If you walk into a bookstore today, you’ll see massive, gold-foiled hardcovers that look more like religious texts than games. Dungeons & Dragons is everywhere. It’s in Stranger Things, it’s on the big screen with Chris Pine, and it’s fueling a billion-dollar industry of "actual play" streamers. But if you rewind to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in the early 1970s, it wasn't a cultural juggernaut. It was basically a mess of loose-leaf paper, scrawled notes, and two guys who couldn't stop arguing about how to simulate a medieval dungeon crawl.
So, who created Dungeons & Dragons?
Most people will give you a quick answer: Gary Gygax. He’s the face on the metaphorical Mount Rushmore of geekdom. But that’s only half the story. Maybe even less than half, depending on which historian you ask. The game was actually the brainchild of two very different men—Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson—and their partnership was as fruitful as it was volatile.
The Wargaming Roots of a Revolution
Before there were beholders or magic missiles, there were lead soldiers. Gary Gygax was a tactical mastermind obsessed with historical realism. He was a founding member of the International Federation of Wargaming and spent his nights in a basement in Lake Geneva, pushing tiny miniatures across sand tables.
He co-wrote a set of rules called Chainmail in 1971. This was a "man-to-man" combat system for medieval warfare. It was crunchy. It was dense. It had a small supplement at the back for "fantasy" creatures like wizards and dragons, mostly because Gygax realized his players wanted to recreate The Lord of the Rings. But even with Chainmail, you were still controlling groups of units. You weren't a person; you were a general.
Then came Dave Arneson.
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Arneson was up in the Twin Cities, running a group of players through something he called "Blackmoor." While Gygax was focused on the rules of engagement, Arneson was focused on the experience. He did something radical: he told his players they each controlled just one character. Instead of a battlefield, they were exploring a castle. Instead of winning a war, they were trying to survive a basement filled with monsters. Arneson didn't have a 300-page rulebook. He had a bunch of ideas and a willingness to let players try anything.
When Arneson drove down to Lake Geneva to show Gygax what he’d been doing, the world changed. Gygax saw the potential immediately. He took Arneson's loose "roleplaying" concepts and started hammering them into a structured system.
The Clash of Two Very Different Minds
You have to understand how different these two were. Gygax was a disciplined writer and a savvy businessman. He wanted things codified. Arneson was a dreamer, an improviser who famously kept his notes on napkins and scraps of paper. This friction is exactly why D&D worked. Without Arneson’s "Blackmoor," the game would have just been another dry wargame. Without Gygax’s "Greyhawk" and his obsessive need to write everything down, the game would have likely vanished into the ether of hobbyist history.
They formed a company called Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) with a third partner, Don Kaye. In 1974, they released the first "brown box" set of Dungeons & Dragons. It cost $10. It looked amateurish. The art was, honestly, pretty bad. But it sold out almost instantly.
It’s worth noting that a lot of people think Gygax was the "boss" and Arneson was the "assistant." That’s not really true. In the early days, they were co-creators. But as TSR grew into a real company, the corporate structure started to favor Gygax’s presence. He was there, in the office, everyday. Arneson was still in Minnesota, mailing in ideas that Gygax often found too disorganized to use.
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The Legal Fallout and the "Created By" Credit
By the late 70s, the relationship had soured. Hard.
Arneson left TSR in 1976. By 1979, he was suing the company. Why? Because TSR started releasing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D). Gygax argued that AD&D was a completely different game from the original D&D and therefore he didn't owe Arneson royalties on it.
It was a messy, bitter period. Eventually, they settled out of court. This is why, for decades, every D&D book has carried the credit: "Based on the original game created by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson." Arneson won the right to be recognized as a co-creator, but the friendship was essentially dead. Gygax became the public face of the hobby, appearing on talk shows and defending the game against the "Satanic Panic" of the 80s. Arneson largely faded into the background, teaching game design at Full Sail University.
More Than Just Two Names
While Gygax and Arneson are the titans, "who created Dungeons & Dragons" actually involves a wider circle of people who usually get ignored in the headlines.
- Don Kaye: He was Gygax’s childhood friend and the co-founder of TSR. He provided the initial funding. He died tragically young in 1975, just as the game was taking off. Had he lived, the corporate history of D&D might have been much less litigious.
- Dave Wesely: He was the guy who ran the "Braunstein" games that inspired Arneson. In these games, players took on individual roles in a Napoleonic-era town. Arneson took Wesely's idea and moved it to a fantasy setting. Without Wesely, the concept of "roleplaying" might not have clicked for Arneson.
- Mornard and Kuntz: Rob Kuntz and Mike Mornard were the first playtesters. They broke the game, found the loopholes, and helped Gygax refine the combat. They were the ones dying in the pits of the original Castle Greyhawk so that we wouldn't have to.
Honestly, D&D wasn't "invented" in a vacuum. It was a messy, collaborative evolution of mid-century wargaming. It was a bunch of guys in basements in the Midwest who were bored with just moving tanks and soldiers around. They wanted to be heroes.
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Why This History Matters Today
Today, D&D is owned by Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro). The game has gone through five major editions and countless revisions. But the DNA is still there. When you roll a d20 to see if you hit an Orc, you’re using a mechanic Gygax refined. When you stay in character and talk to a tavern keeper, you’re doing what Arneson pioneered in Blackmoor.
We often want a single "inventor" for things. We want a Steve Jobs or a Thomas Edison. But gaming history is rarely that clean. Gygax gave the game its spine; Arneson gave it its soul.
If you’re a fan of the game, it’s important to recognize that the tension between "rules" (Gygax) and "story" (Arneson) is still the heart of every session. Every time a Dungeon Master has to decide whether to follow the book or "rule of cool" it, they are reenacting the debate that happened between Lake Geneva and St. Paul fifty years ago.
How to Explore the History Yourself
If you want to go deeper into the origins, you shouldn't just take my word for it. The history of tabletop gaming is a burgeoning field of academic study.
- Read "Playing at the World" by Jon Peterson. This is the definitive, 700-page "bible" of how D&D came to be. It is incredibly dense but meticulously researched. Peterson uses tax records, old newsletters, and primary sources to debunk many of the myths Gygax later told about himself.
- Check out the "Secrets of Blackmoor" documentary. This film gives Arneson and the Twin Cities gamers their due credit. It shows the messy, improvisational side of the game’s birth.
- Find a PDF of the original 1974 rules. If you can handle the archaic layout, try to read it. You’ll see just how much of the game was actually borrowed from other hobbies and how much was truly new.
- Visit the Gygax Memorial in Lake Geneva. It’s a small, humble tribute in a park, a reminder of the hobby's small-town roots.
Understanding who created Dungeons & Dragons isn't just about names on a cover. It’s about realizing that the most influential game of the 20th century started with a few friends, some dice, and a lot of imagination. It wasn't a corporate product. It was a grassroots movement.
The next time you sit down at the table, remember that you’re participating in a tradition that survived lawsuits, bankruptcy, and social stigma. Gygax and Arneson may have disagreed on the details, but they both believed in one thing: the power of sitting around a table and telling a story together. That’s a legacy worth rolling for.