Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson dies

The sad news that the co-creator of the role playing phenomenon Dungeons & Dragons, Dave Arneson, has died comes almost exactly a year after his gaming partner Gary Gygax also passed away.

Arneson co-created the Dungeons & Dragons game with Gygax in 1974, which went on to found the role playing game and spawn a huge number of books, video games and movies to the present day.

The two friends were strong fans of war-based boardgames in the '60s, with a love for fantasy and sci-fi that led them to recreate the games into the Dungeons & Dragons series that evolved the concept into playing as a single hero, rather than an entire force.

The strength of their creation was in taking those heroes into other adventures and events, allowing gamers to play the same role, and expand their characters' abilities and experience across a host of different games.

These essentially minor adjustments to the boardgame parameters have been massively significant in the evolution of gaming, making Arneson and Gygax two of the most influential people the games industry has ever known.

Arneson went on to form his own games company, Adventure Games, and later a computer game studio, 4D Interactive Systems. He died on April 11th at the age of 61 after losing a battle with cancer.