Of Dice and Men (book review)

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It was suggested by my good friend Jens, who wrote his take on it here. We are planning and reviewing four books simultaneously this year, and this is the first of the bunch. I haven't read his review yet (from a glance, it looks a lot deeper and more detailed than mine!), so let's see how it goes...

The book covers the story of D&D from its predecessors (like Little Wars and Kriegsspiel) through its birth with Gygax and Arneson, until D&D Next (Fifth Edition).

Being familiar with the subject, I thought the book provides a good overview of D&D's history. It is told from the point of view of the author's own feelings and relationship to gaming and D&D, which is often distracting.

For example, the book includes "fiction" excerpts of a homebrew campaign the author participated in, trying to draw parallels between his party's adventures and adventures the rise and fall of D&D. While the campaign does seem interesting, it is not really relevant to the history of D&D. Later on, the campaign excerpts is abandoned in favor of fictional excepts of LARPing and his own campaign setting (which also sounds cool enough).

While I do understand that the goal was probably to make the book a bit less "dry" and not a simple succession of historical facts, I was more interested in D&D's history than the author's feelings. He does spend too long talking about the campaign, dice rolls, feeling "nerdy", and various 3rd edition rules.

In any case, I do appreciate the author taking the time to get up close and personal; he plays wargames, goes LARPing, and describes several RPG experiences. 

In addition to his own experiences, the author talks about people who were playing D&D in 2010, or people who had a big influence of D&D in their lives, work, etc. It is, indeed, not only a story about D&D, but also about the people who play it - even those that have no influence on the development of the game.

While I'm somewhat familiar with D&D's history, I couldn't spot anything inaccurate or any novelty. The book is meant to be understood by people with no D&D experience, so there is lots of explaining of basic concepts. I do think the book glances over Basic D&D and 2nd Edition, and  barely talks about other RPGs, but overall it is comprehensive.

It ends overly optimistic about 5e, which is understandable - at the time, we hadn't seem the 2023 OGL  debacle... [I jest, I jest! Well, kinda.]

I should mention I read "Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons" in 2022. In comparison, Empire is much more focused on Gygax and D&D's history than the author and D&D players. Both are interesting reads. I found neither thrilling, but I got what I was looking for.

In short... a decent read, good if you know D&D history, great introduction if you don't.

(Now go read Jens' take if you haven't yet!)