Share <Embed>

Buy Used

$11.95

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Deliver to France

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by Quality Books 4 Less

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

46 used & new from $11.94

Deliver to France

See All Buying Options

Added to

Unable to add item to List. Please try again.

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It Hardcover – August 20, 2013

by David M. Ewalt (Author)

200 customer reviews

See all 9 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$13.88

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$28.04

$3.00

Paperback

"Please retry"

$9.86

$1.57

Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$3.18

$27.51

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.

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Michael Witwer

89

Hardcover
$17.53
David Kushner

43

Paperback
$11.55
Wizards RPG Team

153

Hardcover
$32.29
Wizards RPG Team

253

Hardcover
$19.64
Wizards RPG Team

145

Hardcover
$33.96
Madeline Hale

165

Paperback
$10.79

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Jon Peterson

66

Paperback
$34.66
Michael Witwer

89

Hardcover
$17.53
David Kushner

43

Paperback
$11.55
Madeline Hale

165

Paperback
$10.79
Christopher Robichaud

7

Paperback
$14.35
3

$49.93

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gaming expert and Forbes senior editor Ewalt freely admits at the outset of this fascinating expedition into the world of Dungeons & Dragons that aficionados of the role-playing game don’t exactly enjoy a stellar reputation in the larger public eye. Geeks and math fanatics are often viewed as D&D’s main adherents, and the game’s subculture is still tainted by false stories from the 1980s linking it to suicide and Satanism. Yet, despite the current market rage of Xbox and multiplayer Internet games, D&D remains immensely popular, with fans numbering in the tens of millions. Drawing on his journalistic skill and lifelong passion for D&D, Ewalt walks readers through the game’s eclectic rules, sheds light on its surprising origins, and introduces some of its quirky celebrities. From the author’s own years of experience designing D&D scenarios, he also reveals some choice secrets behind becoming a Dungeon Master. Even audiences normally indifferent to D&D’s charms will find Ewalt’s overview witty and absorbing, and the game’s devotees will discover much here to revel in and quibble with. --Carl Hays

Review

“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’s wit, insight and infectious love of D&D make him the perfect guide to the most significant game of the twentieth century. The book is a joy to read.” (Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist)

“It's almost impossible to explain how Dungeons & Dragons works, and harder still to explain how it feels. This book comes as close as any I've ever read.” (Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and I Wear the Black Hat)

“David Ewalt writes about the world of fantasy role-playing junkies with intelligence, dexterity, and even wisdom. (I am unable to speak to his strength, constitution, or charisma.)” (Ken Jennings, author of Maphead and Because I Said So!)

“Long before I made my mark in software, I was a pretty good Dungeon Master, and D&D has played a significant part in my life. In addition to covering much of the deep history of the game that I never knew, Of Dice and Men brought back tons of fond memories, and damned if it didn’t make me pull some dusty old rulebooks off the shelf at home.” (John Carmack, co-founder of Id Software)

"A fascinating history of D&D written by an author who authentically loves the game. Whether you know what d20 means or not you will love this book!" (Felicia Day, actress, producer, creator of The Guild and Geek & Sundry)

"The best book I've read since the Monster Manual." (David X. Cohen, executive producer of Futurama)

"A fascinating window into the storied history of fantasy pen and paper gaming. A must-read for anyone curious about the genre." (Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder of BioWare)

“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)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Scribner; 7/21/13 edition (August 20, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1451640501
ISBN-13: 978-1451640502
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
Average Customer Review: 200 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #839,536 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #331 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Gaming > Dungeons & Dragons
- #4749 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture > General
- #9638 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

Be the first video

Your name here

Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features:

See Kindle Edition

Customer reviews

Write a customer review

See all 200 customer reviews

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Graeme Ing

Excellent history of the game but a padded book

January 9, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

So I’m glad I read this book, but let me explain what you get.
Excellent history. Ewalt clearly did impeccable research, interviewing a lot of people, and all the big names of D&D are in here. He begins his tale long before D&D and even Chainmail, so it’s very thorough.

Unfortunately he spends too much of the book retelling his own exploits as a player in campaigns, and anecdotes. This is fine if you genuinely have no experience or knowledge of how a roleplaying game works, but for those diehards among us, this gets old very fast and I ended up skipping all these bits.

Be advised that 20% of this book is an overly detailed index. That’s a lot of wasted space. He also doesn’t tell the whole story of Wizards of the Coast, instead foisting us off to a web link. Lazy. I’d rather have had that story than the index, because as I said, his retelling of the actual history is extremely well done. I’d also have liked to see more about other TSR games, like the classic Star Frontiers.

I also wish he’d included photographs. That would have been fantastic.

All in all, a great history, but padded in my opinion, especially considering the ebook price.

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

LordYabo

Too much memoir of play sessions not enough biography/history of D&D.

July 25, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Too much memoir not enough biography/history. As an owner of a gaming store I've had plenty of occasions where someone tells me their favorite moments from an RPG campaign. It's always more interesting to the speaker than the listener because role play is so personal. This is where the book falls down: Ewalt relates sessions of playing with his friends in every chapter sort of as a narrative arch for the book? I really don't care and appreciated those first person accounts of their gaming session being in italics so i could skip it and get onto the good stuff, the reason i bought the book. Yet this brings up the second failing.

After a thorough history of the creation of D&D and first years, he just starts to fast forward over the rise and fall of TSR, the purchase by Wizards, and how D&D came back with d20 and 3.0/3.5. I wanted the whole business/biographical story of D&D, i got a pretty good origin story and then some highlights after AD&D. It's like he or the publisher got tired of working on it and just wanted to ship it. It's too bad, because the decline of TSR, the transition to Wizards, then the fan revolt over 4th edition would be great stories with important life/business lessons in them, even if just what not to do.

This is much more a story of Gary Gygax than it is D&D.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment

Doc Watson

A Personal History of Dungeon Delving

December 17, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I'm not sure where I first learned of Dungeons & Dragons; probably an ad in S&T or another wargaming journal. But I purchased that original boxed edition of three books in 1974 while in high school and not long after ran my first session. Coming from an Avalon Hill / SPI wargaming background, my gaming group found the whole idea of an open-ended, story-based, no winners and losers game amazingly different and very interesting. We began playing regularly.

Now, the rules in that very first edition weren't very good, and I think within six months we had come up with our own ways of handling many aspects of the game, but the very concept of D&D was ground breaking. A year or two later I had moved on to different, similar games and then to college, leaving the realm of role-playing games behind me, but the fond memories of those sessions have remained with me. Even now, 40 years later, I still look for games that will give me a taste of that experience.

David Ewalt's cleverly titled and engagingly written book tells his own, personal story with D&D. It comes from what I think is an experience similar to my own, but certainly one that constitutes a deeper and considerably more long-lasting relationship with the game than I ever had.
The book suggests itself to be a history of D&D, and it is, of sorts. You will learn how the game came about and certainly something about the dominate personalities involved in its creation: Dave Arneson and most notably, Gary Gygax, the essential man in the creation of this wing of the gaming hobby. (I appreciate that while Ewalt has respect and a little awe for Gygax, he doesn't steer away from some of the questionable decisions Gygax made while at the helm of TSR, the company formed to produce D&D and other games.) You will also learn something about the legal, financial and focus troubles that beset TSR once the game took off, as a bunch of gamers sought to manage a growing business; it’s some interesting stuff.

While Ewalt takes a look the public relations nightmare that was the “Satanic panic”, so named because a number of social crusaders falsely associated playing D&D with devil-worship and suicide by despondent gamers—a scenario exploited by novelist Rona Jaffe in her novel “Monster and Mazes”, later made into an execrable TV movie starring Tom Hanks of all people. This is an interesting phenomenon, but Ewalt’s look is rather cursory and I felt the topic deserved more. Similarly, once TSR falls into bankruptcy and is bought out by Wizards of the Coasts, Ewalt’s narrative of the game’s history drops off, even though, arguably, D&D has enjoyed its best days under the Wizards, rather than TSR, banner. Ewalt acknowledges this in the 2014 afterward to the paperback edition. It’s not a major failing, but the book does seem to trail off a bit at the end because of it.

In summary, what this book is not is a comprehensive history of D&D over the last forty years. If you are looking for details on the lawsuits and business problems that plagued TSR in the early days, or comparisons between the various editions of the game, you may need to look elsewhere. What the book is, is the history of one person’s involvement in the game, what interested him about the game and what he got out of playing, how he sought to improve his abilities and experience with the game and those he plays it with. (Ewalt interweaves narrative passages drawn from a campaign he was a player in, which nicely illustrate how the mechanics on the game translate into a collective story in the minds of the players and dungeon master.)

And as memoir of Ewalt’s time with D&D, Of Dice and Men does quite well. I enjoyed his adventures, both in the game and in real life, and I think those of who have had a passing acquaintance with +3 swords, saving throws and umber hulks will enjoy this book.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Comment