Being born after the founding of D&D, I have never thought of myself as someone who is interested in the story of the game's creation. (I started playing 2nd Edition AD&D in the early 90s.) Having said that, I really enjoyed how the author was able to transport me back to a time that I had never lived through, and make me feel like I was a fly-on-the-wall seeing the story play out before me. Though he probably takes more than a bit of artistic freedom to narrate the details of game nights that happened 40+ years ago, I totally loved how it felt like I was there. He also does an awesome job of describing the personalities of the founders of D&D and then illustrating how their quirks had an effect on defining how the game came to be what was when I started playing.
I'm not a historian on the subject, or even a faux historian, blogger, forum commentator, etc. so I can't comment on how accurate the picture is that the author creates. He does take the time to reference all of his info, though, and comes out and admits it when he is filling in the gaps (with the game-night details, for example). The end result is a well-crafted story that smoothly scuttles its way across the pages from factual bits to descriptive narratives.
The book is also an interesting read from a game designer perspective as it shows how play-testing results in changes to rules and codification of recurring themes. The creators of D&D went from a loose framework of large-scale mass battle rules and filled in just enough details to be able to describe a dungeon-delving adventure through tables, rolls and sloppy penmanship on scratch-paper character records... Literally, from mom and dad's basement to the world's best-selling fantasy RPG.
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