‘Master’ gives game creator his due in graphic form
It might surprise many people — at least those outside certain nerd circles — to hear that Dungeons & Dragons is as popular today as it has ever been.
The internet, once expected to destroy the pencil-and-paper roleplaying game with online alternatives, has actually made joining in the fun easier for wannabe players and Dungeon Masters (game organizers). Instead of needing to know the kid down the street who owns the red game box, players can go online to find a group to play with as well as watch videos of games to learn how to play.
The fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, released in 2014, spent more than a year on The New York Times best-seller list and has inspired a new generation of gamers.
Thousands tune in to watch Hollywood voice actors play D&D on the livestreamed “Critical Role.” And “True Blood” actor Joe Manganiello tweeted last month that he had co-written a D&D movie script.
Amid the resurgence, a review of D&D history — and the equally tempestuous history of its creator, Gary Gygax — is merited.
Author David Kushner provides just that in the new graphic novel “Rise of the Dungeon Master” — in which he takes on the role of the reader’s Dungeon Master, telling Gygax’s story.
Kushner uses the unusual second-person point of view, but it immediately feels familiar to D&D players.
Chapters start by telling readers whose shoes they are inhabiting and describing their place in D&D’s creation story.
“You are Gary Gygax. You are home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, busy creating the game that will become your greatest legacy: Dungeons & Dragons.”
Kushner adapted the book from his 2008 profile of Gygax in the monthly magazine Wired — one of the last interviews that the game creator gave before his death that same year.
The story remains archived online, but “Rise of the Dungeon Master” oneups that with Koren Shadmi’s detailed blackand-white illustrations.
The visuals guide the reader through the decadeslong story and important concepts as Gygax and the game grow together.
Gygax is joined by other narrators, including Dave Arneson, D&D’s co-creator whose relationship with Gygax famously soured, and detective William Dear, who unwittingly made the game infamous while searching for a missing teen in 1979.
The setup allows the various narrators to seamlessly interject into their own stories; a different style of speech bubble indicates that a comment from a later interview interrupts a scene from the past.
The book also serves as a fitting tribute to Gygax in chronicling the ripple effect of D&D’s influence and its ability to inspire generations of creators. Besides the obvious connections to fantasy shows such as “Stranger Things” and “Game of Thrones,” game designers and celebrities — including Vin Diesel, Steven Colbert and Tim Duncan — break in to the story to cite D&D’s effect on their lives and careers.
The incredible idea that a game created in a Wisconsin basement in 1974 could have such a wide-ranging and positive influence nearly 50 years later speaks to Gygax’s genius and humankind’s love of pure, imaginative fun.
Although the story of Gygax and D&D’s tumultuous beginnings have already become the stuff of legend, “Rise of the Dungeon Master” recounts that history in a way that’s authentic to the spirit of the game beloved by millions of people.