Of Dice and Men

I went in expecting a record of a persons D&D campaign. Most campaigns are entertaining enough, I thought, thus it would make sense to write one down and sell it for the entertainment of others. I was wrong, and I am glad. This book, while it does chronicle the authors travels in his DM's world of choice, weaves said tale in with a comprehensive history of D&D. I came out of it having learned things I never knew about D&D, and I'm glad I chose to read this book rather than just read the Wikipedia article for D&D. This has left me a bit quizzical, however — why doesn't Wizards of the. Coast publish D&D manuals in e-book format?

What a fantastic read! Anyone who has ever played D&D must read this book. Anyone who has ever heard of D&D must read this book. Oh heck. Everyone should read this book. Thanks Dave. Not only have you brought back many great memories of my own youth, but I think I'm going to go dust off a few old game manuals. While I await the 5th edition rules!

I wanted to like this book more based on its geeky subject matter and although it had its moments, I found the narrative to be slow at times and slightly boring. It is definitely great learning the history of D&D, one of the games I played as an early teen in the late 70's. I would recommend this book simply for its subject matter.

This book sets out to explain the history of a game and a social phenomenon, and largely succeeds. It is well-written, funny, and fairly comprehensive, from the point of view of a casual gamer like me. I would not hesitate to recommend it to my non-geek friends, as an overview of one of my favorite pastimes.

I should preface this review by saying that I am and have been a gamer since the 6th grade, even earlier if you count the time my mother bought me a boxed D&D entry game in fifth grade. Now, after almost a decade of playing RPG's, I can officially call myself a member of the 'target audience' of this book. I say 'target audience,' obviously referring to RPG players of any sort, largely out of deference to several ARC readers that implied (or explicitly stated) that gamers were this book's target audience. And, although I am prone to disagreeing with them, I can't do so in good conscience because I am looking at it as one of the 'initiated,' and I'm a decade removed from being uninitiated. That being said, this book is a delight to read. It is far more than a history of dungeons and dragons, though in some ways it is also a lot less. The history is, in some ways, incomplete. Some of the best stories around (that I've heard from interviews, articles, other books, etc.) don't make the final cut. Instead, the history is more of a story. Actually, it's more like multiple stories, paralleling one another beautifully. David (and I feel like I should be on a first name basis with his after reading this book, despite never having met him, which speaks volumes itself) switches between the narrative of the Dungeons and Dragons game and his own adventures within that system. The stories are funny, tragic, and inspiring. At their core, they are very human stories, and many times, they are very compelling. The book itself reads like a travelogue/history/autobiography/internal monologue/philosophical treatise in a way that could, conceivably, become a bit cluttered and confusing, but runs so seamlessly that it feels only natural. There's enough geek lingo to put gamers at their ease, but it's all very well defined and sparse enough to be unobtrusive. The most important thing that I can say about this book is that, as a nerd that frequently dons imaginary armor and shoots dark blasts of eldritch energy from his hands while cackling wildly, this is precisely the book that I would point my uninitiated friends and family towards, if I was trying to explain my strange hobbies to them. It's funny, fun to read, objective (well, as much as one can be), and, most importantly, captures the elusive 'feel' of Dungeons and Dragons. I would recommend this book to anyone.