Review of 'Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This is a nicely written biography that in some ways appears more like a print version of a bio-pic than an old-fashioned biography. There are interludes of imagined game sessions between Gary and his children that effectively recreate the sidebar “fluff” that is a common method for giving readers a feel for the mechanics about which they are reading. The text itself is both descriptive and creative sometimes recounting events in Gary’s life as any typical biography would and other times using the information from interviews, history, and corporate lore, to dramatize the events in the way a bio-pic would.
The conclusions of the book could further be extended today as the success of Dungeons & Dragons and it’s acceptance into mainstream culture has only increased since Witwer published his book. Unfortunately that success has also encouraged lawsuits, jealousy, and mismanagement of Gary’s estate which Witwer carefully avoided addressing.
Highly …
This is a nicely written biography that in some ways appears more like a print version of a bio-pic than an old-fashioned biography. There are interludes of imagined game sessions between Gary and his children that effectively recreate the sidebar “fluff” that is a common method for giving readers a feel for the mechanics about which they are reading. The text itself is both descriptive and creative sometimes recounting events in Gary’s life as any typical biography would and other times using the information from interviews, history, and corporate lore, to dramatize the events in the way a bio-pic would.
The conclusions of the book could further be extended today as the success of Dungeons & Dragons and it’s acceptance into mainstream culture has only increased since Witwer published his book. Unfortunately that success has also encouraged lawsuits, jealousy, and mismanagement of Gary’s estate which Witwer carefully avoided addressing.
Highly recommended not only for those who want to know about the man, the game, and the business but also see, especially today when it is all too obvious that Gary’s legacy is every bit as important and present in today’s globalized world as Roddenberry, or Lucas, or Tolkien.