Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons Book Review

Jon Peterson, described by some as an expert on Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games, recently published Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons, a non-fiction book that covers the history of TSR and the feud between Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who you may know as the co-creators of D&D.

And if you’re not sure if this book is something you’d be interested in, you can also check out this review penned by one Jeff Grubb, a former TSR designer who witnessed some of the events described in the book. A couple of sample paragraphs:

This was a slow read for me, as I would read a few pages, then stop to reflect. Is this something I already knew about? Is this new information? Does it fit with what I knew at the time? There are a lot of stories from the past that surface here – The passing of original founder Don Kaye, Dallas Egbert and the Steam Tunnels, BADD. And there is stuff that I have tucked into the back of mind over the years – Gygax versus the small press, the Origins/GenCon Rivalry, the Avalon Hill Rivalry. And there is stuff that I really didn’t know much about – for example, the original split not only between Gary and Dave, but between the Lake Geneva and Minnesota crews, or that the original Chainmail published by Guidon games, or the idea that GAMA (the Game Manufacturers Association) was founded in response to TSR’s actions in the hobby at large.

I was there for part of the time covered, but this isn’t my story. The design department of 1985 – Me, Tracy, Zeb, Doug, Bruce, Merle, are sources, but we’re minor actors in this particular passion play. At the time we were mushrooms (literally, our offices on Sheridan Springs Road had no windows). We were hobbits (to quote one of our managers, who referred to himself as a Ranger protecting Hobbitown). We were the country mice in our rural environment, far from the cool stuff in Hollywood. We were the little folk we. We would hear the distant thunder. We were mostly innocent bystanders, and on more than a few occasions, collateral damage.