A while back I wrote a blog post on some of the books I've read about the history of DnD. I've got a long term fascination with the game's history, especially the early days, in which an un-employed shoe cobbler created an industry and built a multi-million dollar business... and then lost it all ten years later. Since writing that post, I've read several more really interesting, really entertaining books on the history of DnD, plus one book that kind of sucked. I figured I'd write a follow up blog post to share my thoughts on these other titles.
Book: Game Wizards
Author: Jon Peterson
Readability: High
Informative Content: High
I'd heard a lot about Jon Peterson's other book, Playing at the World, which is a highly recommended, more general history of wargames and roleplaying games. Game Wizards, on the other hand, is really focused in on the start of DnD and its original publishing company: TSR. I think Peterson did an excellent job of sifting through all the different accounts of how things went down--each account deeply affected by the thoughts and feelings of the participants involved--and teasing out what looks like a relatively objective history. He also focuses in on the history of the two main competing gaming conventions of the time, Gygax's Gencon and Origins. Of particular interest is what this book reveals about Dave Arneson's efforts in RPG design and publishing after his ouster from TSR. If you read this book and Slaying the Dragon by Ben Riggs, you'll have a very complete, and fascinating, history of the first 20 years of D&D.
Book: Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History
Authors: Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, Sam Witwer
Readability: High
Informative Content: High
This book was a joy for me, giving my fascination with the history of DnD and my particular soft-spot for the older versions of the game. Surprisingly, the main author is Michael Witwer, who wrote the pretty lousy Empire of Imagination book I reviewed in the first blog post. In this book he had help from several other authors, most notable Jon Peterson. This book is a remarkably deep dive into the products that TSR released, and it's lavishly illustrated throughout. Reading the other histories can give you a hunger to see what the games and supplements actually looked like, and this book very successfully gratifies that hunger. Plus, it's very thorough and complete--you can't get through it in one session, even if you're just skimming the pictures.
Book: The Gamesmaster
Author: Flint Dille
Readability: Low
Informative Content: Low
This book is the stinker I mentioned in the first paragraph of this blog post. Flint Dille is apparently one of the writers involved with 80s cartoons like GI Joe and Transformers, and this book is a memoir of the start of his career. He also became friends with Gary Gygax during the years that Gygax was living in Hollywood and trying to license DnD to the motion picture and TV industries, and this book covers some of that time. Dille kind of tries to portray Gygax as a geek-gone-wild, living it up in Hollywood and throwing lavish parties populated with models and playboy bunnies. Somehow, the stories sound like selectively remembered and embellished anecdotes, and not really all that believable. The most interesting thing is the way Dille handles his retelling of his involvement in the introduction of Gygax to Lorraine Williams, Dille's sister and the woman who eventually took over TSR and forced Gygax out. It's also somewhat interesting for what it reveals about the life of a scriptwriter in 80s L.A., though you get the feeling Dille's retelling is not particularly accurate or thoughtful. If you skip this one, you won't be missing much.