The more I read and interact with this hobby, the more it becomes clear to me that not only D&D was like capturing lightning in a bottle, but also that Arneson was more the lightning and Gygax was more the bottle.

This is not me taking a jab at Gygax, there's plenty of other reasons to do that. D&D would never happen without Arneson and it would never happen without Gygax. It happened despite both of them. Arneson would never in a million years sit down to write that game and publish it. Gygax did.

But at the same time, for all the creativity and vernacular proficiency that Gygax presents to us, Arneson seems to have had that mad genius vibe and impetus that drove him to experiment and iterate and change how he done things. And sure, both of them stood on the shoulders of giants and yadda, yadda, yadda.

For many reasons, so much more of Gygax survived over the years. But the lightning is still there for us to find and capture ourselves.

In a lot of ways in my life, I'm more the bottle. But I've decided that I will try to be more the lightning. I will try to be more like Arneson. Hopefully, I will be able to.

Cover art: Lightning Struck a Flock of Witches; by William Holbrook Beard (1824 - 1900)