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Slaying the dragon : a secret history of Dungeons & Dragons / Ben Riggs.

by Riggs, Ben, 1978- author.

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New York, NY : St. Martin's Press, 2022.

Tactical Studies Rules (Firm)

Fantasy games -- History.

Video games industry -- History.

Dungeons and Dragons (Game) -- History.

9781250278043 (hardcover) :

125027804X (hardcover)

viii, 293 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm

Part I: The rise and fall of Gary Gygax -- The warden's tale -- The birth of TSR, and the D&D phenomenon -- Satan! Suicide! And sales! -- TSR's near-death experience -- D&D and living the riot life in LA -- Part II: The Williams era -- Sympathy for Lorraine -- The departure of Weis and Hickman -- Lost realms found again -- How to find a bestselling author -- D&D, now advanced and 2.0! -- The saga of TSR West -- The fish-bait strategy -- Salvation sales in the book department -- TSR and Tolkien, or the game that was not -- Part III: Slapping a band-aid on failures -- Can VHS teach D&D to eight-year-olds? -- Departures -- TSR's greatest setting can't stop sales slide -- Random House wants its money back -- The giant with feet of lead -- Magic competition -- The warden departs -- Existential absurdity in 1997 -- The tomb -- Part IV: The preacher's son performs a resurrection -- Peter Adkison -- The deal that saved D&D -- Healing the wounds.

"Role-playing game historian Ben Riggs unveils the secret history of TSR- the company that unleashed imaginations with Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, and then saved by their bitterest rival. Co-created by wargame enthusiasts Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the original Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game released by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1974 created a radical new medium: the role-playing game. For the next two decades, TSR rocketed to success, producing multiple editions of D&D, numerous settings for the game, magazines, video games, New York Times bestselling novels by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and R. A. Salvatore, and even a TV show! But by 1997, a series of ruinous choices and failed projects brought TSR to the edge of doom--only to be saved by their fiercest competitor, Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. Unearthed from Ben Riggs's own adventurous campaign of in-depth research, interviews with major players, and acquisitions of secret documents, Slaying the Dragon reveals the true story of the rise and fall of TSR. Go behind the scenes of their Lake Geneva headquarters where innovative artists and writers redefined the sword and sorcery genre, managers and executives sabotaged their own success by alienating their top talent, ignoring their customer fanbase, accruing a mountain of debt, and agreeing to deals which, by the end, made them into a publishing company unable to publish so much as a postcard. As epic and fantastic as the adventures TSR published, Slaying the Dragon is the legendary tale of the rise and fall of the company that created the role-playing game world"--Provided by publisher.

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