![\"Dave](\"http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/45655000\/jpg\/_45655992_007155108-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-play game, has died of cancer at 61 in a hospice in St Paul, Minnesota.<\/strong><\/p>\n His two-year battle with the disease ended on Tuesday when he passed away peacefully, his daughter said.<\/p>\n Arneson created the game famous for its oddly shaped dice in 1974 along with the late Gary Gygax.<\/p>\n “The biggest thing about my dad’s world is he wanted people to have fun in life,” said his daughter Malia.<\/p>\n Arneson and Gygax developed D&D using medieval characters and mythical creatures and it was a worldwide hit, particularly among teenage boys.<\/p>\n It eventually was turned into video games, books and films.<\/p>\n Pioneer<\/strong><\/p>\n “I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun,” Malia Weinhagen told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n “But my dad never did. He just wanted people to have fun.”<\/p>\n D&D, described by AP as “the quintessential geek pastime”, spawned copycat games and later inspired a whole genre of computer games that is still growing in popularity.<\/p>\n “[Arneson] developed many of the fundamental ideas of role-playing: that each player controls just one hero, that heroes gain power through adventures and that personality is as important as combat prowess,” said a statement from Wizards of the Coast, which produces D&D.<\/p>\n The company noted that Blackmoor, a game Arneson had been developing before D&D, was the “first-ever role-playing campaign and the prototype for all [role-playing game] campaigns since”.<\/p>\n Arneson met Gygax, who died in March of last year, at a games convention in 1969.<\/p>\n He is survived by his daughter and two grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arneson taught classes in game design in his later years Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-play game, has died of cancer at 61 in a hospice in St Paul, Minnesota. His two-year battle with the disease ended on Tuesday when he passed away peacefully, his daughter said. Arneson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[357],"tags":[587],"class_list":["post-813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eclectic-bits","tag-obituary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":815,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.majik.org\/cruxenrose\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}