Description

The story of the arcane table-top game that became a pop culture phenomenon and the long-running legal battle waged by its cocreators.

When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success–and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game s fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson–a noted authority on role-playing games–explains how D&D and its creators navigated their successes, setbacks, and controversies.

Peterson describes Gygax and Arneson s first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release of the game; the founding of TSR and its growth as a company; and Arneson s acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR. He recounts the Satanic Panic accusations that D&D was sacrilegious and dangerous, and how they made the game famous. And he chronicles TSR s reckless expansion and near-fatal corporate infighting, which culminated with the company in debt and overextended and the end of Gygax s losing battle to retain control over TSR and D&D.

With Game Wizards, Peterson restores historical particulars long obscured by competing narratives spun by the one-time partners. That record amply demonstrates how the turbulent experience of creating something as momentous as Dungeons & Dragons can make people remember things a bit differently from the way they actually happened.