I have a secret that may surprise you. It’s
not particularly disreputable, certainly not criminal or immoral or even very interesting. It doesn't involve peculiar sexual practises, religious cults or even an unusual addiction but, for what it’s
worth, here goes………….As a teenager I used to play role playing games.
I know, I know. It’s
come as a shock to you to discover that your suave, debonair and erudite host
was once a geeky RPG fan but there it is.
Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu – I had a go
at them all. To be fair, I was never
THAT into it all, largely because I was at a boarding school where sport was
king and geekiness wasn’t. So my
interest manifested more through my accumulation of an extensive set of RPG
systems, combined with the occasional game and, in truth, it had all pretty
much faded away by the time I hit the Lower Sixth.
It had all started in Switzerland of all places in the
summer of 1981. My prep school had arranged
a school trip to a youth centre in Switzerland where we spent a fortnight in
immersive French lessons each morning and a mix of excursions (the Nestlé chocolate factory visit
is still a cherished memory) and sport in the afternoons. The evenings were spent in the usual teen and
near-teen occupations – video games (primitive Space Invaders and Asteroids),
school-type discos, cack-handedly trying to chat up older girls and just
hanging out. The centre was being used
by a number of different British schools and I got into an argument about orcs
with a kid from one of these other schools.
Yes, you read that right – an argument about orcs. I was a Tolkien obsessive at the time and so
was horrified when this kid claimed that orcs were pig-like creatures with
snouts and tusks. Tolkien, after all,
had described orcs as, “"squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with
wide mouths and slant eyes... ...degraded and repulsive versions of the (to
Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.”
So, not at all porcine then.
Argument ensued, almost ending in blows before he explained that his
description came from this really cool game he and his friends were into,
called Dungeons & Dragons. He
invited me to come and watch them play and I was immediately hooked.
On my return from the trip, I badgered my mother into
driving round all the local toy and game shops until we found the red box basic
Dungeons & Dragons set. I corralled
some school friends into playing and my career as a Dungeon Master took off.
Much water has flowed under the bridge since those halcyon
days of youth and I haven’t played or even thought about RPGs in years,
although I still read some fantasy. But,
when I spotted Of Dice and Men in an
Amazon browsing session some months ago, a nostalgic interest slowly stirred
and when the publishers, Scribner, kindly allowed me access to the title
through Netgalley, I couldn’t resist.
Of Dice and Men
combines a history of role playing games in general, but more particularly,
that of Dungeons & Dragons with a quasi-memoir of David Ewalt’s experiences
in the game. It tells of the genesis of
the game and how it evolved from classic wargames, of the gradual falling out
between Gary Gygax and Dave Arnessen, the true founding fathers of D&D and of
the complex and chequered corporate history of the game and TSR, the company
founded by Gygax. It touches on its
cultural impact, from the scare stories of Satanism to its influence on, and
eventual supersession by, video games and is a fascinating insight to a hobby
that was clearly much much larger than I had thought.
The sections of the book that deal with Ewalt’s life in the
world of RPGs and his gradual relapse into playing raised a few wry smiles and
a bit of recognition and I suspect manages to convey the excitement and
pleasure of the game even to those who have never come across it. I found myself getting the urge to play again
and to get hold of the old sets (all of which have been lost in various
clear-outs). Unfortunately, games like
D&D change; as Ewalt describes fluently, there have been various iterations
of the D&D rule system and the current system almost certainly wouldn’t
appeal anywhere near as much as the AD&D system I was familiar with. Most of the other games I came across from
what must have been the heyday of classic RPGs are also now out of print. The world has moved on.
I thoroughly enjoyed Of
Dice and Men and would recommend to anyone, but especially reformed
players. About the only criticism I’d
make is that the descriptions of the actual games he was playing are probably
more of interest to his playing colleagues than to the general reading
public. It’s a minor quibble though and
doesn’t detract from the book as a whole.
And if anyone has an old Monster
Manual or Top Secret set, I might
be in the market…………………
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