Of Dice and Men

Chillin' in the hotel in Orange County. Beautiful weather outside. I bet it's 20 degrees in Detroit right now. I'm in a t-shirt. Just sayin'...

I started this book a little while ago and read the final two thirds on the plane ride over from Minneapolis. I had a baby shitting its pants next to me and then getting breastfed. It wasn't ideal so I immersed myself in clerics, orcs, balrogs, and polyhedral dice for the majority of the flight.

Of Dice and Men is, as the subtitle describes, "the story of dungeons & dragons and the people who play it." The author attempts to write a book that is high level enough to appeal to the uninitiated, yet peppered with enough nerdisms to give any dork a nerdgasm. I straddled the fence. I was interested in the anthropological and historical aspects of D&D, but I also have always wanted to play it.

As a youth I stared in fascination at the miniatures set up at my local Games Workshop stores. I was super into Lego as a child, read find-your-fate fantasy novels, and got into heavy metal early on, but I never made the full leap to D&D. I owned Hero Quest and Space Crusade, but I was a one man gamer. I had no idea how to play either game so I just made it up in my head (much like D&D). But I was alone. I never had that mentor or older nerd to initiate me into gaming proper. So I just hung around the periphery of the gaming scene.

Anyway, this book is about the genesis of D&D, its rise to fame, infamy, its fall, and its rise again. The tome looks at the politics involved, the relationships formed and dissolved, and the cultural legacy. It's an impressive story to say the least. Inspirational.

If you have a casual (or serious) interest in D&D then you'll enjoy this book. Hell, even if you literally don't know anything about it, this is still a good read. But I'm not gonna oversell it. It's not the greatest thing since twenty sided dice. But it's good. Check it out. Find your fate...