and know I know you’re dishonest.
Here is the full context of the first quote:
The issue with EGG and Arneson is more complicated. I tend to oppose both the deification of EGG, and the backlash/hagiography of Arneson. I do think it is incorrect to view them as equals in an endeavor (Lennon/McCartney), and I also think it's unfair to tar Gygax as the Ray Kroc of this situation- someone who just took someone else's idea and marketed it.
If you know the history, and read this article, it's not surprising. Arneson brought in the magical element; he took Chainmail and turned it into the semblance of what we know today- an RPG. He was the original element of chaos- as he was in Braunstein.
BUT ... and this is a huge and unavoidable but, he wasn't Gygax. Here is the telling pullquote, which is in accord from everything I have read: "Arneson didn’t have a concrete ruleset; he was making things up as he went along. But, Kuntz said, he did manage to cobble together 18 pages of handwritten notes, a lot of which were simply stats for Chainmail monsters."
Arneson could never have created D&D; it wasn't in his DNA. Everything we think of as "D&D," the books, the rules, the mythos, that was all Gygax. Would he have done it if he hadn't played in Arneson's game? No. That really was a eureka moment.
And as for the rest ... wow. Just look where you found those.
Dude- you really googled me To try and discredit me and that was the best you can find.
You are as terrible at google as you are at history.
Thankfully, that little exercise should show how trustworthy you are with quotes.
You know nothing about design if you assume Arneson had no concrete rules to play 1.5 years of sessions before revealing them to us, the LGTSA, in 1972. And that Gary was able to latch onto Dave's system and calibrate it into his own iteration of Blackmoor is a fact:
"Dave and I disagree on how to handle any number of things, and both of our campaigns differ from the "rules" found in DandD."--Gary Gygax, Alarums & Excursions #2, July, 1975
By the time that Gary and I (as Mordenkainen & Robilar) adventured into Dave's "City of the Gods" in Early 1976, Dave was still using his system. then, and in turn adding in bits and pieces of the printed D&D matter.
That is of course consistent with his ongoing iterating of the base concept as an evolving form (re, note Gygax's quote from A&E above where he puts in quotes the word "rules" which in usage means that THERE ARE NO STEADFAST RULES, and that you can add and change them as you iterate them into existence to meet the infinite array of possibilities and variabilities that are presented in a Fantasy world context):
"…I've never used any of the D&D rules because whatever version comes out, I've already added to it and gone on and done things different. If there's a good resemblance to those rules, I got my own. Most of the rules are only between my ears and they're constantly changing."
Dave Arneson, GameSpy Interview, August 19, 2004
This is not just "he was making things up as he went along," but he was compiling these as well and preserving their access by way of a notational system.
Did we play in an RPG in 1972? Yes. How different was it than the written version of the D&D rule set? Not much different. The mechanical access was different but the architecture had to remain the same from Arneson's transference of it to Gygax, or else it would not have been what we refer to as an RPG.
Arneson wrote several rule sets prior to D&D. Two drafts of DGUTS for instance. He most definitely could and would have published these without Gygax, I have no doubt, just as his group had come that far with it and with the DUNGEON board game by 1972. But Gary was the Rules Editor for Guidon Games, so he was an easy access point for the Two Daves who were most excited by their discoveries and gaming systems, and so they brought them down with the express notion of publishing them through Guidon. To assume that if Gary had not known Arneson, had not been the GG Rules Editor, that these would not have been published at some future time and in a form consistent with Dave Arneson's complete mechanical systems is, by itself, a Fantasy or perhaps wishful thinking.