costs no endurance to swing and kills everything they want it to kill. And they want it at first level. Any changes made to the game brings them sobbing to the forums to complain about how everything is now ruined. And the rest of them, who were complaining about the game being unbalanced, start complaining that it’s now unbalanced in the other direction. They are impossible to make happy.

And yet, there’s a massive culture in this country that mashes these people together on servers and have them interact with one another. This is what has, up until now, kept me from playing fantasy games online. That and the generic-ness of it all. Did you ever play Diablo? Sheesh. Talk about blandsville.

Well, that’s going to change (I hope), since these guys mention in every press release that this is based on Conan’s world as created by Robert E. Howard. His name comes up a lot. And, if they are to be believed, they are cleaving closely to the stories and descriptions from Our Favorite Writer. Will the adventures match the vision? Am I, by creating a character in this virtual world, becoming a pasticher? Will I ever find anyone online who doesn’t type in LeetSpeek to the exclusion of all else? Only time will tell.

Once everything gets up and running, if there are any regular Cimmerian readers who would like to play alongside what I’m doing, I’ll post my handle and server along with everything else. Heathens and savages need not apply.