>>96310799
The funny thing about Arneson is that he's not a good writer, but he definitely understood D&D better than Gygax did, and somewhere in his nonsense you can see what Gygax was so desperate to try and get a hold of. I think the best demonstration of this is Adventures in Fantasy, Arneson's first game after D&D, which is a borderline objectively bad game, but right from its rambling, poorly-written preamble we have Arneson's take on RPGs, which is what Gygax ultimately ended up adopting towards the end of his life. Before that though, Gygax took AD&D (and his post-D&D games) in the opposite direction, with stricter rules and less room for improvisation/inspiration. The funny (and slightly sad) thing is that in his last few months of life, Gygax admitted that his favorite way to play was the earliest, most Arenesonian version of D&D.