Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Read Online Free PDF

threatening to sew your ass to your elbow. What I do know is that I had it easy. I played D&D as much as I wanted and put up with only occasional teasing: Other kids were forbidden to play the game and ostracized when they did.
    In the 1980s, D&D found itself at the center of a massive hysteria. The game was linked to murders, satanic rituals, and teen suicides. Schools banned it; churches demonized it; courts criminalized it. Law enforcement officials would report that a suspect “was known to play D&D” the same way they might reveal he tortured animals or was a serious drug addict.
    I never wavered in my love of D&D, though I did see other games. As we entered our angsty teenage years, my friends and I spent increasing amounts of time with D&D’s children: role-playing games that stepped out of the fantasy genre to emulate spy thrillers (Top Secret), science fiction (Star Trek: The Role Playing Game), and whatever it is you’d call Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness .
    We were particularly fond of postapocalyptic games like Cyberpunk 2020, which belong to a genre inspired by authors like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. In high school we spent hundreds of hours playing Shadowrun, a futuristic game that brilliantly combined sci-fi with classic D&D elements. The game imagined an apocalypse caused by the return of magic, instead of warfare or disease: It had trolls on motorbikes, elven computer hackers, and an ancient blue dragon named Dunkelzahn who got elected president.
    In practice, Shadowrun played something like Blade Runner meets Conan the Barbarian . My favorite character was a wizard who could shoot a gun with one hand and cast fireball spells with the other. I sat in a friend’s basement and played that character on almost every Saturday night of my high school senior year.
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    A magic-user controls arcane energies through an act of pure will, so I can dismiss Weslocke’s blade barrier just as easily as I summoned it.But not until my next turn. For now, I have to wait, and right now, it’s the pirate’s turn.
    He bites for 11 points of damage, and then Morgan gets a funny look on his face. “Roll against your willpower score,” he instructs me. “The pirate has a special attack.”
    I pick up my favorite d20 and toss it on the mat. Four.
    “Sorry,” Morgan says, though he is clearly not apologizing. “Weslocke is frozen in fear for the next five turns. You can’t take any actions, including casting or dismissing spells.”
    I lie inside my magic cage, cowering, while the monster tears at me with his claws. He digs under my armor and rips through my clothes, slashing my skin in dozens of places. Outside, Babeal, Ganubi, and Jhaden dispatch the other pirates, but reinforcements arrive from belowdecks. And even if they weren’t occupied, they couldn’t help me without being shredded by the barrier.
    I can feel my life force bleeding out of me. I’m going to die.
    By the time I reached college I had become conflicted about my identity as a role-playing geek. Sure, the games were awesome, but I worried about ghettoizing myself in a world of dice and fantasy.
    I didn’t know anyone at my new school, so my first week on campus I went to two club meetings with hopes of making friends. One was the Science Fiction Forum, a sort of nerd fraternity where members watched videotaped episodes of The X-Files, played D&D, and argued about whether the starship Enterprise could defeat an Imperial Star Destroyer in a dogfight. The other club was the Press, the school’s alternative newspaper. It was full of self-styled revolutionaries who smoked clove cigarettes, drank Belgian beer, and thought they were Hunter S. Thompson.
    After a few weeks, I quit the Forum and dedicated myself to the Press . The women were better looking.
    From there I began distancing myself from my nerd heritage. I spent most of my free time in the Press office, writing articles and arguing about politics. I only played one