Gaming & Gygax
I have long suspected that there was a good story behind the creation of Dungeons & Dragons. The earliest D&D publications listed David Arneson and Gary Gygax as co-creators, but then Arneson disappears. Was this some sort of Stan Lee vs Jack Kirby type situation where one creator got all the credit and the other got shafted? Gygax would later leave the company under less than amicable terms. TSR (the company Gygax founded to publish D&D) went from being the fastest growing gaming company in America to millions of dollars in debt and selling its assets to upstart gaming company Wizards of the Coast. What was the story behind all that? What about the charges of occultism and teen suicides that were brought against the game in the 1980's?
Ewalt tells those stories and does a good job of it. Of Dice and Men is very close to being the backstage book about D&D that I have always wanted to read. I wish Ewalt had gone into even more detail; had explored what went on at TSR and WotC during the last few decades; had told the stories of the creators who came and went and the company politics that led to the creation of the various editions of the game. That is not the story Ewalt tells here though. After Gygax parts company with TSR the author's interest in the company fades.
Playing Dungeons & Dragons is a very subjective experience and as a result books about the game tend to become about the author. These narratives tend to go in two directions. Either the author approaches the gaming community like a biologist studying a troop of chimpanzees, or he relates his personal story of being a friendless 13 year old until he discovered D&D and began a new life of adventure as a Half-Elf Ranger. The first approach is condescending and the second is boring. Ewalt dabbles in both approaches but avoids the worst of both as well. I could have done without all the details about the author's campaign, but his account of visiting Gygax's home town attending Gary Con are touching. I will forgive the discursive material because the interesting materials outweighs it by a good margin.