Slaying the Dragon Audiobook

Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs and read by Sean Patrick. Hopkins is available on Hoopla and has a runtime of 10h 28m. 

I thought I had a pretty good idea of the story Ben Riggs was going to tell when I started this audiobook. Afterall, I lived through the fall of TSR, I subscribed to Dragon magazine, and I've listened to Game Wizards by Jon Peterson, but this was not what I expected. This was that same story, but the story wasn't the same. Or rather, the retelling of the story was different than what I expected. And it went on well past the ousting of Gary Gygax. It changed my opinion of Lorraine Williams, explained a lot of the untold bits, and made me better understand the utter mess that TSR had gotten itself into. 

Slaying the Dragon tells the untold story of how TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, was driven to the brink of disaster, saved, then driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions a second time, then purchased and saved by their bitterest rival. If you're not into that, probably skip this book. But it's kinda my jam.

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Gary Gygax vs Dave Arneson. Gary Gygax vs Lorraine Williams. Lorraine Williams vs Peter Adkison. That's the simple narrative that I believed for a long time, but it's not that simple. It never is. This book fills in the holes through interviews, research, uncovered documents, and anonymous sources, and does it all with compelling prose and entertaining narrative. It was good. I was entertained. I learned things I did not know. Mostly, I realized that Lorraine Williams was not the devil who destroyed everything Dungeons & Dragons in her hatred of games and gamers.

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