by Samantha Tynes
It’s Friday night. Do you know where you child is?
Ask my mother that question when I was in my early teens and the answer would have been consistent and simple. “Playing D&D with her friends and their parents.”
I love reading. Growing up, I read everything I could get my hands on. I preferred fantasy. Grand stories about a person from some provincial town rising up to save the kingdom, complete the epic quest, become a hero. My friends and I ran around the parks, neighborhoods, and playgrounds pretending to be dragons, warriors, elves, and magicians. After a while, I started writing my own stories. I hadn’t ever heard of RPGs, D&D, or LARPing, but when a friend of mine asked me to join his AD&D game, it seemed a natural evolution.
“What’s Dungeons and Dragons?”
“You make up a character and go on adventures.”
Of course I said yes. I rolled my character, a first bard named Rinu, a few days later. There were other games down the road, Shadowrun, Mutants & Masterminds, and what have you, but D&D was my first and sometimes I still find my way back to it. I was, and still am, an unabashed nerd. David Ewalt (Level 15 cleric) is a nerd. He isn’t ashamed of it either.
In his new book, Of Dice & Men, Ewalt seeks to tackle the history, passions, and culture (inside and outside of gamers) behind the most well-known fantasy game, Dungeons & Dragons, as well as his own journey from former player to full on D&D addict. Ewalt is a senior editor at Forbes, is a writer of all things techie and geeky with his blog (with more than 2,000 articles under his belt), and is well-qualified for the task.
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| Yup. Definitely took the cleric bullet. (Image from Ewalt's Simon&Schuster bio page) |
It’s funny, sometimes surprisingly insightful, and doesn’t pander to geeks or nerd culture. With a full disclaimer in the first pages, Ewalt tells those hardcore D&D veterans that this is mainly for the uninitiated, and yes, he is aware that there are other versions of D&D but he likes 3.5, and that’s what he’ll use for his footnotes (which give a glorious flavor to the already interesting text). By ten pages in, I was already giggling to myself in the middle of the lunchtime cafe crowd.
Of Dice & Men is broken into two distinct parts: gaming pre-D&D, and the aftermath of Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and Don Kaye. A lot of people know the general story behind the creation of D&D, and Ewalt is aware of his own limits, acknowledging that there are more in-depth histories of the game out there. Yet the amount of research and work put into it is evident in the golden nuggets of information he drops, but most impressively is the list of further reading given at the end. He effectively builds on the history of board games, war games, and grognards and how they each influenced the creation of tabletop RPGs.
The book does flip flop between personal narrative and narrative history; peppering in Ewalt’s own D&D adventures and path back to devotee in-between imposed breaks in the history. The story weaved of a group of friends and gamers’ rise and fall is at times more interesting than the anecdotes of his own adventures, both in-game and IRL. At first, the anecdotes seem a little out of place, but as the stories progress the relationship between Ewalt’s campaigns and journey back into gaming is reflected in the ups and downs in popularity and success D&D has had over the last 40 years.
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| See? Level 15 Cleric. Says so right on the cover. (Image from his site) |
I’m all for waving your geek flag high and proud, but with all the facets of geek and nerd culture that are becoming mainstream, sometimes it feels like a small step backwards. We are the cool kids now, whether we want to be or not. Still, the book is an entertaining, quick, and engaging read, ideal for sharing with friends and family who “just don’t get it.” And it made me really, really want to play D&D again.
Of Dice & Men is available here, and lots of other places. Pick it up!
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