Slaying the Dragon
A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons
Ben Riggs
First annotation on .
6 quotes
Chapter 1
- While browsing the fantasy and science fiction section, he picked seven books off the shelves before he noticed a bearded and bespectacled gentleman beside him, likewise carrying seven books. The exact same seven books. The bespectacled man asked, “Do you really enjoy reading books like that?” Ward replied, “Why, yes, I do!” and then turned to escape the strange fellow so closely eyeing his book selection. But the bespectacled man was undeterred. He said, “We play games that are more enjoyable than sword-and-sorcery novels; why not stop by some time and try them out?”Apr 18 2024 2:15PM
- A few weeks later, Ward went over to Gygax’s house and played. Gygax believed Ward waited a few weeks because, “during the interim he was checking up to find out if we were merely eccentric or actually dangerous lunatics.”Apr 18 2024 2:15PM
- It was up to you. If you wanted your character to sing “Love Potion No. ” to distract a cyclops, you could do that too. Now you could fail, and your character could die. After all, if the cyclops didn’t like music, it might try to make toothpicks out of your femurs. But the existence of failure just made every choice more vitally important. This was a burst of total freedom bounded only by the imagination.Apr 18 2024 2:16PM
- This tale, as told by Jim Ward, is one of competition, market forces, and capitalism at work. In 1997, I was a high school senior in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and from the hobby shops and gaming tables I frequented, Ward’s story seemed about right. I heard game store owners talk about how they could buy RPG supplements that might sell over the course of a year, or they could take that money and buy cases of Magic: The Gathering that would fly out the door in a week.Apr 18 2024 2:36PM
Chapter 2
- Gamers in the ’s and ’s played war games, miniature games, and strategy games. Games like Diplomacy, where players controlled European powers during World War I, or Gettysburg, which allowed players to see if they could do better than the generals in re-creating the largest battle to ever take place in the Western Hemisphere. Gamers established hobby groups and published fanzines for each other with names like Panzerfaust and The Domesday Book.Apr 18 2024 2:38PM
- In short, these men (almost exclusively men at the time) were escaping humdrum lives as insurance salesmen and cobblers by creating a life of the mind in which they were generals, warriors, and leaders of nations. They wanted to be heroes, if only for an afternoon in their own basements.Apr 18 2024 2:38PM