How Did Dave Arneson World Build?

[True Black Raven]

For those of you who have read the First Fantasy Campaign and Dave Arneson's True Genius by Robert J Kuntz, what is your take away in regard to Dave Arneson's World Building?




In all threads where Rob's book (Dave Arneson's True Genius) is quoted please note Copyright Robert J Kuntz 2014-2017

[hengest]

I have only read DATG, but I will quote myself from another thread.  This interview suggests there was a degree of very practical necessity, at least at first: dungeons were generated because the only way to go was down, water kept players from wandering too far.  I think I heard him say the same elsewhere about solid rock.  The quote below is from this thread.

Aug 3, 2021 22:25:27 GMT -5 hengest said:

(I'm going to try starting a DA spinoff series just like we have for the Rob Kuntz interview here.)

Kobold Press interview published in 2009 here.

Quote for spinning (bold type mine):

Where did you start with Blackmoor? 

Arneson: See, I had this neat German plastic kit and I just imagined what sort of fantasy setting it would make. Oddly enough, even though it was actually a German kit, years later I learned that it was actually a model of a castle in Sicily. But when I started, I was thinking German.

After that it just grew and shortly it was too small for the scale I wanted.

But it was a neat kit and I didn’t want to abandon it, so the only way to go was down [into the dungeons]. All this happened a few weeks before the first adventurers caught sight of it.
We were doing a historical campaign in Holland so my map ended up with a lot of water. All that water also helped keep the players from wandering everywhere. (Not that that lasted very long.)
Maps. I love maps. I love to write the stories. The other paperwork is essential, but a drag. I usually start with the maps and then do the story.

A couple thoughts here:

I have had a lot of experiences like this, where necessity or some kind of extreme limitation turns out to open an avenue for creativity.  It even happened recently here when mao just didn't like one of my items so I tried to expand it in the only direction that seemed possible, and it turned out to be pretty productive, generating not only a backstory for the item but also, with The Perilous Dreamer 's help, a set of questions for further exploration.

(From another angle, though, the idea of the dungeon (mysterious, underground) seems so perfect to go with improvisation, exploration, learning...like a perfect match, as if it was just waiting for Arneson to discover it. Or to gamify it: of course, dungeons had been used to great effect before in Tolkien's Moria.)

Thoughts about invention through necessity?  

Also, feel free to mine the interview for other quotes and start another thread (I suppose if we go crazy with DA spinoffs, it could have its own sub someday).  

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Please put in the link, what thread are you quoting from?

[hengest]

Sept 30, 2021 19:47:55 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Please put in the link, what thread are you quoting from?

This one, also fixed above.