Review by Booklist Review
Gaming expert and Forbes senior editor Ewalt freely admits at the outset of this fascinating expedition into the world of Dungeons & Dragons that aficionados of the role-playing game don't exactly enjoy a stellar reputation in the larger public eye. Geeks and math fanatics are often viewed as D&D's main adherents, and the game's subculture is still tainted by false stories from the 1980s linking it to suicide and Satanism. Yet, despite the current market rage of Xbox and multiplayer Internet games, D&D remains immensely popular, with fans numbering in the tens of millions. Drawing on his journalistic skill and lifelong passion for D&D, Ewalt walks readers through the game's eclectic rules, sheds light on its surprising origins, and introduces some of its quirky celebrities. From the author's own years of experience designing D&D scenarios, he also reveals some choice secrets behind becoming a Dungeon Master. Even audiences normally indifferent to D&D's charms will find Ewalt's overview witty and absorbing, and the game's devotees will discover much here to revel in and quibble with.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Forbes editor David Ewalt offers a genial history of Dungeon & Dragons and its impact on his own geek life. In the early1970s, two Midwesterners-a college student and a cobbler-drew elements from war games and fantasy novels to create the world's most influential role-playing game. Within a few years of its genesis, D&D had become a flashpoint in the culture wars, as practitioners were accused of leading young men to murder, suicide and the church of Satan. D&D's star soon faded due to corporate mismanagement and the rise of video game consoles, but recent years have seen a renaissance, which Ewalt charts, along with his own guilt-ridden return to the game. He follows a number of storylines, tracing the official history of D&D, his own introduction to the game, and his adult experiences as a player and reporter. Weaving the strands together are charming tales of his cleric character in a postapocalyptic America ruled by vampires. Oddly enough, the weakest sections of the book involve Ewalt's descriptions of his life outside the imaginary dungeons. Nevertheless, this is a highly readable account of a game that seized the imagination of a generation and maintains its grip three decades later. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In his first book, Ewalt dives headlong into Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) after decades away from the game, exploring both the history of role-playing games and the reasons people play D&D and presenting his personal narrative of ways the hobby has affected his life. The author narrates the real-world majority of the book, and Mikael Naramore provides the dramatic and often humorous voice to the first-person adventures of Ewalt's D&D characters. -VERDICT Fans of D&D and of games history will enjoy this charmingly geeky memoir. ["Enthusiastically reported and honestly written, this personal exploration of the D&D world is a great read," read the review of the Scribner hc, LJ 7/13.]--Jason -Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A child of the polyhedral dice returns to the fantasy game of his youth in a reverential history of the innovative pastime that has launched billions of role-playing adventures. Before Dungeons Dragons, those with a fetish for alternate time periods and a visceral need to escape the banality of everyday life would wage tabletop war against each other in meticulously rendered re-enactments of history's greatest battles. Soon, however, even these highly orchestrated military clashes began to grow a bit tiresome--until someone threw wizards and other magical entities into the mix. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson are the pioneering duo credited with merging old war simulations with a revolutionary gaming system that removed "winning" as the objective and encouraged imaginative players to keep their adventures going in perpetuity--or, at least, until their characters ran out of all-important hit points. Then again, in DD, resurrection is never really out of the question, either. Forbes senior editor Ewalt adroitly parallels his return to DD after years away in the "grown-up world" of journalism with the story of how Gygax and Arneson originally came together in the early 1970s to form Tactical Studies Rules, Inc.; the author also covers the ensuing split between the creators. The former thread, however, is by far the more engaging, as the rise and fall and resurgence of the DD empire has been well-documented elsewhere. Hard-core DD followers will find few revelations in Ewalt's personal dungeon crawl through TSR history. However, for those who don't know a Ranger from a Rogue or a Hobgoblin from a Halfling, the author's devotion to the game does much to illuminate role-playing's enduring power on mortal men and women. A serviceable history of Dungeons Dragons coupled with an insightful look at the game's allure.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
