Rise of the Dungeon Master (Illustrated Edition): Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D Paperback – Illustrated, 25 May 2017

You are Gary Gygax……….. this is your life... a very interesting book and well told and surprisingly touching in parts, especially the ending. A good book and well worth a read for anyone interested in D&D and its creators.

Great as a history of the game, with nice artwork... somewhat lacking in terms of layout and writing style.A must by for D&D history buffs but as a comics nerd it left some to be desired.A full in depth video review can be found on my YouTube channel “mindmilkD20” - search for my channel on YouTube for a detailed review.

Superb.

This is an interesting read, although despite being separated into nine chapters it is also a short read and I finished it within two days, had I not been reading other material at the same time I would have finished it much earlier. Perhaps to state which may be clear already to some shoppers, it is a graphic novel, the story is told through speech bubbles and narration in boxes. The book is based upon a profile from Wired magazine in 2008 and interviews with both Gary Gygax and David Arneson before their deaths, which I think in some ways explains the book being a little more short on detail and sparse than I had hoped for. The illustration, I thought, was excellent, in keeping with the subject matter some pages resemble the illustration in some of the actual AD&D books that I have (second edition).I had little to absolutely no knowledge of the origins of AD&D or anything about Gygax prior to reading this, for instance, I knew nothing of his having a co-writer, David Arneson, or their parting of the ways and dispute over authorship and Gygax suggestiong that Arneson did not contribute much and Arneson's suggest that money had changed Gygax. I did know about the Tom Hanks movie Mazes and Monsters which is a story featuring a troubled young person who develops full on delusions following his involvement in the D&D scene, this gets two panels but the real life story, which supposedly inspired the film (although there were no shortage of stories at the time and its referred to as "Satanic Panic" and has been associated with other sensationalised pop cultural trends, like music, cinema and books before it was D&D) is afforded more space.This would be an interesting book, I think, for anyone who has an interest in D&D and Gygax, I loved for instance all the detail about HG Well's Little Wars and how that tied into the emergence of D&D in the first place as I had discovered HG Well's book independently of D&D and had imagined it would have been a great source for anyone inventing a D&D style game (or later iterations of fantasy games which were table top war gaming style games like Battlemasters then warhammer, warhammer 40K and EPIC). Its remarkable to me that the D&D emerged from the table top war gaming, although in some ways it makes sense too, it also explains for me the strange mix of out right fantasy and historical references and "accuracy" striven after in the second edition books that I own.So far as the narrative goes, or story, it charts the rise of the D&D scene, Gygax creates the game and eventually relinquishes ownership of the company which is producing it, the portrayal also depicts his shift from creating rules for every occasion towards a more spontaneous sort of game play and finally the suggestion that its impossible to have too many rules when it is a matter of people meeting to use their imagination. There is also a short, not exactly clear, mention that towards the close of his life Gygax had spiritual conversion hinging in some ways upon the fantasy role playing itself. There is not a lot of depth to this, except perhaps, I thought the implication that he imagined God to be a kind of cosmic Dungeon Master/Games Master. Although when I think about it much of the book did leave me wishing I could read more, the sources probably are out there and I probably will read more and it probably will be as this book has amplified my existing interest. If I had read more from other sources I suspect that I would be a little underwhelmed by it, the artwork would probably have been as enjoyable.The use of captions to provide narration involves casting the reader in a role playing role, so it will tell you that you are Gygax or Arneson or whoever else the case may be and then tell you about dilemmas or decisions being made. I can see what they were trying to do here and part of the time it works fine, other times I did not think that it worked well at all. Also, although as brief as the rest of the content, in the later part of the book it mentions the rise of alternative companies, such as Steve Jackson's and computer or online gaming, there really is not a lot of detail on what Gygax thought about this, besides a speech bubble in which its suggested that both he and Arneson when they suffered ill health before their deaths enjoyed the direct company of friends gaming. Also that TSR, the D&D company, defended their intellectual property rights and TSR became synonymous "They Sue Regularly". I always wondered about this, as growing up in the UK I had seen the D&D cartoon, I had a vague idea that D&D was a board game from the US which was unavailable where I lived, unlike say Monopoly or Buckaroo.When I first say gambooks I am pretty sure it was Vampire and Werewolf ones and I suspect GURPS, a series launched by Steve Jackson (who I only knew for writing Fighting Fantasy gamebooks with Ian Livingstone, which were more fantasy versions of the Choose Your Own Adventure Series with a dice roll combat system). Unfortunately there is no detail at all as to why D&D did not "export". I remember inventing D&D style games, which resemble what I know now as actual D&D systems but which at the time were entirely of my own devising, the rules were capricious, often made up on the spot and I probably would have snapped up D&D books if the idea could have been explained to me and they were available.Likewise, earlier in the book there is mention of the first text based games being developed by programmers, this really interested me too as I wondered was this something that Gygax et al were just unaware of or considered to be a separate development to their own work. The D&D idea is something which I think would have lent itself readily to early gaming of that type but perhaps that is something I am thinking as someone reading in the present with a perspective that did not exist then. I guess the point is that Kushner and Shadmi dont make it clear in their book, besides a mention that it was happening. Overall, I recommend this but I suspect its for the much less acquainted with the subject matter and it will leave you wanting more information.

I bought this as a gift, the story is quite interresting and the artwork is lovely. I am really happy to have bought this and was worth every penny.

Although surprised at the format I was delighted with the content.