Book review: Game Wizards

I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in about 1987 or 1988, fairly quickly making the transition from a player to a dungeon master. My friends and I spent many nights, including some epic all-nighters, exploring dungeons and wilderness areas, fighting monsters, solving puzzles, and collecting treasure. Little did we know at the time the turmoil that TSR, the gaming company that produced Dungeons and Dragons, had been through only a few years earlier.

The upheaval that occurred at TSR in late 1985, along with the various highs and lows of TSR since the game (and the entire genre of role playing games) was invented by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974, is detailed in the book Game Wizards, by Jon Peterson. As he explains:

This book is the story of how D&D rose from its humble origins to become a pop culture phenomenon, and what that remarkable journey did to the people who made it.

That story centres initially on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where Gary Gygax lived. Arneson, meanwhile, lived in Minnesota. Both were members of a small but energetic miniature wargaming community. Through their interactions, they created something great. However, what began as a partnership between two clearly creative individuals quickly devolved into a battle over recognition for their creation. Throughout the book, Peterson paints Arneson as the sort of person who is big on ideas, but short on execution. On the other hand, Gygax is generally able to deliver on ideas, both his own and often (but not always) those of others.

Peterson breaks the book up into episodic chapters, with each chapter corresponding to a year in the life of TSR. Much of the early chapters chronicle the development of the game, and the various characters who made early contributions, alongside Gygax and Arneson. However, very quickly the battleground between Gygax and Arneson is set, and plays out through their writing in wargaming magazines, through the conventions, and eventually through the courts.

An even bigger battle was brewing though, and Peterson does a great job of building suspense for it. The Blume family gradually grows in importance through all aspects of the growing company, but especially at the higher levels of management and governance. Peterson teases the reader in the first few pages, giving a quick view of a great battle to come in 1985. I was fully expecting that battle to be between the Blumes and Gygax, especially as the Blumes increasingly asserted control over the company in the early 1980s, including by disallowing share option purchases by other company employees who were entitled to them. However, in the last two chapters a new player emerges and ultimately takes control over the company, despite what Gygax thought were robust rules to prevent an outside 'non-gamer' taking over. Gygax eventually succumbed, following Arneson out the door with both losing control of the game they created.

I really liked this book. However, I suspect that it is not for everyone. It is, essentially, a case study of how an enthusiastic and entrepreneurial founder, who has developed a successful and growing product, can ultimately lose control of their creation. It is also a case study of how a successful company can lose its way through wasteful forays into non-core activities. In TSR's case, this included ill-fated acquisitions of a craft sewing collective (related to the extended Blume family) and failed movie deals. It is also a case study of how a founder can be outflanked by more clear-headed and business-minded people.

The context of the gaming community made these case studies especially interesting to me, because I recognised many of the names, as well as many of the gaming products and modules and D&D settings that Peterson references. In short, I was the perfect audience for this book. A reader who lacks background knowledge about the game, or who is less interested in the business of gaming, is left with a book about petty copyright disagreements and political manoeuvrings that may be of little interest to them. Nevertheless, I would recommend it to anyone who has interests somewhat aligned with my own.