Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who by David M. Ewalt Read Free Book Online Page B

I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion,” he wrote. “Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but—the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.”
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    1 . Games are also a frequent subject of ancient scriptures: In one Indian story, Shiva and his consort Parvati are playing a game of dice and ask the divine bull Nandi to officiate. Shiva loses, but Nandi declares that he’s the winner anyway. This may be the world’s earliest example of a bad Dungeon Master.
    2 . “Troglodyte: This reptilian creature looks somewhat humanoid . . . It has spindly but muscular arms and walks erect on its squat legs, trailing a long, slender tail. Its head is lizard-like and crowned with a frill that extends from the forehead to the base of the neck. Its eyes are black and beady . . . Hit Dice: 2d8+4 (13 hp) . . . Armor Class: 15 . . . Special Attacks: Stench.” Monster Manual, page 246.

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GROGNARDS
    I knew that if I truly wanted to understand Dungeons & Dragons, I had to first understand the games that gave birth to it. But I couldn’t just go to a toy store and buy a hundred-year-old war game: today, games like Little Wars and Kriegsspiel are decidedly out of style. 1 They’ve been replaced as entertainment by war-themed video games and supplanted in education by incredibly complex simulations. Militaries around the world still use war games for training, but these exercises are usually either computerized or playacted. The U.S. Army employs game designers in the Simulations Division at its Command and General Staff College; their events look like highly moderated role-playing games, a cross between D&D, fantasy football, and high school Model UN.
    But dedicated war gamers soldier on. The Historical Miniatures Gaming Society, a nonprofit foundation created to promote the hobby, has more than two thousand members worldwide and hosts a yearly convention—four days of seminars, socializing, and lots and lots ofgames. Since I had never actually played a war game, I decided to check the con out—these games are too important to ignore. (In other words: Fear not, ranger. We’ll get back to D&D in two shakes of a lamia’s 2 tail.)
    Historicon was held over the second weekend in July at the Valley Forge Convention Plaza in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, an edge city about twenty miles northwest of Philadelphia. The town is best known for its massive mall, the largest in the United States. It’s also home to Valley Forge National Historical Park, where George Washington and the Continental Army famously made camp during the American Revolution. But the mall gets way more visitors.
    It’s easy to find the convention center, an unappealing 1970s concrete bunker connected to dusty and dated hotels at either end; the whole complex rises out of a sea of parking lots like a crashed alien spacecraft. Three thousand attendees walked through the doors that weekend to grab spots at over six hundred games. I got there early on Friday to procure one of twelve tickets for “Napoleon’s Battles Boot Camp,” a hypothetical skirmish between French and Prussian armies, intended for novice players. With time to kill, I wandered the halls.
    There are certain characteristics common to all game conventions, whether they’re dedicated to historical minis, role-playing, video games, or board games like chess and Scrabble. The first is gender imbalance. Maybe men are more attracted to competitive games or more likely to obsess about their hobbies; either way, they always constitute a majority of attendees. The second is age imbalance. Convention-goers are more likely to sport gray hair than tattoos andear gauges, probably because of the high cost of attending. Finally,