Full Sail Dave

[captainjapan]

Dave Arneson taught an elective class in game development at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida for the last ten years of his life. The relationship he had with the for-profit design school was such that they posthumously dedicated a small building to his memory. It's the only building on the campus named to honor a person. Dave Arneson's course was called 'Rules of the Game'. That class is no longer offered.

Now, with that out of the way:

How in the world does someone with such poor editing and organizational skills go on to develop and revise a college level curriculum (w/ exams) for that span of years?

Also, and more importantly, what WERE the "Rules of the Game", that he taught?! Arneson is famous for his black box approach to written rules.

I wonder if anyone on the net has ever talked about this aspect; like a student, perhaps.

[Starbeard]

I remember once looking him up on ratemyprofessors.com. That would all be purged now but you might be able to access some of the student reviews through the Wayback Machine. Sadly I remember most of them not being very flattering. From student reviews it seemed like his class mostly consisted of tangential rants about D&D or his favorite video game (Sims), and assigning "lab" time where the students had to play Eurogames.

Full Sail should still have the class syllabi archived, it would be nice to see what he actually put together without the filter of reviews from bored computer science students.

[captainjapan]

I see this short entry from Cyclopetron with select, non-flattering, comments about Arneson. Unfortunately, the links at the site no longer resolve. 

[Starbeard]

I can't remember but that may have been what prompted me to look through the reviews. I know it was after he had passed, anyway.

As someone who has taught, I always take those types of student reviews with a hefty grain of salt. They're just a horrible metric. At most all it really showed is that he and his students often had a personality clash, and a possibility that he wasn't always the best at (or just not concerned with) communicating class goals or purpose.

[Finarvyn]

My perspective (as a lifetime teacher) is that most students who provide official feedback are the ones who don't like what you do, and thereby want to complain about it. Most of the ones who like you tell you daily through their comments and actions, but they rarely take the time to give feedback through "rate my" type formats.

As to Arneson, I can imagine that he would be an enthusiastic but disorganized teacher. I know many of those in the profession, and students often either love them or hate them. I would personally enjoy getting to hear the ideas and stories from a Dave Arneson. I think that Erick Wujick of Amber Diceless was a similar sort and I really enjoyed talking to him about gaming, so I think I would have enjoyed hearing Arneson teach.

[Starbeard]

I agree. Students often have a love-or-hate relationship with the absent minded professor type, and as we've "discovered" now that student feedback reports are no longer done physically in class (but actual teachers always knew), if you make a feedback report entirely on the onus of the student, those with an axe to grind are usually the only ones to actually take the time and effort to fill it in.

That said, if you only get negative feedback, and a lot of it, then there's probably a definite personality clash at play. I can imagine those who simply weren't interested in Dave's grog musings might have had gotten little out of the class, but I know I would have probably loved it.

[Starbeard]

captainjapan: as a follow up, if you are invested enough in learning about it, you might just find out who to contact at the library and ask how course syllabi are archived at Full Sail, and whether it is possible to request one for viewing.

[havard]

I archived a statement from one former student (validity not confirmed) about Dave as a teacher here: blackmoor.mystara.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=3107

Not much, but you could use the link to track him down on Twitter if you want to ask follow-up questions

If you do, please share!

-Havard

[captainjapan]

Well, I messaged Full Sail for a syllabus of the class. I received a form email in return.

It doesn't necessarily mean that I won't get a meaningful yes or no answer, but I don't think they're set up to assist people who aren't already affiliated with the school.

I may try again, later.

[Starbeard]

Sept 5, 2023 22:50:14 GMT -6 captainjapan said:

Well, I messaged Full Sail for a syllabus of the class. I received a form email in return.

It doesn't necessarily mean that I won't get a meaningful yes or no answer, but I don't think they're set up to assist people who aren't already affiliated with the school.

I may try again, later.

Drats. They may also just be hesitant to deal with someone unless they can vet them as an academic working on a research project. Maybe increment knows something more about Dave's teaching, or knows of someone else who has looked at his materials.

[chirinebakal]

Speaking as one who worked in academia for more than fourteen years, no, course information is not generally available because the central administration doesn't want to spend resources on what's basically a departmental matter. Departments don't have the resources either - my wife was a departmental administrator for over sixteen years - and any material older than two to three years is in a folder somewhere in a forgotten file cabinet. One copy of any documentation will probably have been filed, and any duplicate copies are long gone to the trash or recycling. There might be a digital copy somewhere, but since the computers used by professors are routinely wiped and sold as surplus once they leave the department, anything more than three to five years old is gone.

People would be, and have been, shocked at the actual on-the-ground archival retention policies in place at most academic institutions. The name of the game is resource management, and if there's no endowment then there's no archives.

Given the usual rapid turnover in staffing (read student workers, who are both cheap and expendable) at the lower levels, I'd be surprised that anyone even remembers who Dave was and his connection to Full Sail. My former employer, for example, was shocked to discover that they had a strong connection to Dave and gaming; and, of course, once I left there was no further interest in the subject on the part of the administration. Given that academia has the collective attention span of mayflies, I'm not surprised.

[Starbeard]

It's true, you do have to dig it out from the dustbin, and different universities will have different levels of care taken for that. But if Florida is anything like California, we have always been required to submit syllabi for archiving at the university level, to be kept into perpetuity. 99.999% of the time it goes into a folder that will never be looked at again in all of history, but occasionally someone actually does come into special collections to see something for a research project. That's the key really, ingratiating yourself to the librarian as someone they don't mind doing the work of digging through the files for.

[aldarron]

Aug 28, 2023 18:57:00 GMT -6 captainjapan said:

How in the world does someone with such poor editing and organizational skills go on to develop and revise a college level curriculum (w/ exams) for that span of years?

Well I'm not sure what your source is for that assessment. While I would personally peg Arneson as having, a one of my college professors once said about himself, "a creative random kind of mind" and to be a bit cluttered in nature, I wouldn't call him a poor editor and certainly wouldn't say he had poor organizational skills. His spelling leaves something to be desired, but then again, so does Len Lakofka's.

These are all facts that are true about Arneson:

- He was the leader of the largest wargaming club in Minneapolis by the time he was a senior in High School.
- He typed, typeset, illustrated and published the clubs newsletter from 1969 to 1976
- He organized and ran a massive, intercontinental Napololeonics wargame
- At the same time he wrote the core mss for Don't Give up the Ship
- He wrote the first ever published adventure setting with the first full dungeon - Temple of the Frog
- He ran his own game company, with something like a half dozen or more full time employees for 4+ years
- He was a leader in his church where he taught and led a bible study and later served as a missionary to California.
- He was an editor on Different Worlds magazine
- He also contributed a regular column to Different Worlds under the pseudonym Gigi D'Arn.
- He did some work with special needs students
- eh, I'm getting tired of listing stuff and I'm only up to the mid 1980's and left out a bunch of stuff.

I think what I'm getting at here is that Arneson wasn't incapable. In my opinion, putting together a class syllabus and lectures was well within his skillset.

Aug 28, 2023 18:57:00 GMT -6 captainjapan said:

I wonder if anyone on the net has ever talked about this aspect; like a student, perhaps.

I have seen a blog post from former students who reminisced fondly of the class - can't find the link. Also met a guy once who said he loved taking the class. It seems to have been popular <shrug>

[Finarvyn]

Sept 6, 2023 18:37:39 GMT -6 aldarron said:

- He also contributed a regular column to Different Worlds under the pseudonym Gigi D'Arn.

I didn't know this. Now I will have to sift through Different Worlds to see what he wrote.

[rhialto]

Sept 7, 2023 4:31:29 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Sept 6, 2023 18:37:39 GMT -6 aldarron said:

- He also contributed a regular column to Different Worlds under the pseudonym Gigi D'Arn.

I didn't know this. Now I will have to sift through Different Worlds to see what he wrote.

I had no idea either, and recall endless speculation on who this writer really was...

[captainjapan]

Alas, no; a call to the librarian's desk confirmed that Full Sail does not archive syllabi or course materials.


Here's an excerpt from his GameSpy interview, 2004:

...So you're an educator now. Where are you working, what are you doing?


Arneson: I work for Full Sail University. It's a private college. I teach computer documentation which is keeping track of all the programming, what code does what, and where you can find it because it's not painfully obvious where the code is when you've got millions of lines of code like some of these programs have today. I also teach game design which, in my class, involves students playing a lot of different types (of games) and looking for how to apply them in the computer realm. I talk a lot about role-playing on computers, for some strange reason.

A screenshot from the 2009 Full Sail Course Catalog; the last year in which Dave's class would have been offered (sorry for the over-large screenshot. I hope it's readable.)

[captainjapan]

Here are all the student reminiscences about Dave Arneson that a web search turned up (all Reddit):


"I was there in 2004. I remember thinking this guy was crazy. That he kind of just rambled on about theoretical games that didn't exist but could. Part of me felt like he was there to give credibility to the program and part of me though that he just had so many thoughts and ideas that he just wanted to get them all out at once.

He encouraged us to play tabletop games. A lot of tabletop games. The end of lecture was just play games. Games we never played before and games that used systems we'd never been exposed to. I had really only played classic board games and Magic: the gathering. He pushed me out of my comfort zone.

The thing I took away from his class that I still keep with me today is that people are just going to do what they want to do. If you want someone to do something don't discourage them from doing what you don't want them to do but instead to encourage them to do the thing you do want. A player wants to wear mismatched armor and that looks stupid? Don't take the ability to do that away from them, but maybe give them set bonuses so they're encourage to wear the matching stuff you want them to. That way the player gets a chance to express themself and you still help guide the player toward desired ways to experience the game. Both can be right, it's okay, people are going to play the way they want."

-Reddit user, OnaRedHorse, 2018

"Dave Arneson was one of my teachers, the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Gygax invented the dice system, Chainmail, but Dave invented the modern concept of role playing. He was mildly sexist, and referred to girls butts as "having a nice backpack, if you know what I mean." The girls typically didn't like him."

-Reddit user, mredding, also 2018

"To be honest, I wish I remembered more about the class. I just remember a blue shirt he where a few times... I wish I would have paid more attention."

-Reddit user, dannyboyfl, 2017

"...I also graduated with the Game Dev degree from Full Sail back in '07. I'm not sure what changed between 2002 and 2005 when I started, but it sounds like I got an almost completely different experience from the OP. The only time I really felt like my money was wasted was in Dave Arneson's class "Rules of the Game," where his lectures basically boiled down to talking about how the D&D video game was shirt, how the D&D movie was shirt, and in conclusion, make a fun game. The silver lining to that, though, was that it gave us more time to focus on our two-month long game dev project for our other class."

-Reddit user, Marahumm, 2018

"That was the real (secret) point of Arneson's class - a break from thinking and crunching. But I can't really disagree."

-Reddit user, Udderpunch, in response to Marahumm

"I was taught a class by (Dave Arneson, sorry folks) in 2001 when he was with Full Sail. Normal guy, my recollection of him was that he tried to be a good teacher on a difficult subject to teach. Probably was there more to help Full Sail market its new Game Design degree program."

-Reddit user, MavenACTG, 2021

Two former "Rules of the Game" students remembering Dave Arneson. Skip to 23:00 mins. in to hear the relevant portion.

chtbl.com/track/188C98/mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/7zh6rx/Out-Of-Play-Area-Ep04-Jameson-Durall-Director-eSports-Ops-Full-Sail-v02_BM.mp3

[Starbeard]

Sept 7, 2023 9:16:12 GMT -6 captainjapan said:

Alas, no; a call to the librarian's desk confirmed that Full Sail does not archive syllabi or course materials.

Too bad. I wonder if that's a Florida thing or just a private university thing. At least you tried.

Great stuff you did manage to dig up, though.

[captainjapan]

Thanks, Starbeard.

I would have liked to get those course materials. I'm afraid that the substance of Arneson's ten years of lectures will have gone mostly down the memory hole. None of the student recollections that I found did much of anything to reveal  Arneson's teaching. In fact, they were mostly disparaging. You warned me that would be the case.

Also, I would like to apologize to mrmanowar and rayotus and anyone else who was following the Q&A with Chirine thread. By digging dirt on Arneson over here, I've scuttled your chance to ask questions over there. I'm sorry. If you're still interested, do take Chirine up on the offer to join him at his forum.

Or you can view an archive of his extensive blog posts, here.

[Starbeard]

Aw man, I hadn't checked in on that thread since it first opened. I'm sorry to hear that he felt the need to leave. I looked back over this thread and personally I don't see any attacks or attempts to disrespect anyone, and what you dug up has a lot of good comments and reminiscences as well. I don't know Chirine, but from he says it sounds like he's been having to deal with a lot of nasty negativity in his gaming circles over the past few years. I can understand how anything anyone posts about Dave might set him off as a reminder of that, so I don't blame him for leaving but it makes me sad, especially that he would call you out a little rudely as a bad guy because of it. I don't think anyone here had anything more than the best intentions to do a guy's legacy justice, so don't blame yourself.

[Finarvyn]

Well, apparently this thread chased chirinebakal away from this board. I'm locking it.

[Finarvyn]

I was asked to add a few additional details about Dave Arneson and his time teaching at Full Sail University. At this point, discussion on the topic is still unavailable and the thread will continue to be locked, but this seemed to be important information to add.

Captainjapan is the one who did the sleuthing, so credit should be given to him.

Here are a couple of others I found at RateMyProfessor.com through the Wayback Machine:

From 2009: "Dave Arneson was one of the most unique teachers I've ever had. He was the most egotistical, grouchy, and senile old man I've met. But despite these traits i find myself thinking back to his classes wishing that I could hear just one more crazy [story]. By listening to his words I learned more than any other teacher I had before. Thank you, Dave."

From 2004: "A living legend. Imagine Santa having had a bitter divorce. If you get past the fact that the labs are all game-playing and listen to him, he is a fountainhead of no-BS knowledge. Very realistic and still positive."