Tom Van Winkle's Return to Gaming

I have come across a number of discussions among those who seek to discover and recapture an original, "natural," unbounded, or otherwise pristine form of role-playing game. Some of them find the roots of this mode of play in the person of Dave Arneson, one of the two original authors of Dungeons & Dragons . These fascinating discussions have two things at stake. One is the quest to find a style of play that may add more to your current game, a never-ending quest. The other is the implicit, and occasionally explicit, notion that original is better, purer, more pristine gaming as intended , as originally conceived. Intended by whom? By the founders, by the discoverers of this new form of game, that's who. It's Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Or else it's either Gygax or Arneson. Take your pick. Generally, the pervasive notion seems to be that Arneson was a referee who made rulings on the spot, that he favored a "free-wheeling" kind of game. Gygax, by c...