Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons \u0026 Dragons by Ben Riggs

Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons \u0026 Dragons Reviews

• 
  Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)

  If you're at all into gaming or geek culture and have any interest in history, this is definitely worth a read. Slaying the Dragon is a fascinating account of the history of TSR, the company that created Dungeons and Dragons, all the way through it being bought by Wizards Of the Coast.
  
  The author interviewed as many people as possible to do research for the book and it offers a nuanced look at what happened, including details on the poor financial decisions that ended up leading to the downfall of TSR. But you also see how amazing it was at its best, some of the incredible artists and writers who were developed at the company (even if they too often failed to retain their best talent). There are some wild, fun, and tragic stories. Plus the irony of the fact that this game central to the Satanic Panic of the 80's and 90's was created by a devout Jehovah's Witness!
  
  I enjoyed this a lot, though at times the author inserted himself into the narrative a bit too much. I do wish this had covered more on HOW D&D became so popular in the mainstream in the past decade or so. It's mentioned at the end, but not in any great detail. That said, this is interesting and well-researched. The audio narrator does a great job and nails the tone of the book - history, but also light and sometimes a bit tongue-in-cheek. Which works for the topic. I received an audio review copy of this book via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.
• 
  Scott (*on a brief hiatus - California Dreamin’)

  4.5 stars
  
  "Where's my other bar of gold?" -- punchline to an anecdote representing the ever-present divide between the creative and corporate factions at the company TSR Inc, on pages 200-202
  
  For those who have never rolled multi-sided dice and/or assumed the guise of a wizard or warrior in your free time I'm here to tell you that Riggs' Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons was still an accessible and even enjoyable work regarding that name-brand RPG (or 'role playing game') which is celebrating its 50th (!) birthday this year. To be clear, this book is really not so much about the minute details of the games / products themselves but the people and personalities that staffed the TSR (Tactical Studies Rules), Inc offices in a converted Q-Tip factory in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin from the glory days of the 70's and 80's into the downward spiral of 90's. The narrative was not particularly salacious or damning, but what I felt by the conclusion was that author Riggs admirably took great pains to be even-handed or even depict the best parts of all those involved - for example, the one longtime CEO could be (and is in fact considered so by some of the game's devout fans) the villainess of the piece, but what I will probably remember best about her is a moment where she allowed a beloved game designer to take extensive paid leave time when his wife unexpectedly required long-term hospitalization and simply would not accept his resignation request. Additionally, author Riggs clearly hustled and interviewed so many of TSR's creative folks involved - writers, artists, etc - that both the their talent AND good-naturedness often bled through the pages. And just when is seemed like the company would likely crash and burn into bankruptcy it received a heartwarming reprieve that is detailed in the closing chapters. The provocative title of this book (or what you'd think it might be about) may be off-putting to some, but I thoroughly enjoyed learning firsthand about what kept the Dragon breathing fire for all of those years.
• 
  Dave

  Riggs, a D & D fan, traces the humble beginnings of Dungeons & Dragons creation at the hands of Gygax and Arneson through the buy-out by Lorraine Williams to Peter Adkinson's take over of the company with Wizards of the Coast. An amazing adventure, feat and journey unto itself.
  I started the game myself way back in 1981 or so when I saw a 9th grader looking through the 1st edition Monster Manual during study hall and asked him if I could look through it. He let me and I had no idea what the numbers all meant, but I was enthralled with all the monster depictions by artists Trampier and LaForce.
  I know why Riggs was referring to Gygax as "Saint Gary" but that got tiresome in spots otherwise the book seems to tell it like it was and is. Adkinson comes off a bit like undercover boss near the end by having good creators who quit or let go come back to the fold.
  I would like to see another volume detailing both 4th and 5th editions of the game.
• 
  Andi

  I'd like to thank the publisher and Net Galley for allowing me read this book about the rise and fall of TSR.
  
  If you would have met me almost 10 years ago I would have told you very little about what Dungeons and Dragons is. I would have said, it's a movie and a tv show, and it's roleplaying with dice. That's it. In 2014, I had witnessed a video of girls playing a game and thought, 'hm, looks fun, easy,.. I played video games and I have done roleplaying, So maybe I can do this too.' And now, I've played multiple campaigns through both vintage TSR, Wizards of the Coast, and also from current 3.5 and 5 E.
  
  This book is well told, well researched and gives the truth and I think answers that some people seek or have always known (but now confirmed) regarding what on earth was going on in the company. From the birth of the game through Gary, to the take-over from the female who wished to pay more attention to Buck Rodgers, and the sacking of everyone and everything to keep afloat. It also goes over some random moments when they tried to make their way into other media like tv and CD roms.
  
  I was thoroughly entertained and now I can tell my friends - I know things from this book! If I never played D&D I would have no interest in this book. If I played D&D for longer, I might know these stories but not the truth. So in short, I'd give this a shout-out and a need to purchase book for the person who loves D&D or is fascinated by the world.
• 
  C.T. Phipps

  
  https://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/2...
  
  Dungeons and Dragons and its parent company in the Eighties, TSR, had a fascinating story that has mostly been shared around by gamers at cons as well as word of mouth for decades. This isn't the story of the Satanic Panic that both villified gamers and drove sales through the roof. No, this is a story of the internal politcking that led to the rise of TSR as a corporate entity under Gary Gygax, his loss of the company to Lorraine Williams, and how it was ultimately acquired by Wizards of the Coast before becoming yet another corporate culture.
  
  Generally, popular wisdom holds Gary Gygax as blameless and portrays Lorraine Williams as the villain who stole his compay but Ben Riggs has a very different sort of take on things. Indeed, his portrayal of Lorraine Williams makes her every bit as endearingly quirky as the rest of TSR's creatives. Gary Gygax was a creative genius but a poor businessman according this book, spending boatloads of money on bizarre projects like trying to take a shipwreck from the bottom of a lake as well as a hard-R Dungeons and Dragons movie when they were presently marketing it to kids.
  
  Lorraine Williams was an excellent businesswoman, by contrast, but not as interested in the creative side of things and attempted to keep her distance in the company from employees. Which was bizarre given its tiny size and enthusiastic love of the material. She was also obsessed with the Buck Rogers IP and erroneously believed it would be a massive success. Later, she would attempt to move out of the tabletop roleplaying game business into paperback publishing because they were selling far more of those than they were of games. This, as you could imagine, didn't go over well with all of the obsessive gamers within.
  
  The book is full of fascinating details and, to be frank, dirt on the history of TSR as well as it's parents. There's some genuinely scandalous revelations about the people involved as well as the treatment of employees. Margaret Weis, mother of Dragonlance, made only $30,000 a year while being the best-selling author who was actually keeping the company afloat. Gary Gygax was cut out of a massive portion of his profits that he was entitled to. Random House, of all people, was cheated by TSR when the latter tried to give them a massive amount of product no one was buying (Dragonstrike) in order to get a huge check.
  
  The depiction of TSR in the book is a company that was populated by rabid fans working primarily for their love of the product that didn't really adjust too well to being an actual business. A lot of bizarre and insane mistakes were made but no one is a true villain. Many people were underpaid (Ed Greenwood was given about $2000 dollars for the Forgotten Realms' rights and even then only a courtesy) but everyone seemed to love what they were doing until they suddenly weren't doing it because of mismanagement.
  
  Really, if anyone comes off as a hero of this, it is the most unexpected one in Peter Adkinson. He not only bought TSR despite the company was five million dollars in debt but paid off all of their individual artists, including Gygax. He also was willing to buy the company despite the fact Lorraine Williams had a personal detestation of him that seems to have originated in her belief that Wizards of the Coast was their biggest rival despite them not making tabletop RPGs.
  
  The writing is crisp and humorous, often highlighting the absurdities of the situation without making much in the way of direct judgement. It is an unflattering but not condemnatory depiction of TSR and would make a great basis for a Mad Men or The Pirates of Silicon Valley-esque drama. I strongly recommend this as a easy-to-read introduction into the history of Dungeons and Dragons.
• 
  Matt

  I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads program in exchange for an honest review.
  
  TSR just appear to be three letters, but it was the company founded to publish Dungeons & Dragons which launched the role-playing game genre and would impact fantasy throughout pop culture. Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Riggs tells the story of a small company in a little Wisconsin city that changed pop culture.
  
  Riggs account of the company that literally invented a game genre, not only covers the beginnings of the rise of geekdom into the pop culture zeitgeist but also the creative individuals a part of the company that created fascinating new worlds to play in or as time went on to delve into through fantasy novels both augmented by amazing art. In addition to interviewing scores of former employees and executives of TSR, Riggs delved into internal sales numbers, contracts, lawsuits, and other related financial details to full detail the health of the company over its lifetime while relating the information in easily readable prose. Although he tried to get her first-hand account, Riggs had to examine the role of Lorraine Williams—who came in to save the company but ultimately whose decisions resulted in its death a decade later—through the eyes of others each with their agendas and or grievances.
  
  Slaying the Dragon records the history of a company that created and dominated its own industry until it collapsed trying to grow its customer base and broaden its portfolio. Ben Riggs does an excellent job in revealing the individuals that ran, sustained, brought it down, and ultimately though that saved its legacy.
• 
  MissBecka Gee

  As someone who only touched on RPG in her teens, I found this fascinating.
  I married a mega D&D nerd, so my education has been increasing over the last 20 years or so.
  I was able to teach him a thing or two as I listened to this book.
  There was quite a bit more to the destruction of TSR than anyone on the outside knew possible.
  I will have to listen to this a couple more times to retain all the info, but I'm okay with that.
  The amount of research and interviews Riggs did to get this together was highly impressive.
  Looking forward to listening to it again!
  Much love to NetGalley & Macmillan Audio for my DRC.
• 
  Anton

  Roundup from 3.5 based on the true and deep passion of the author for the subject. I was delighted to share his enthusiasm. So if you are a diehard D&D fanatic you may enjoy this volume too.
  
  HOWEVER. I did not love it. If you are into the subject, I suggest starting here:
  -
  Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It. It is fantastic and tells a slightly more rounded story.
  
  If you want to dive properly deep, go with:
  -
  Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventure from Chess to Role-Playing Games; or
  -
  Designers & Dragons
  
  All three books above focus on the phenomena that D&D and tabletop roleplaying are as well as an account of the key actors in the history of the hobby. The kind of stuff you really want to know...
  
  Ben Riggs on the other side chose a slightly different focus. He investigates TSR the company and the story of its demise. So it is like an extended Harvard Business Case Study on TSR's business, not D&D the game. The problems I have with his approach are:
  - from pure business standpoint, TSR is just not remarkable enough. It is 'small beer' company with a product that has massive cultural significance but not a commercial impact;
  - the account comes across as a little naive. All creatives are good. All executives = 'suits' are stupid, evil or both. TSR is badly run, Wizards of the Cost can do no wrong. It just not how the world works...
  
  To make it work, a lot of emotion is injected through commentary full of melodrama, hyperbole and irony. Too much for my liking. The parts of the story that focused on people were super enjoyable and insightful. The speculations about business decisions came across as a bit childish.
  
  So a mixed bag. But a bag about a subject one loves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Kristin Sledge

  4.5 stars rounded down.
  
  Dungeons and Dragons was a very taboo subject in my household growing up. Living in an EXTREMELY religious house, one where even watching Pocahontas talk to Grandmother Willow was taken as letting demons in/false worship, it was never an option to be exposed in any capacity. Fast forward to now, where I have played many characters in many campaigns and love everything about D&D. I feel so lucky that I was able to learn more about the history of this amazing game and that we live in a world saturated with exquisite live-play podcasts such as Dungeons and Daddies and Critical Role.
  
  Riggs does this story justice, laying out all the avenues(good and bad) taken by the founding company, TSR, throughout the early years of D&D. He gives a voice to not just Gygax but the artists, writers, and creative minds that kept the wheels of progress moving ever forward.
  
  I can honestly tell you that this Level 9 Monk/Barbarian Fawn player has loved every second of this novel and look forward to future installments of the ever evolving game of Dungeons and Dragons. 4.5 stars rounded down, and a massive recommendation for all those who love table top games; or even those looking to dip their toe in.
  
  Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Sherrie

  ***I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway***
  
  If you want an ego boost, and you're a bit of a geek, you should read this book. The inventors and leaders of the company that made Dungeons and Dragons were brilliant folks who did everything wrong. It's astounding that anything was accomplished. If they can do it, so can you!
  
  It's hard to write a book about the intricacies of a business for multiple reasons. First, where do you get your information? How do you fact check? The author did a stupendous amount of research for Slaying the Dragon and it shows. They acknowledge when their information is incomplete and I appreciate that level of honesty.
  
  Second, business is BORING. Contracts, fees, financial agreements...it's hard to write that in a way that keeps people excited. The author gave it the good college try, though, using very informal language (including the occasional curse word!) and creating a tone that honestly felt like someone chatting with their friends about their hobby. At first this kind of bugged me, but by the end it felt like a good choice for this particular book. I expect that this will split the audience a bit.
  
  Overall, this was a fun jaunt through the history of D&D. If you're a gamer, you might enjoy it.
• 
  Jason Pettus

  2023 reads, #21. As a member of Generation X, I of course obsessively played the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons way back in the late '70s right after the game had been invented (I bought my first Basic boxed set in 1978, just one year after they began being sold, then moved to Advanced D&D a year later); but unlike the Gen-X males who went on to be lifelong gamers (of not only RPGs but then tabletop games and then videogames), I gave up on gaming of all kinds for good a few years later as a teen in the early '80s, as my focus shifted much more to things like music and girls. So, I largely missed all the drama at the time when D&D creator Gary Gygax was forced out of his own company in 1985, then with the new executives managing to run the company completely into the ground in just over another decade after that, through a series of decisions so bad it makes the head spin still to this day, eventually going bankrupt and being bought for a pittance by their rivals, the now massive multinational corporation Wizards Of The Coast. That makes me glad for books like the new Slaying the Dragon, a clear and plainly written guide to the ultra-fascinating proceedings, penned by gaming-focused journalist Ben Riggs (who among other bona fides publishes regularly with Felicia Day's "Geek & Sundry" multimedia content company).
  
  Under his sure hand (if not dipping a little too often into Joss Whedon-level purple prose), the story he paints is almost ridiculously easy to understand in hindsight: a group of dysfunctional, nerdy gamers in a small town in Wisconsin, who are used to "publishing" their guides as xeroxed booklets and maybe selling in the hundreds if they're lucky, catch lightning in a bottle by inventing the world's first intellectually-based (i.e. doesn't rely on miniatures) roleplaying game, at the exact moment in history the entire general public is hungry for such a game. Suddenly they're selling out left and right, and quickly realize they could be selling in the millions if they can get their shit together enough to actually scale up to that level; but unfortunately, they're all a bunch of dysfunctional nerdy gamers in a small town in Wisconsin and therefore not up to the task, making TSR almost fold not even a decade after they began.
  
  That's when Gygax was convinced to invite in the sister of a friend, the now notorious villain Lorraine Williams, which as far as I can tell happened because she was the only person any of them knew who actually had an MBA from a business school; but unfortunately she turned out to be one of those people who was probably at the bottom of her class at that business school, skating by with a D+ average, just barely understanding the basics of how to run a corporation, and not smart enough to understand that big risky decisions can easily blow up in your face. This then seemed to be combined with a thoroughly unpleasant personality, one of those permanently sour fucks who notoriously thought she was morally better than the nerdy artists and writers who produced all of TSR's contents, with the kind of cold sociopathy that lets someone casually commit horribly offensive, dispiriting corporate acts with a bored wave of the hand, and an monomania that Riggs cleverly describes as "speedboat thinking" (as in, if you're a rich asshole who owns a speedboat, then you get to do whatever the fuck you want to do with the speedboat, even crash it into a brick wall if you want, because you're the rich asshole and you own the speedboat, plebes).
  
  That led to a series of bad decisions from day 1 of Williams' reign, which began by her sneaking around behind Gygax's back and purchasing a 51% ownership of the company, then immediately firing him without even a two-week notice or a kiss goodbye, then leading to a series of evermore bungling and hole-digging mistakes as the years continued, which instead of humbly fixing caused Williams to react with evermore indignation and defensive posturing. Just to name one example out of hundreds I could (and bear with me for the long story), at a certain point TSR was partnering with DC Comics to put out a line of popular D&D titles, but Williams started insisting that they also do a title about Buck Rogers, because Williams' family just happened to own the rights to Buck Rogers (her grandfather, newspaper executive Frank Lille, was willed it by the character's creator, Philip Francis Nowlan, as a thank-you for helping him get it sold to syndicates in the first place), and so she was constantly shoving the intellectual property down everyone's throats so her family could make another extra buck on top of everything else TSR was making.
  
  Problem was, in the '90s Buck Rogers stank from the leftover reek of the cheesy '70s adaptation, before it had become retro and warmly remembered, and before the explosion of big-budget superhero movies, so TSR took a hard pass. Now incensed, Williams impulsively decided to start an entire new comic book division of TSR, despite no one there actually knowing anything about how to write, draw, ink, print, publish or distribute comics, and suddenly threw tens of millions of dollars at it; and DC, rightly pissed, took them to court over the deal they supposed had with them. Williams was then forced to come up with a shaky legal loophole, calling their product "comic modules" that come with both a comic story and a cut-out mini-game in the back of each issue, which was just enough to stop the lawsuit; but DC reacted by canceling all their D&D lines but retaining their exclusive right over it, making TSR not only lose out on missing revenue but double-lose by not being able to actually publish D&D comics through TSR Comics. Now add that their exclusive distributorship at the time with Waldenbooks had the comics stored in the gaming aisle where the comics kids never saw them, that the gamer kids didn't like the games, and that the comics kids weren't about to cut up their collectible comics, and suddenly TSR was gushing money, simply because Williams combined bad business sense with a grating personality.
  
  And this is to say nothing of how the company finally ends, where Williams really shows off her D+ in business school by engaging in such ultra-risky behavior as "sectioning" [that is, when a proven profitable company presells that year's profits at an 18% loss to an investment bank, in return for getting all the cash at once at the beginning of the year, so to cook the books and look like they're doing much better than they actually are], and taking advantage of the 150-year-old "gentlemen's agreement" between publishers and brick-and-mortar bookstores, where the stores pay immediately for all books they might order from a publisher, but have the legal right to send back unsold copies a few months or a year later and get a full refund, with TSR in the early '90s shipping millions of extra copies of merchandise to Waldenbooks nationwide to get the cash for them fast, and deciding to worry later about what happens when Waldenbooks returns all that unsold merchandise and demands their money back. Which of course is what they notoriously did a few years later, right when the Great Comics And Gaming Crash Of The Mid-'90s happened and everyone's chits were called in, the company finding themselves now with a whopping $30 million in unpaid debt, which led to mass firings five days before Christmas (because of course it did), then their bankruptcy and acquisition by Wizards Of The Coast six months after that.
  
  There's a whole lot more here to discover, so don't let today's extra-long writeup make you think I'm telling you the entire story; we haven't even touched today, for example, on Gary Gygax's insane turn in the early '80s starting up an LA production company for TSR, in which he bought a luxury home in the Hollywood Hills and started having these crazy drug and sex parties, having meetings with people like Orson Welles about being in a big-budget D&D movie, and all kinds of other nutso details about the whole saga over this book's fast-reading 300 pages. But perhaps one of the most fascinating details, and something I'm glad Riggs was able to get in right at the end of the book, was how Wizards founder Peter Adkison is almost like the anti-Williams: he's brutally honest with himself about his strengths and weaknesses (Wizards' first attempt at a product was written by him, but everyone hated it, and he realized he needed to start hiring outside creatives); he saw the writing on the wall early (their first official product was an add-on manual for an RPG, and when it bombed he saw that the industry was about to crash); he understood that great ideas often come from identifying a need (their massive seller -- nay, society changer -- "Magic: The Gathering" was inspired by him going to sci-fi conventions and seeing conventioneers endlessly spending 20-minute periods hanging out in hallways waiting for banquet rooms to open, and realizing they desperately needed a mini-game easy to carry that could provide exactly 20 minutes of legitimately thrilling fun); and he recognized and rewarded talent (his first employee went on to be the world's first female CEO of a gaming company, going all the way back to Parker Brothers and the like). People like to paint Wizards as a giant faceless corporation that swept in and picked up D&D for a song and then blanded it out to its listless state it's now in; but it's good for Riggs to remind us that they started as just another small nerdy gaming company too, but in their case knew how to do everything right, which is how they ended up being such a massive success and a shadow over all of gaming that they now are.
  
  So, yes, a lot here to take in, a kind of simply written but conceptually sweeping look at...well, really, the whole of American society from the late-'70s to late-'90s, which is why this will appeal so much to so many middle-agers out there, even if told through this interesting but ultra-niche corner of society dedicated to the rise, fall, then normalizing of this brand-new form of entertainment that suddenly cropped up out of the blue. It comes strongly recommended, and will undoubtedly be making my Best Of The Year list I'll be publishing later in December.
• 
  Ross Lockhart

  An engaging look behind the scenes at the rise and fall of TSR and development (and legacy) of Dungeons & Dragons. I'd compare Slaying the Dragon to Jon Peterson's Game Wizards and The Elusive Shift or Shannon Appelcline's Designers & Dragons, but Riggs has a much looser, anecdotal writing style than Peterson's more academic tone. Occasionally, Slaying the Dragon feels like a tabloid reporting on the excesses and shortcomings of TSR management, wallowing in the sensationalism of bad business decisions. But then again, that's also a fair assessment of the personalities behind the company's ascension and demise. Though there are no clear villains here, only fallible humans. On the other hand, current IP owners Wizards of the Coast do come across as downright heroic, stepping in and saving Dungeons & Dragons as the book nears its close. Recommended for those who wish to understand what happened at TSR beyond the usual hagiography of Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax, and how a business can go so far off the rails while still producing memorable work.
• 
  Tom

  I managed to wade my way through the first part of the book, but that was it. Sure, there's some really interesting history in here, but the writing is amateurish and in dire need of editing. Tons of thinly-veiled and snarky personal attacks get in the way of telling the story. The most damning indictment of the book is the quantity of "(he/she) wouldn't talk to me and I can't blame (him/her)" statements made throughout the section I did manage to read--not good.
  
  Don't trust the majority of the other reviews--they're all written by people who received free copies.
• 
  Jonfaith

  [listened to the S6 of Shostakovich which is a spare marvel, an apologia, a bruised poem against diktat. How apt.]
  
  During my junior high years (12-14) I discovered Dungeons and Dragons. My friends and I loved it, possibly without quite understanding such. Through the darkened glass of nostalgia it was likely a raft as nearly everyone of us was experiencing some measure of dislocation: divorce appears to have been the national pastime in the mid 1980s. I gather that I always enjoyed reading the attendant materials rather than actually playing the game itself. We eventually migrated from the game to other role playing endeavors and then upon reaching high school we drifted apart. I never felt any interest in video games; fantasy as well as science fiction were both just genres of film and later literature to be trawled but not embraced.
  
  Christmas Eve I found myself kneeling in the direction of nostalgia. I communicated to my best friend an interest in parsing the appeal and the experience of those D&D campaigns. Such is linked to Cold War epistemology and a burgeoning sexuality which was likewise ambivalent and prone to propaganda. Yesterday I discovered that this history was available at the library and the possibility appeared beyond the fortuitous it was a mandate of sorts and how quickly I was disappointed. I am not sure the history of role playing games deserves a better writer than Riggs but anything deserves at least nominal editing. This is easily the worst book I read in 2022. Repetitions and clunky asides are the very structure. Jejune monikers and hayseed descriptions appear to be the authorial palette as it were and woe to the reader who persists after recognizing this was four page article bloated by anecdotal bad writing.
• 
  Korynne

  I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons or any tabletop RPG games, nor watched anyone play them, so I’m not sure why I was drawn to this book. I’ve always loved video games, so I’ve always wanted to try out D&D and other formats of games, but for some reason I’ve never had the opportunity or means to play. Nevertheless, I still wanted to read about its history.
  
  Slaying the Dragon is the true story of the rise and fall of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), the original creators of Dungeons & Dragons, and how the game ultimately ended up in the hands of Wizards of the Coast, TSR’s biggest rival at the time.
  
  Despite having never played D&D and not being a huge fan of nonfiction, I actually found this book to be very interesting and easily readable. The author’s writing is so captivating and enjoyable. This wasn’t dry or hard to read at all. The only real complaint I have is that sometimes I got the people mixed up, but that likely comes from listening to the audiobook and not being able to see the names written down, which overall wasn’t a huge deal. The audiobook narrator was excellent though and had a great voice to listen to.
  
  The history of D&D is full of surprises and the author did a great job of laying it all out from the beginning, including all the big moments while also highlighting minor details that were notable or simply just interesting facts. I think it’s hilarious that in the “Satanic Panic” era of the 1970s, people thought D&D summoned actual demons and enticed people to commit suicide. I’ve never understood how people come to these absurd conclusions about fantasy games or novels.
  
  Overall, Slaying the Dragon was a super fun read that I would definitely recommend to any Dungeons & Dragons fans out there, whether you were a hardcore fan in the ’80s or you’re a casual player now or you only read the novels. Tabletop and RPG gamers would likely also have a good time reading this book. Above anything, it’s a really fascinating history, even if you aren’t super familiar with D&D (like me). I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read this.
  
  My Book Blog:
  Storeys of Stories
• 
  Hannah

  ***I received an audio ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***
  
  I love DnD but am kind of a newbie to tabletop RPGs (with the exception of HeroQuest in the 90s and some card games). So, I came into this book from a completely objective viewpoint about the people involved in DnD's history. Riggs seemed objective to me as well, which I really appreciate in a history book about something that can apparently be a very contentious topic in the RPG world. Slaying the Dragon was well-researched, packed with information, and still fascinating and funny! I really enjoyed the narration, too. Definitely recommend to anyone interested in DnD or recent microhistories set in the U.S.
• 
  Jordan

  This book will no doubt stand amongst the pillars of RPG history. Meticulously researched, yet the book never forgets that these were things that happened to real people.
• 
  Pierre Armel

  This is the review of a reader who paid the full price for this book. No review copy here!
  I loved this book and devoured it in a few hours. If you are into RPGs that is a fascinating and thoroughly researched account of the history of TSR, the company behind D&D, but also of its creative and less creative staff. If you are not into RPGs that is still the riveting story of a company which never found the way to balance creative craziness and corporate requirements. Recommended!
• 
  Dave Wheeler

  It feels like this book was written for fans of D&D who already know some of the history of the original company and it’s major players. I enjoyed learning about TSR and D&D as I have never played, but I heavily disliked the writing style and decisions. It is very fanboy-y and I felt that the author did not include enough dates of events in the first half of the book. Also the casual language was very off putting, for example the many uses of “Saint Gary” in reference to creator Gary Gygax.
  
  I enjoyed the content but reading this book was a chore.
• 
  Adam Whitehead

  In 1974, wargamers Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created the world's first roleplaying game: Dungeons & Dragons. An immediate, enormous hit, the game fuelled the creation of the TSR company and a quarter of a century of classic gaming products, not to mention power struggles and dubious corporate decisions.
  
  The story of TSR, its rise and fall, has been told before and the narrative is familiar, from Gygax and Arneson's early days in miniature gaming to coming up with the first dungeons and the first campaign settings (Blackmoor and Greyhawk). They then start TSR and Dragon Magazine, Arneson is maneuvered out of the picture and the game's immense success sees Gygax living the high life in Los Angeles trying to get a movie made whilst the company teeters on without him. Then businesswoman and Buck Rogers licence-holder Lorraine Williams takes over, forces Gygax out, and the company sees renewed success in the late 1980s from new campaign settings (such as Forgotten Realms), a second edition of the game and entries to the video game and novel markets, which keeps things going until everything blows up spectacularly in the late 1990s, resulting in the sale of the company to Magic: The Gathering creators Wizards of the Coast.
  
  Whilst the story is familiar, there's a lot more detail in Ben Riggs' book, which calls upon interviews with a huge number of ex-TSR luminaries, although there are two notable absences. Gygax passed away in 2008, so is only represented through archive interviews. Williams declined to be interviewed for the book, so Riggs has to rely on second-hand accounts, interviews with some of her close co-workers and a few archive interviews (particularly drawing on David Ewalt's Of Dice and Men, the last book Williams was interviewed for). This leaves the book feeling oddly structured: a heroic saga where both the main protagonist and main antagonist (who is who depends on your point of view) are absent for large stretches of it.
  
  To be honest, the main narrative of the book is well-known to the point of overfamiliarity to any long-standing roleplaying fans (newcomers who have come to the game in the last few years - and there's a lot of them - will find much more of interest here), so it's more in the details where it shines. The saga of TSR West, the California-based publishing initiative with its own products and an ill-advised idea to branch into comic books (costing TSR it's very lucrative licencing contract with DC in the process), is mostly new to me and fascinating. Additional details on how badly TSR could treat its superstar authors, and how some of the corporates who came in later on simply didn't understand the first thing about the product they were selling, are also intriguing. There some fascinating almost-ran stories, like when TSR nearly acquired the Middle-earth licence but foundered on Christopher Tolkien refusing to grant them permission to publish original fiction.
  
  One of Riggs' biggest successes is getting his hands on hard sales data from TSR. In some cases, some of TSR's own big names were unaware of what the hell was going on with the company's products, and their reactions to learning how bad sales really were in the 1990s are startling. Learning that Forgotten Realms sold well, but not quite as well as some earlier, retired settings was a surprise.
  
  The book is a goldmine of interesting trivia, but the writing tone is inconsistent. Sometimes the tone is serious and analytic, and sometimes jokey and anecdotal, and the tonal shifts sometimes feel random. There's also a marked difference in how Riggs talks about deceased people and folded companies and how he talks about still-living individuals and extant corporate entities. There's also a lack of deeper analysis on well-regarded stories. The suggestion that TSR collapsed due to an overload of campaign settings is taken as fact throughout, and the oft-mentioned idea that D&D faltered in the 1990s more because of an increasingly unwieldy rules set (contrasted to the streamlined rules of its biggest competitor, Vampire: The Masquerade) and the refusal to slay sacred cows with a more thorough revision - seemingly proven by the monstrous success of D&D 3rd Edition after the move to Wizards of the Coast and the even bigger success of the even more streamlined 5th Edition - is not really given any shrift.
  
  There's also a distinct lack of coverage of the video game side of things, which mostly gets a few brief mentions and little more. The book may actually suffer from its conciseness: 278 pages to cover twenty-five years of history is not really enough, and several chapters halt just as they are starting to get interesting. There's also the fact that the revival of D&D's fortunes with 3rd Edition in 2000 and the subsequent appalling misjudgements that led to the ill-conceived 4th Edition in 2008 and the brand's subsequent eclipsing by former allies-turned-competitors Paizo with their Pathfinder game are just as fascinating a story, but the book decides not to pursue the story into that era. That's fair enough, but it seems to leave the book begging for a sequel (which, given Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro's legal firepower, might never happen).
  
  Slaying the Dragon (***½) contains enough new revelations and interesting analysis to be worthwhile for seasoned D&D players, and newcomers to the game unfamiliar with all the old anecdotes will likely enjoy the book more. But it does feel like the book could have gone into some areas in more detail and depth, and been a bit more consistent in tone.
• 
  Jacqueline Passano

  I won this as a goodreads giveaway and I’m really glad I did! It was an engaging and entertaining read as well as informative!
• 
  Yener

  When I joined the D&D ranks, TSR had already fallen. Two rumors were constantly circulating among our seniors: 'Gyrax gone, D&D done' and 'Wizards killed my setting'.
  
  Now I realize those were products of little information and too much talking.
  
  Riggs presents a superb work investigation. His hard work of interviewing any players possible, deep diving to legal archives, reading many previous sources manifests in his work. Except for Lorraine Williams side. Williams is refusing to talk about TSR since her departure so all references regarding her role is second hand information -which is still a lot.
  
  This is not a RPG book, it is merely about history. It does not tell much about the rules of the game or details about the modules. Considering the target audience, a right way of eliminating and organizing the content. I don't think there are much readers clueless about Fantasy Role Playing who still want to read it's history.
  
  How did Weis and Hickman started Dragonlance and begin the epic tale with some twist of fate? Did you know Forgotten Realms were created before Dungeons and Dragons? Was Gyrax really a Saint? How did the White Wolf revolution pushed D&D to become more innovative? And of course why does a company fail even after creating the greatest Fantasy world of it's time (Planescape) and go bankrupt.
  
  The book taught me a lot about the publishing word, distribution of hobby products and business culture of it's time.
  
  Today we live in a different world of roleplaying. Medium has changed, methods of creation and distribution has changed. This closed page of history is greatly told in Slaying the Dragon.
• 
  Steven Schend

  Great book that analyzes the rise and fall of TSR, the originator of role-playing games and the original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons and all that entailed.
  
  At first, I'd wondered why the book was shelved as Social Science rather than Business; after finishing it, the book really is an analysis of people and the decisions they make in life, business, etc. Knowing more than a few of the personalities discussed and/or quoted, I definitely had an odd personal perspective as a reader (and shadow person in the background but not quite within the narrative).
  
  It's couched as an analysis of the rise and fall of the business entity that was TSR and its author was privy to a lot more information (financial, contractual, and anecdotal) than I've previously seen in any books about the gaming business.
  
  I'm slightly biased as a former employee of TSR during its last years (1990-1997), but I learned an awful lot of information that was actively kept from the staff at the times. I'm a tad embarrassed so much was going on outside of my notice, but at that time, the much-younger person I was kept focused on what he could affect/control and that was the work, so it was easier to keep working than to lose more energy on worrying
  
  If you're a fan of gaming, there's a lot to be learned from this book. If you're thinking about going into the gaming business, this is an education in what NOT to do if you manage to capture lightning in a bottle and become unexpectedly successful.
• 
  Anne

  I never thought I would find a book about business so interesting...
  
  I love playing DnD, and my husband loves Magic the Gathering, so when I saw this book coming out, I knew I had to read the history of the original creators of Dungeons and Dragons. And this book was great. Not only did I learn a lot of the origin stories of the art, worlds, and books in DnD, but it was also really interesting to understand how such a ground-breaking gaming company destroyed itself from within. Though this book portrays Wizards of the Coast as being great, and maybe they were in the 90s when they purchased TSR (the original company), but a lot of the choices Wizards are making now is so reminiscent to the choices which drove TSR towards bankruptcy. But I digress.
  
  This book was very interesting and if you enjoy DnD as much as I do, I think you'll enjoy this book too!
• 
  Laura Bone

  3.5
  
  If Slaying the Dragon has taught me one thing, it's how NOT to run a business. I didn't know about any of the history of TSR, the original company of D&D. It was interesting to gain an understanding of the roots of D&D and learn about the company that founded RPGs.
  
  However, at times the book was a little slow and the writing a little too "fan-girlish." Also, I know it's not the author's fault, since she chose not to be interviewed, but it would have been nice to have had Lorraine Williams' voice present in the book.
  
  Overall, I liked Slaying the Dragon, it just was not a favorite nonfiction book.
• 
  Drew

  A gift from my daughter, this was not a book I would have thought was a must read for me. But, it was exactly what I needed to read.
  If you are a fan of D&D I believe you will enjoy this book.
  If you are a person who grew up on the worlds that TSR created this is required reading!
  Ben does an amazing job of bringing this story to life and navigates you through the rise and fall of TSR. He does so in a respectful way and with an open mind.
  It was a bit of a tromp through my childhood and teen years as he introduced the giants of TSR and the gaming world and the part they played in its making. This book presents all the information to you of the people, the ledgers and the mishaps, but for those of us who grew up in the era there is a good bit of nostalgia to remember.
• 
  Bri

  Slaying the Dragon was well-written, and the author is clearly passionate about D&D. I started this book wanting to learn more about the history of the game, and I did.
  
  But, I definitely think I would have enjoyed it more if I was a more avid fan of D&D.
  
  As a casual, once-in-a-while player, I struggled to keep track of all of the terms, products, and people mentioned in the book. (There were far too many Johns, Jims, and Jeffs for me to have a prayer of keeping them all straight.) A timeline of the product releases and/or a dramatis personae section would have been helpful, but unfortunately, no such resources were included.
• 
  Elise

  As a lover of DnD I was so excited to pick this up! If you are interested in the business and finances of the company behind the game, this will be a very informative read. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of exploration into how the ideas and creative elements behind the game came to be. Ultimately, I didn't find the book to be particularly engaging, but it's definitely well researched and put together.