There are now two conventions for Dave Arneson in Minnesota.
We has one that has returned since Covid had slowed things down, happening in October in conjunction with his birthday and birth of TSR.
And one in the Spring not far off from when Dave passed away. (Avoiding GaryCON when allowed)
Dave Arneson started with the MMSA early on in its creation shortly after 1963, David Wesely introduced him to the group while still in grade school.
During their tenure in the group David Wesely introduced the concept of the Game Master/Referee to combat the Game Lawyers (before then there was generally NO one running the game) in 1965, then games went from taking years to being start to finish overnight. This created more creativity and social interaction.
Wesely introduced Role-playing a year or two later, totally dropping all WARGAMING and combat. Leave it to Dave Arneson to force David Wesely to come up with combat on the spot due to a Dual.
When Wesely headed off to serve full time deployment Dave Arneson and Megarry took the ideas and ran with it with permission from Wesely.
See the timetable for detail.
But it is clear Dave Arneson started merging multiple ideas into one. And created original content, rules, and method that others never thought of.
- TSR was founded on October 1st 1973, on Dave Arneson's birthday!
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