David Wesely

Wesely's developments, inspired by Kriegsspiel wargames, were important and influential in the early history of role-playing games.

[2] In 1967, Wesely rediscovered the 19th-century professional wargame Strategos, by Charles A. L. Totten, at the University of Minnesota library.

[3][5] Dave Wesely developed Strategos C for wargames set during the American Civil War, and it circulated in draft form in 1969, acting as a precursor to Valley Forge (1976).

[7] In a 1981 interview published in Pegasus magazine, Dave Arneson described Wesely's Braunstein as a game in which each player had a "role" that they were playing.

[8] Jon Peterson cites Arneson's Blackmoor as being the most significant precursor to Dungeons & Dragons.