Of Dice and Men

The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It

By: David M. Ewalt

Narrated by: David M. Ewalt, Mikael Naramore

Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

The Hobbit meets Moneyball in this definitive book on Dungeons & Dragons - from its origins and rise to cultural prominence to the continued effects on popular culture today.

Here, There Be Dragons.

Ancient red dragons with 527 hit points, +44 to attack, and a 20d10 breath weapon, to be specific. In the world of fantasy role-playing, those numbers describe a winged serpent with immense strength and the ability to spit fire. There are few beasts more powerful - just like there are few games more important than Dungeons & Dragons.

Even if you’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, you probably know someone who has: the game has had a profound influence on our culture. Released in 1974 - decades before the Internet and social media - Dungeons & Dragons inspired one of the original nerd subcultures, and is still revered by millions of fans around the world. Now the authoritative history and magic of the game are revealed by an award-winning journalist and lifelong D&D player.

In Of Dice and Men, David Ewalt recounts the development of Dungeons & Dragons from the game’s roots on the battlefields of ancient Europe, through the hysteria that linked it to satanic rituals and teen suicides, to its apotheosis as father of the modern video-game industry. As he chronicles the surprising history of the game’s origins (a history largely unknown even to hardcore players) and examines D&D’s profound impact, Ewalt weaves laser-sharp subculture analysis with his own present-day gaming experiences. An enticing blend of history, journalism, narrative, and memoir, Of Dice and Men sheds light on America’s most popular (and widely misunderstood) form of collaborative entertainment.

©2013 David M. Ewalt (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Dungeons & Dragons has been a huge part of my life. The book sheds light on the world of [D&D co-creator] Gary Gygax, and it also lets the reader into the mind of somebody questioning how cool this game is.” (Vin Diesel)

“An engaging book that fuses history and memoir. [Ewalt] tracks D&D's turbulent rise, fall and survival, from its heyday in the 1980s...to the 21st century.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“David Ewalt offers a genial history of Dungeons and Dragons and its impact on his own geek life.... A highly readable account of a game that seized the imagination of a generation and maintains its grip three decades later.” (Publishers Weekly)

From a Passioned Man

It's very clear that this book was written, and narrated if you got yourself the audiobook, by a man that deeply loves the tabletop role playing hobby. David M. Ewalt shows his love for Dungeons & Dragons, and the people that helped make it the influential powerhouse that is today, with every story he tells and anecdote he shares with us.

If you are a fan of Dungeons & Dragons, this book is a wonderful read/listen. If you don't, perhaps it's better, for it'll help you understand us, lovers of the hobby, a little bit better.

Dungeons and dragons nerds!

Dungeons and dragons nerds rejoice! This book is essential reading for tabletop nerds everywhere! From start to finish I was hooked!

Very nostalgic and lots of fun

Brought back many fond memories from high school and college. Great times and friends
Would recommend

Very entertaining

Great balance of history and fun! Can’t wait to start playing dungeons and dragons! Again nice work. Bravo

Excellent listen.

I quite enjoyed the history of D&D and the accessible way it way presented!

Great book on the story of D&D

I enjoyed this book a lot. I didn't play D&D growing up, but I was very interested. This book made me want to go buy the D&D manuals on eBay.

A Story of D&D and David Ewalt

I actually thought this was a pretty good book. The performance was great, but there wasn't much about the people who play D&D unless they were quoted to expedite the history of the game. Beyond that it was basically just a little less of a self-loathing "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks". I found the amount dislike thrown at LARP was a little uncalled for and seems to display the author's lack of knowledge beyond a twenty minute Internet search.

In the end this was still a good book, but I wouldn't recommend this for anyone except the most devoted of RPG fans. The author claims he wrote this for a wider audience but he speaks to the veteran fans in the last 2/3 of the book. I had tears come unbidden to my eyes when the author is talking about Lake Geneva, for no other reason than that is where it all began. So, at the very least, Mr. Ewalt, I thank you for that.

good not great.

if you're uninitiated to the game, this will be an interesting book. if you know about/have played it, it will still be interesting, but maybe less so.

satisfactory look at rpgs and their players

I read this book to try to understand why people play RPG games and get "addicted"
to them. more than a decade ago, i'd been in those shoes with World of Warcraft that i played with a boyfriend living far away, but the need to play for me ended when our physical locations aligned. this book was useful for me to understand how games, beginning with strategy games or war play games, are a way that people can meet others, be creative, have a victory feeling, and build up social skills - is satisfy our base intellectual needs - and that it's easy to want that small satisfaction constantly. don't get me wrong, the book doesn't malign games with addiction to them, rather it weaves together four tales : 1) humanity and strategy games over time, 2) the authors "fall" back into a weekly dnd game and becoming a master 3) an exploration of various gaming communities like LARP and french war games, and 4) tales of characters in a dnd game the author is playing .

i thought the structure of this book was good as the stories mixed well with the observations and histories. my beef was mostly that the voice of the narrator was a lot quieter than i'd like and the emphasis on some words was hard to understand on my headphones and second that i wasn't super into the game stories partly because i didn't really know what various races and classes were and had to wikipedia it. it would have been useful to have an appendix chapter read with descriptions of these.

overall though i'd say that apart from those tweaks i can't really think of any other way i'd chose to absorb this material or a way that wouldn't bore me, so i find it successful.

Fantasy RPG Nostalgia

Of Dice and Men is a fun trip down memory lane for those who grew up in the 70s and 80s playing Dungeons & Dragons while being a quirky bit of gaming history for everyone else.

Tracing the history and development of D&D from the evolution of chess to military gaming in Europe (15th-20th centuries) and Avalon Hill in the US (1950s & 1960s) this performance filled in some of the gaps for someone (myself) who grew up playing these games as a kid in the early 1980s. Alas, nostalgia only applies to those who can relate and the book ran a little overlong.

The performances were good and enhanced the dual narrative between reality and fantasy.