Jon Peterson, a leading expert on Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games, is the author of Playing at the World, Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana (a Hugo Award finalist), the New York Times bestseller Heroes' Feast, and The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity (MIT Press).

Series Foreword ix
Preface xi
I From a Club to a Company
Opening Moves 5
Gygax and Arneson 15
The $300 Idea 33
II Adventurers in Business
1975: Sage Street, Goodbye 55
1976: Stab 79
1977: The Great War 103
1978: Stolen Glory 125
III The Everfull Purse
1979: Treasure in the Steam Tunnels 151
1980: The Spotlight 175
1981: Identity Crisis 199
1982: Extravagance 223
IV Disjunction
1983: Splitting the Party 251
1984: Cursed 273
1985: The Ambush at Sheridan Springs 289
Epilogue: Endgame 313
Sources and Acknowledgments 319
Index 353

Discover the colorful history of the table-top RPG phenomenon, Dungeons & Dragons, as a D&D expert examines its surprising successes, setbacks, and controversies.
When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success-and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Inside you'll learn about:
• Gygax and Arneson's first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release
• The founding of TSR and its growth as a company
• Arneson's acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR
• "Satanic Panic" accusations that plagued D&D-and boosted its popularity
• TSR's reckless expansion and near-fatal corporate infighting
• And much more!
With Game Wizards, Peterson restores historical particulars long obscured by competing narratives spun by the one-time partners. That record amply demonstrates how the turbulent experience of creating something as momentous as Dungeons & Dragons can make people remember things a bit differently from the way they actually happened.