Dungeons & Dragons art & arcana A visual history

"D&D IS A GAME OF STORIES,"write Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson and Sam Witwer early in "Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History," before noting it also comprises other things, like characters and ideas. But for anyone who's sampled the iconic role-playing game, D&D is also an exuberant dive into imagination, world-building, teamwork and identity - especially when played in its original format on a table cluttered with rule books, maps, monster manuals, character worksheets and colorful polyhedral dice nestled among pizza boxes, Funyuns bags and halfempty Mountain Dew cans. Once in the game, you could forget about the dreary annoyances of school as you slipped into your handcrafted persona of a thieving elf with high Strength and Intelligence scores and went offto battle the Demogorgon or a giant toothy Purple Worm with your fellow treasure-seeking friends. And if you were the designated Dungeon Master, narrating the story and directing the plot you mostly made up, that was even better. Just watch the first five minutes of the Netflix series "Stranger Things" to see the joyful camaraderie. "Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana" is an officially licensed (and promotional) history of the medieval combat-and-quest game originally concocted in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. With more than 700 images of guidebook illustrations, game packaging, advertising and ephemera crammed between its covers, it feels as if you're exploring a document dump of the company archives in convenient coffee-tablebook form. The game's creators apparently never threw anything away. While the amateurish black-and-white sketches and badly typed rule book drafts reveal humble beginnings in the first chapter, the artwork soon becomes much more elaborate as D&D caught on. Cartoonish drawings give way to books and handsome box sets decorated with lavish color paintings and computer-generated graphics as Dungeons & Dragons morphed into a global mass-market transmedia property with its own novels, magazines, video games, television series and other products. While the book is dominated by images of clanking chainmail-clad warriors, columns of text detailing the game's historical development also snake through its pages. The tone is largely upbeat and earnest, but the authors don't sidestep the ups and downs of the franchise, like an early cease-and-desist order from J. R. R. Tolkien's estate for unauthorized use of hobbits and ents. Typical business woes of overexpansion, the travails of a marketplace shifting to digital entertainment and corporate acquisition are also covered. However, it's the discussion of the game's social impact in the late 1970s and early 1980s that is far more intriguing, as the authors recount the persistent parental fear that D&D's luridly illustrated manuals were practically inspiring innocent youngsters to construct cardboard altars to Beelzebub in the basement: "To an audience who had no understanding of the mechanics of a role-playing game, and especially those inclined toward religious fundamentalism, this was all scary stuff." D&D survived the bad press and went on to influence a whole generation of creative professionals. The authors Sherman Alexie, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Junot Díaz, Sharyn McCrumb and (naturally) George R. R. Martin are among those who have discussed the game's impact on their own storytelling skills, as have countless actors and computer programmers. As the author and technologist David S. Bennahum observed in the late 1990s, Dungeons & Dragons was "an example of how a subculture built by kids would work its way upward into the cultural mainstream." "Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana" will mostly appeal to those who have similarly fond memories or who want a nostalgic blast from the past - even if the past was last night. But player or not, it's hard to deny the degree to which D&D has infiltrated the culture, especially in a world where "Stranger Things" and HBO's "Game of Thrones" grabbed multiple Emmy nominations this year. J.D. BIERSDORFER is the production editor at the Book Review.

From the INTRODUCTION If it's true that we live in an era when it is "chic to be geek," then Dungeons & Dragons is just about the coolest thing out there. It was, it is, and it always will be the game of the geeks, but its fandom is no longer so neatly contained. Once an esoteric diversion known only to a small but passionate group of wargamers, the game and the foundational concepts that it brought forth became among the most influential phenomena of the Information Age. The reason? The game's earliest adopters happened to share an interest in other "geeky" things like computers, electronics, digital technologies, visual effects, filmmaking, performing arts, and beyond. These geeks grew up to develop the social and business infrastructure of the twenty-first century using concepts they had once learned on poorly lit tabletops set in dining rooms and basements. Dungeons & Dragons, according to Wired editor Adam Rogers, "allowed geeks to venture out of our dungeons, blinking against the light, just in time to create the present age of electronic miracles." It is indeed chic to be geek, and the prophesy has finally been fulfilled: the geek shall inherit the Earth (and the parallel D&D world of Oerth). Today, if you are one of the millions of subscribers to an MMO (massively multiplayer online game)such as World of Warcraft ; a tourist in the exotic worlds of a computer role-playing franchise such as Final Fantasy or The Elder Scrolls ; a virtual marksman in any first-person-shooter video game; a lover of modern fantasy television, films, or literature such as Game of Thrones ; or even anyone who has ever "leveled up" in a game or rewards program, then you have Dungeons & Dragons to thank. Simply put, D&D has either directly or indirectly influenced them all. John Romero, co-creatorof the seminal first-person-shooter Doom , attributes his success to D&D, calling it "the most influential game," adding that "the gaming concepts put forth by D&D inspired the earliest groups of gamers and computer programmers, and set into motion a revolution of creative and technical innovation." The numbers of actors and directors who credit the game with providing them inspiration is immense, from Vin Diesel and Stephen Colbert to Rainn Wilson and the late Robin Williams. Celebrated director Jon Favreau suggested the game gave him "a really strong background in imagination, storytelling,understanding how to create tone and a sense of balance." National Book Award-winner Ta-Nehisi Coates agrees, suggesting the game helped introduce him to "the powers of imagination." All this is to say, the story of D&D is as important now as it has ever been, and with the recent success of 5th edition and an array of D&D-inspired blockbuster books, shows, and films surfacing, from Ready Player One to Stranger Things , its history will become increasingly visible and relevant. Nothing conveys the story of D&D better than its visuals. At a time when fantasy and science fiction were, at best, fringe diversions, D&D was creating a culture of do-it-yourself fantasy world-building through its immersive narrative environments, given life by its ever-evolving illustrations and artwork. It depicted monsters, magic, swords, and sorcery in a way that taught fans a visual vocabulary of the unreal, fixing in the minds of a whole generation how to picture the fantastic. The relationship between Dungeons & Dragons and its artwork goes beyond symbiosis, but to outright reliance--one simply couldn't exist without the other. The art informed the game, and the game informed the art. Beginning as amateur, homebrew sketches used to illustrate to the initiated simple concepts such as maps and the physical appearance of monsters, characters, and weapons, the art of D&D rapidly became an essential teaching tool as the game reached wider audiences less familiar with some of its fundamental concepts. The illustrations quickly had to become instructional in nature, helping players to not only conceptualize the landscapes, inhabitants, and equipment of the imagined world, but even how to use them in the context of the game. Soon the game and its fandom demanded even greater levels of sophistication--ful lcolor artwork with higher and higher levels of character andcomposition. This movement gave way to a wave of master artists who eventually developed the most important and influential fantasy art from the late 1970s to today--a collection simply unsurpassed in the fantasy genre. The book you are holding is the dynamic story of this incredible game as told through its incomparable imagery, as well as the story of the visuals themselves. It is a carefully curated selection of art, advertising, and ephemera that we feel best represents D&D's incredible forty-plus-year journey--a visual archive that tells a remarkable story of evolution, innovation, turmoil, perseverance, and ultimately triumph. While we expect that much of the enclosed imagery will be at least remotely familiar to D&D aficionados, the collection that follows includes numerous one-of-a-kind rarities, many of which have never been released to the public. We truly hope that you enjoy what you read and see, and that you as readers might approach this piece the same way we did--with unadulterated passion and a taste for adventure. After all, this is an adventure module of sorts, one that is intended for you personally, just as it has been for each of us. "So enjoy, and may the dice be good to you!" Excerpted from Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana: A Visual History by Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, Michael Witwer, Sam Witwer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.