David R. Megarry | |
|---|---|
 Megarry holding his original Dungeon! play-test game. | |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Game designer |
David R. Megarry is a game designer most notable for the board game Dungeon! .
David Megarry was a member of the Midwest Military Simulation Association (MMSA), along with Dave Arneson, David Wesely, Ken Fletcher, John and Richard Snider and others. [1] Megarry was also a member the original Twin Cities Blackmoor group run by Dave Arneson. [2] : 8
Megarry has brought to light Blackmoor gaming materials used in the early days of the game. These include regional maps, dungeon maps, and character matrices. The Blackmoor character matrices start in 1971, and cover approximately 20 characters played over time. The various attributes include Brains, Leadership, Courage, Health, Woodcraft, Horsemanship, Sailing, etc. They also include some history about each character, including the character's death. Megarry has described the character sheets as a "moving history." [3]
The first column, McDuck, was the only entry when I started this sheet. As characters died, I would create a new one. These sheets represent 2+ years of gaming.
In October of 1972 David Megarry designed a board game (which would ultimately be called Dungeon! ) with the desire to capture his experience as a player in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor dungeon without the need of a game referee. Megarry hoped to relieve pressure on Arneson who complained of being overwhelmed as the only game master in the popular campaign. Megarry took the underworld component of Blackmoor and turned it into a dungeon exploration board game with randomly-selected monsters and treasure. [4]
The earliest prototype dungeon board was preserved by Megarry, but the instructions are missing. The earliest complete version of this game was called The Dungeons of Pasha Cada.The Dungeons of Pasha Cada was preserved by a friend who received a hand-made copy in 1973. This version of the game includes 30 monsters, and the player characters are the standard Hero, Superhero, Wizard, and Elf. [5]
Historians have linked the Dungeon! combat results table to Table T, in Charles Totten's 1880 book on military wargaming, Strategos , which was widely read and used by MMSA members. [6] [7] Table T was commonly implemented in Twin Cities Strategos-based games such as Strategos N. [8]
After developing the game, Megarry contacted Parker Brothers to see if they had interest in the game, but received a rejection letter. [9] Also in 1972, Gary Gygax expressed an interest in Blackmoor and the dungeon board game, and invited Arneson and Megarry to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to demonstrate their games.
Dave Arneson and Dave Megarry traveled to Lake Geneva to meet with Gary Gygax, to provide a demonstration of their games. While meeting at Gygax's house, Dave Arneson ran the Lake Geneva gamers through their first session of Blackmoor. Rob Kuntz describes Dave Arneson as the referee, and the Lake Geneva players as being Gary Gygax, Ernie Gygax, Terry Kuntz, and himself. Kuntz describes Dave Megarry as the de facto leader of the group, as he understood the Blackmoor game and campaign world. [10]
Gary, myself and a few other local wargamers were the first "lucky" fellows from Lake Geneva to experience the rigors of Blackmoor. This idea caught on deeply with Gary after an exciting adventure in which our party of heroes fought a troll, were fireballed by a magic-user, then fled to the outdoors (being chased by the Magic-user and his minions), fought four (gulp!) Balrogs, followed a map to sixteen ogres and destroyed them with a wish from a sword we had procured from the hapless troll earlier. [11]
After Megarry showed his board game to Gygax, they continued to correspond about it. In 1973 they presented The Dungeons of Pasha Cada to various manufacturers, including Don Lowry of Guidon Games. Lowry was concerned that the dungeon maps would be too expensive to print. [12] The game would eventually be published by TSR Hobbies as Dungeon! in 1975. [2] : 8
Dave Megarry was hired by TSR in 1975, the same year they published his Dungeon! board game. [2] : 8
Megarry called Bill Owen of Judges Guild to negotiate a formal license from September 4 – November 22, 1976; this agreement required Judges Guild to pay a royalty to TSR for the right to place text on the cover of most products saying "Approved for use with Dungeons & Dragons". [13]
Arneson left TSR in 1976 over creative differences, and Megarry left around the same time. [2] : 9
Knucklebones magazine identified Megarry's Dungeon! as the first game in the genre of adventure board games. [14]
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American game designer and author best known for co-creating the pioneering tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) with Dave Arneson.
Greyhawk, also known as the World of Greyhawk, is a fictional world designed as a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. Although not the first campaign world developed for Dungeons & Dragons—Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign predated it by about a year—the world of Greyhawk closely identified with early development of the game beginning in 1972, and after being published it remained associated with Dungeons & Dragons publications until 2008. The world itself started as a simple dungeon under a castle designed by Gary Gygax for the amusement of his children and friends, but it was rapidly expanded to include not only a complex multi-layered dungeon environment, but also the nearby city of Greyhawk, and eventually an entire world. In addition to the campaign world, which was published in several editions over twenty years, Greyhawk was also used as the setting for many adventures published in support of the game, as well as for RPGA's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign from 2000–2008.
David Lance Arneson was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the role-playing game (RPG) genre, pioneering devices now considered to be archetypical, such as cooperative play to develop a storyline instead of individual competitive play to "win" and adventuring in dungeon, town, and wilderness settings as presented by a neutral judge who doubles as the voice and consciousness of all characters aside from the player characters.
Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. It originated in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, as an early testing ground for what would become D&D.
In the World of Greyhawk campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, Tenser is an archmage who strives to rid the Flanaess of evil. Tenser is a former member of both the Citadel of Eight and the Circle of Eight.
The Free City of Greyhawk, also known as Greyhawk City and the "Gem of the Flanaess," is a fictional city-state in the World of Greyhawk campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. Since the setting was originally published in a folio and then again in a boxed set that were both titled World of Greyhawk, the word "Greyhawk" is often used to describe the entire campaign world setting, although the proper name for that part of the world is the Flanaess. Sometimes the lands controlled by the Free City are also referred to as Greyhawk, though the proper term for the region is the Domain of Greyhawk.
David Wesely is a wargamer, board game designer, and video game developer. Wesely's developments, inspired by Kriegsspiel wargames, were important and influential in the early history of role-playing games.
The Midwest Military Simulation Association (MMSA) is a group of wargamers and military figurine collectors active during the late 1960s and 1970s.
The Castle & Crusade Society was a chapter of the International Federation of Wargaming dedicated to medieval miniature wargaming.
Robert J. Kuntz is a game designer and author of role-playing game publications. He is best known for his contributions to various Dungeons & Dragons-related materials.
An adventure board game is a board game in which a player plays as a unique individual character that improves through gameplay. This improvement is commonly reflected in terms of increasing character attributes, but also in receiving new abilities or equipment.
Donald R. Kaye was the co-founder of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), the game publishing company best known for their Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game. He and TSR co-founder Gary Gygax had been friends since childhood, sharing an interest in miniature war games. In 1972, Kaye created Murlynd, one of the first D&D characters, and play-tested him in Gygax's Castle Greyhawk campaign. Kaye and Gygax were convinced that D&D and similar games were an excellent business opportunity, and together they founded Tactical Studies Rules in 1973. However, only two years later, just as sales of D&D started to rise, Kaye unexpectedly died of a heart attack at age 36.
The original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson was published by TSR, Inc. in 1974. It included the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Its product designation was TSR 2002.
Greyhawk is a supplementary rulebook written by Gary Gygax and Robert J. Kuntz for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. It has been called "the first and most important supplement" to the original D&D rules. Although the name of the book was taken from the home campaign supervised by Gygax and Kuntz based on Gygax's imagined Castle Greyhawk and the lands surrounding it, Greyhawk did not give any details of the castle or the campaign world; instead, it explained the rules that Gygax and Kuntz used in their home campaign, and introduced a number of character classes, spells, concepts and monsters used in all subsequent editions of D&D.
Blackmoor is a supplementary rulebook of the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game written by Dave Arneson.
Braunstein is an experimental game and game genre introduced by David Wesely, a member of the Midwest Military Simulation Association, in the late 1960s, and originally played in the Twin Cities. Braunstein was important and influential in the early history of role-playing games.
Lankhmar is a fantasy board wargame published by TSR in 1976 that is based on both the Swords and Sorcery short stories of Fritz Leiber set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, and on a board game designed by Lieber and Harry Otto Fischer while they were in college.
Strategos is a military wargame developed by Charles A. L. Totten for the United States Army, and published in 1880.
The First Fantasy Campaign is a supplement for fantasy role-playing games written by Dave Arneson and published by Judges Guild in 1977.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, gnomes are one of the core races available for play as player characters. Some speculate that they are closely related to dwarves; however, gnomes are smaller and more tolerant of other races, nature, and magic. Depending on the setting and subrace, they are often skilled with illusion magic or engineering. Gnomes are small humanoids, standing 3–3.5 feet (91–107 cm) tall.