What follows is a
timeline constructed from 3 interviews given by Major David Wesely. To be clear, the following is only a series
of notes from only these interviews. I
mean that it is not an attempt to correlate every time stamp ever provided by
Major Wesely. I have not been in any way
thorough in tracking down all of Weselys interviews and statements, nor have I
even included every single instance of dating information in the interviews
listed here. Rather, I have noted what
seemed to me to be the key statements with dating information found in these
particular interviews, and listed the information in chronological order to
make a basic timeline according to what Major Wesely presents. In other words, this is a practical rather
than exhaustive examination. There are,
of course, minefields of potential error when attempting to cross list
information from different interviews. Nevertheless
it is quite interesting to organize the Major's statements this way, and I did
observe that in these three instances at least, the Major was consistent with
the dates he remembers.
However and again,
these are notes based on one persons recollection. Major Wesely's recollection may be perfectly
accurate, partially accurate, or not at all accurate. With that said, I felt the information was
interesting enough and significant enough to warrant sharing and taking seriously. Lastly, ellipses ... indicate places where I
skipped over digressionary or redundant verbiage for the sake of clarity.
1958 "I got into wargaming in 1958... Avalon Hill
Gettysburgh"
TFC59, 2:30
1964 "Our Wargaming group, which was very small in the 1964
timefame, by '65 this happened; we had maybe 5 of us playing wargames"
BC16, 5:50
April 1965* "...I was contacted by... this 55 year old guy who
was trying to organize a group, and so 7 of us,... got together at his house...
from April of '65 to '68"
TFC59, 12:50
1965* Dan Nicholson contacts Wesley from Strategos library card.
BC16, 9:00
1967 "Arneson and I traded off... We began to understand that
there were a lot of psychological satisfactions to being the referee, putting
together this clever scenario... We are doing that up through, well we're doing
that a lot, when I go off to graduate school in 1967. I graduated from Hamlin University, Bachelors
degree, Spring '67, and Fall of '67 I go off to graduate school."
BC16, TC36:00
1967/8 (first Braunstein) "...By that point I had started in
graduate school and I was just home on holidays... I went back to college and I
had months before the next holiday and I thought about it and came back and had
planned it all up... and it was a dud." (second Braunstein)
TFC59, 50:50
Fall 1968 "So I came
back on Christmas of '68; came back home with months of thinking about this,
and designed this game that's going to be run in a little town in Germany
called Braunstein."
BC16, TC46:46
Spring Semester 1969 "The next time I came home, which would have been,
you know, spring break, they came back and they said "When you gonna do
another Braunstein?" So the next
time I put together a new revised version of Braunstien... I did it with only 4 people... so I wouldn't
have too many people to run, and it was worthless.... So I tinkered with it and
at the next weekend I tried it again - that would be Braunstein 3 - and it was
still a disaster. Absolutely no fun for
anybody, so I was just glad nobody else had seen that beyond the people I had just
tried it on, and (I) went back to college."
BC16, TC54:05
Summer 1969 (June+) "And all the time I'm down in Kansas, from
then until spring - June when I get to come back to Minnesota, I'm saying, why
did it work the first time and not work the second time?... and so I came back and set up a new scenario
and this one was in Latin America."
BC16, TC55:05
Summer 1969 "And then, over the course of the summer of '69,
Arneson and I, well first I and then Arneson, who had been after me to do it
again, he would start refereeing the thing so I would get to play
sometimes. And we did that all the way
through, and in the fall I went back to college. And I came back on the usual vacations and we
played Braunstein games then."
BC16, TC56:50
Spring 1969 - Oct 1970
(running Braunsteins with Arneson) "He and I were taking turns for
about a year and a half"
MC369, TC 12:00
Fall 1969+
"Fall of '69, went
through '69, '70 and on up into the summer of 1970, and in October of '70...
It's time for me to go off to the Army.
And Arneson said to me, "Is it okay if I keep running these games
if you're not here?" And I said
"Dave, it's set up in your father's basement. Of course you can run it."... I came back to the gaming community and I
find people are playing this Blackmoor thing that Arneson has created. Which, as he says in his Corner of the
Tabletop magazine "a fantasy Braunstein set in the Black Moors."
BC16, TC57:16
Fall 1970+ (following after Weseley leaves for service in October)
"They continued to do Braunstien games, then Duane Jenkins introduced
BrownStone, which is an Old West setting.." MC369, TC 13:00
1971 (early, following Xmass 1970) "After I
went off to the Army, Arnesons' running the Braunstien games... I'd been, you know, home on leave at Christmas
once during that time. Then in the
spring of '71 I'm still off in the army again, and Arneson and Jenkins had been
doing all these games together. Jenkins
was one of the brighter guys... into joking alot... He came up with a variant which was set in
the old west."
BC16, TC104:45
1971
"(Jenkins) also
made a very important step as well, in that, whereas I would run a Braunstien
game and its' results were that evening, and the next time I ran that scenario
you'd all be starting over again... Last time you were a tavern owner and this
time you're the banker... He came up
with the very good idea of having what you did last week carry over into when
you played again the next time... So... El
Pauncho was just some stray Mexican who had a few buddies who rode into town
last time, but now there's wanted posters for him plastered all over town. And that was good. The other thing that he did was the notion
that when Dave Arneson played El Pauncho in the last game, he kept on playing El
Pauncho. And his character therefore carried on and on and on, the way you are
used to seeing your player characters do in Dungeons and Dragons Big big watershed."
BC16, TC107:43
1971 (apparently March or later) "about 2 months after (Jenkins'
Brownstone), Dave Arneson comes out with Blackmoor..."
MC369, TC 15:00
Simplifying the above
yields the following sequence
1958 Wesely begins wargaming
1964 Small Wargaming group
April 1965 group expands to 7
1965* Dan Nicholson joins - use of Strategos
1967 Arneson and Wesely referee
Spring 1967 Wesely graduates
from Hamlin University
Fall of '67 Wesely at graduate school.
Christmas of 1968 First Braunstein
Spring Break 1969 Braunstein 2 and 3
June/summer 1969 ) Bannana republic Braunstein
Summer 1969 Arneson and Wesely run Braunstein games
October of 1970 Wesely leaves for the Army - Arneson continues to do Braunstien games
Christmas of 1970 Wesely home on leave for first time
1971 (circa Jan-March) Duane Jenkins introduced
BrownStone, which is an Old West setting
1971 (circa March-May) about 2 months after Jenkins' Brownstone, Dave
Arneson comes out with Blackmoor
As you might imagine,
listening to long interviews and transcribing parts of them is quite time
consuming, but I may well add to the above in the future if I come across more
information in other interviews. So it
is appropriate to think of this as a work in progress.
*Having come across some old letters, it's my understanding that Wesely now dates this about a year earlier.
Sources:
TC (Time Code -
Minutes:Seconds)
MC369
MattChatt 369, David
Wesely on the True Origins of D&D, Matt Barton, Published on Mar 5, 2017
TFC59
Theory From the Closet -
by Clyde L. Rhoer the 3rd, Podcast #59,
2010-08-29 19:21:34
2010-08-29 19:21:34
BC16
BrigadeCon 2016: An
interview with David A. Wesely, Earl Tea Grey TV
Streamed live on Oct 29,
2016
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