Dave Arneson's Love Affair With Japanese Monster Movies

From My Gathering Memoirs.  ©2010. Robert J. Kuntz

My friend David L. Arneson moved to Lake Geneva to work for TSR in 1976. He originally roomed at the same complex as my brother, Terry Kuntz (who also worked for TSR as the first manager of the DUNGEON Hobby Shop).  David soon relocated to an apartment on Wisconsin Street .

As I lived on Madison & Wisconsin and EGG still lived on Center & Wisconsin, I would often stop into David's on my way to Gary's house (note map, below).

This was often on weekends, and invariably if I didn't find Dave reading or writing, I'd find him watching his favorite Japanese monster movies.  He usually had a big bowl of popcorn and was just laughing like a kid at these things; and in retrospect they were so  bad they were funny.  Here are some photos and links to the movies that made the designer of so many historical and fantastic games chuckle.

ONE OF DAVE"S FAVORITES, GAMERA THE "ATOMIC TURTLE"

Links @ Wikipedia/Other:

1  2  3  4  5  6 

Gary's Ghosts

From my gathering Memoirs.  ©2010. Robert J. Kuntz

Gary Gygax was not only a great story teller, but he had some real scary stories that would keep you at the edge of your seat.  And he insisted that they were real.  He had convinced his daughters and son, Ernest, of these, and when I was about 14 years of age he related them to me.  Without going into extravagant detail, these all transpired at his mother's house on Dodge Street in Lake Geneva, just a block away from where I lived on Madison Street.

They included a friend (Tom Keogh, c.f., OD&D credits list) sleeping over and feeling a horned hand pressing down upon his back as he slept, which he later accused Gary of doing, and which Gary denied any part in.  The hand kept his friend pinned down.  The way EGG told this really effected me and I would not sleep on my stomach for months thereafter.

Another involves him being at home alone at night with his cat.  He is reading at the front living room table by dim light.  The door to the kitchen opens of its own accord and creaking noises, as made by approaching footsteps, come from that direction and proceed across the room towards him.  At mid point they reach a position parallel with the chair on which the cat is sleeping. The cat immediately wakes up and stands, arching its body upwards in a hair-raising scene.  The footsteps stop right before the table he is siting at, stunned.  The cat lays back down.

And the last is the sound of something very heavy falling in the attic with a great booming noise and then proceeding to make this same dreadful sound as if something were walking across the attic floor from one side of the house to the other.  Upon investigation by himself and Don Kaye, they found nothing moved or unordinary.

To say the least, I was never too thrilled being in that house at night when we visited his mom, or later, when Ernie Gygax was the soul occupant after her death. It had a very spooky quality to it.

At Milwaukee Gamefest 2004 EGG and I met to co-DM again and BS over old times, him just having suffered a stroke and myself a broken left leg.  While gathered afterwards at his Hilton Hotel room I reminded him of those stories he used to tell.   A twinkle grew in his eyes as he regarded the others present, and through no more encouragement on my part, out they came again, for the "amusement" of all.  I often wondered how many who heard these told in that same serious tone, in that same air of truth that cannot be confounded by doubt, actually slept on their stomachs that night...

"Welcome Back to the Creative Fold." Extracted from my In Progress Memoirs

Copyright 2010.  Robert J. Kuntz.

"... After I quit TSR I embarked upon a massive self-learning and creative phase, with all the joys and bumps associated with it. This included continued world-crafting of my World of Kalibruhn, creation of related and ancillary RPG matter, fantasy- and science-fiction story crafting and board game design. For the latter I finished three prototype designs:  "Ice Age," "Dragons" and "Magus" with the last to eventually find publication in Dragon Magazine 147.  These were in turn submitted to the Avalon Hill Game Company which rejected them, though with a nice letter of response favoring the "Dragons" game wherein one adopted the role of a dragon.  Since I believed through the play-tests that the strongest one was "Magus," I ventured onward, first to Mayfair Games, who took too long considering it, so I finally pulled it back.  I then decided to take the bunch to the Dragon Magazine and therefore arranged a meeting with its editor (who I shall not name, other than it was not Tim Kask, Kim Mohan or Roger Moore, all of whom I had respect for in their separate runs as editors).

I had been out of sight for a year by then, a reclusive artist banging away at the keyboard and filling boxes in my reconverted attic cum office with reams of material. As I entered this editor's office, he said, "Rob!  Welcome back to the creative fold!"  As I sat down I was immediately uncomfortable.  It was a sixth-sense impression that was gathering steam for what I was to later add to the presumptuous and insulting category.  Here I was, I finally thought, in the Golden Halls of Allah, and with a representative thereof whose very chair he was sitting upon was in part due its existence to my prior work as an employee and designer for the company, and quite some time before his own arrival.

Many would be writers would have laughed off the remark, of course, looking to the future sale.  That glorious sale.  The object of desire.  The reason for being.  Being there.  But it isn't, really.  Now or then.  Being a creator, the aftermath of my undertakings have found various coigns:  in publication, in filing cabinets, in boxes, on a bed stand, pinned to walls, and some unfortunately for their final repose found a lone and unexpected fire, consumed from the indited page but not from my minds-eye of experience.  I thought about this meeting for some time afterwards. My coyness at his questions; and my sudden reversal of intent.  I fairly escaped the meeting by promising to be back in touch when I had polished them some more, and he had not even held the designs in his hands.  The "meeting" lasted less than ten minutes.

In retrospect my sensibilities about the ideas of creator and creation had been offended. Was there only one spot on earth for such artificing? Why yes!  The very spot where it takes place at, so there are many "one-spots". . .  My own experience proved an invaluable lesson.  It was about the work.  Good works will always find a place and time to nurture them.  Under Kim Mohan's  capable leadership not too soon after the afore-noted editor's removal,""Magus" found a home. ..."

Memoirs Extract 2

As I have informed the blog-readers here, I am about crafting my memoirs.  I try to write 2 pages a day and look to publish these in about 1.5-2 years IF I AM STILL ALIVE BY THEN.  :)

In my 42 years of involvement in this industry, as IFW member, TSR employee, owner and operator of 2 companies, convention chairman for GENCON, friend and student of EGG, and generally as an inquisitive, curious and deep thinker, I feel that there is a lot of territory to be covered within these memories and a lot to be derived from them by those who eventually read these:  The history of this game industry, the advent of fantasy in games, my shared experiences with EGG, Dave Arneson and others of note from 1968 onward, as well as my insights into art and its processes on many levels, as well as inspirations and thoughts which continue to incite and extend the creative thinking process, the latter which I feel is sorely lacking in our industry today when compared with the past.

Here are some extracts which you might find strange, enjoyable, or utterly useless:

"It is not the creep of nihilsim that worries me, but the human condition which cannot recognize it."...

"Stating and restating problems is a negative illusion; solutions are positive realities."

"David Arneson always appeared to my inner sense as a fervent and excitable boy.  There was absolutely no way of escaping wanting to play with him."...

"Am I living in the future tense of a past present?"

EGG Anecdotes/Remembrances Of (selected from my Memoirs)

Copyright 2009. Robert J. Kuntz. All Rights Reserved.

"'Rob, I could give two pieces of coon shit what people think of me."-- EGG in an email to me circa 2003.

... This nature was so true of EGG. But it also true that this did not suggest a lack of caring attitude or warmth, for which he was noted to have in great abundance. His detractors, mainly in my estimation jealous piss-ants found at various fora on the internet, were very vocal, but also very cowardly as they seldom if ever, unlike in the days of honored exchange in magazines or by post, ever had the gumption to say anything to the man's face or to direct their enmity towards him in personal exchange; and of course this example betrayed the very nature of the acts and the people behind them. Gary was a heated debater. His letters to the editor in Panzerfaust magazine, the International Wargamer or in The Courier, often developed into slugfests, with a notable one carrying on for many pages and issues between Jerry Pournelle (before the latter's rise to fame as a SF author) ...'"