Game Wizards

Peterson follows Dungeons & Dragons from its beginnings as a niche tabletop game to a cultural presence far beyond the small community that first played it. He begins with the meeting of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and their work toward the game's 1974 release, then covers the founding of TSR and the company's early growth.

The book also examines Arneson's bitter exit from the company and the legal challenges he later raised against TSR. It recounts the Satanic Panic accusations that the game was blasphemous and dangerous, and how that controversy ironically drew public attention to it.

Peterson describes TSR's aggressive expansion and the internal power struggles that left the company deeply in debt and overextended. He shows how Gygax lost his fight to keep control of the company and the game. Written as the game's fiftieth anniversary approached, the book is a careful account by a recognized expert on role-playing games, one that sets aside the rival versions of events offered by the two original partners. It also shows how the intensity of creating something so consequential can cause its makers to remember events differently than they unfolded.