 Goto [ Index ] |
1) General layout of book- I didn't mind the slant boxes for text in most situations. I thought it gave the book a unique format that wasn't difficult to read. Same with the use of d10's for page numbering- this is a D&D book after all. What I did mind is that sometimes in doing two page layouts of quotes or text, things often got hidden in the crease between pages- that was irritating, but it didn't kill the book. As with all of this, YMMV.
2) Foreword by Vin Diesel/Celebrity Essays- Although it's the foreword, it's really the first of a number of reminisces by famous people who have played and/or are playing D&D. This one combines why Diesel loves the game with a "Let me tell you about my character" story. Overall, not bad. You get the sense that he really loves the game, but that comes across in all the essays. Other than length and name rec, this is no different from the other celebrity contributions.
With the other essays, some of them come from widely recognizable individuals such as Wil Wheaton, Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies, Stephen Colbert of "The Daily Show", and "Samurai Jack" and "Star Wars: Clone Wars" animator Genndy Tartakovsky. The others come from random folks from MTV, Wizards, the makers of D&D Online, authors, and some others. What's neat about them is that they are presented on sheets from the 2E Monster Manual, complete with randomly assigned monster illustrations from the book. The quality of the writing varies, but most of them contain the same thing: when the author began, what the circumstances were, if they still play, why they enjoyed the game. After a while, you get a little bored of these. I read the first five or so, then read the ones from people I recognized while skimming the others
3) Introduction- a quick and dirty summation of D&D's history. This was probably the most informative piece in the book, despite it's brevity (4 pages). It starts with Arneson and Gygax in 1974, deals with the games growth and expansion, the cultural backlash (i.e. accusations of Satanism), the continued growth and revision to AD&D 1E and 2E, and finally ending with 3E, 3.5E and the introduction of Eberron. Most of the book after this point is just expanding upon the information from this section, sometimes redundantly, sometimes not.
4) Section 1: The Adventure Begins. This is probably the worst section of the book. The three parts of this section consists of author Harold Johnson remembering his beginnings with D&D in the 70's and then telling some of the beginning history- the same history we have in the Intro, though with a little extension. Then we have the Gen Con portion, which involves a headache-inducing red coloration over the pictures on the bottom half of every page. Informative, but I didn't want to stick around long because of the layout (this, by the way, is one of the things that led to a 2 in Style). Finally, it ends with Gary Gygax telling his version of the creation story. It was great to read an eye-witness account of the beginning, but there are two things wrong with it. One, a lot of it we'd already heard before from the Intro and Johnson's writing. Two, this is a reprint of something he wrote in 1999 for D&D's 25th anniversary. Is it that he had nothing new to say, or that the essay is that good, or that he didn't want to contribute to this book? It's sad that this is the only major contribution from either founding father, and that it is not original to this book. The fact that most of the content appears earlier in the book, minus his personal reflections, makes this look like it was shoehorned in just so that old-timers couldn't claim there's nothing from Gygax in a book about his game.
What redeems this section is its informativeness (the fact that the same stuff is repeated two or three times really drills it into your head) and the art from the original products. Having never seen some of this, I appreciated this section mostly for the illustrations- even some of the ones from the Gen Con section (except the ones covered in red).
5) Section 2: Worlds of Adventure- this covers the game worlds of D&D. I'll cover each individually:
5a: Greyhawk- why is it that the first world, the core world, and the flagship world of the current edition gets 2 pages of text? Also, why does every other world's creator get to weigh in on their world, but not Gygax? Are there some major politics involved preventing him from contributing? Also, while it's mentioned that this world has a lot of influence on the game itself, there's no mention of what it is. No names, no gods except Vecna and Iuz, nothing. Not impressed by this section.
5b: Dragonlance- now this is how a world should get written up. The whole history of Krynn's development is here, even mentioning the failed SAGA experiment. Quotes from Weiss and Hickman are throughout this piece, as are some iconic illustrations. Great stuff.
5c: Forgotten Realms- another well done section, with a lot of stuff from Ed Greenwood (including a celeb essay, though illustrated with Elminster) and Jeff Grubb. The best part was some of Ed's original maps of the Unapproachable East, which really shows off how detailed he made even just one chunk of the world. More iconic illustrations round out this section.
5d: Mystara- a world I didn't know much about, but now know a little bit more of. Doesn't cover everything, but what it does cover it does cover well. The only thing I didn't like is that it mentions this is more of a pulp setting, but doesn't show how or why that is.
5e: Spelljammer- Another good section, again doesn't cover everything, but at least explains some of the more iconic bits (spelljammer helms, prominance of beholders and mind flayers, crystal spheres and phlogiston). More good illos.
5f: Ravenloft- Very good review, does a good job of getting across the premise of the setting. Would have liked them to cover horror and powers checks, but you can't get everything.
5g: Dark Sun- this section does an o.k. job of getting across that this was not typical D&D by describing the dessert setting, the prominence of psionics, and mentioning some of the unique races. Beyond that, it doesn't say anything else about what makes this unique. The harm of casting magic, the prevalance of gladiators, the alien nature of the thri-kreen, the complete reversal of racial stereotypes, reliance on stone and bone gear, and even the unique stat rolling method all made this a cool world. But none of that is mentioned here. Too bad.
5h: Planescape- Again, does a great job of getting the flavor across, like the language, the nature of Sigil, and the factions. Not enough diTerlizzi art, though, nor the Planescape font. Those artistic touches made this one of my favorite settings.
5i: Birthright- oops, nothing on this one, even though it gets mentioned a number of times throughout the book. Why they didn't give this any coverage is beyond me (did this get sold to a third party or something?).
5i: AD&D 2E- Another section that tells instead of shows. It tells that it incorporated a lot of things from Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana, but doesn't show a great deal of it. Since this was my jumping on point, I'd have really appreciated seeing this rather than just hearing it. But, if you're familiar with all these things, not a big deal. It does do a good job of showing how monumental a task this was, both from a technical side and the "How are we going to tell people and live" side.
5j: PHBR's- remember the reddish brown race and class books from 2E? They get their own part of the book. I appreciated that the authors could both praise and be critical of this creation, and they show a good understanding of the series' downfall- it led to an arms war where each succeeding book had to have better and better stuff to be marketable. It also led to a rules expansion that they wanted to avoid from the beginning of 2E. Despite the ancillary nature of the PHBR series, this part was an enjoyable read.
5k: Historical Sourcebooks- this part describes the how and why behind the green books, and what could have happened had the line been more successful and been allowed to continue. Not bad, and easy to skip if this has no interest to you (personally, I liked the books, and still use some of the maps in my classroom today).
5l: The Black Box- i.e. D&D Basic redux. TSR, realizing how complex 2E was, goes back to the simpler rules of original D&D to help bring in new gamers
All of these parts are good to look at together, as they form a picture of TSR glutting the market with product, an issue that led eventually to...
6) Section 6: from TSR to Wizards of the Coast. The first part of this, entitled "How I Became a D&D Fan," consists of two essays, one by Peter Adkison and the other by Ed Stark. Both of them are fine essays, but they are laid out side by side- on mutliple pages. And so, annoyingly, you have to read them concurrently or read one and go back to the beginning to read the other. This was probably the second worst section in terms of layout, and again led to the 2 in style. The same crime is committed again in "TSR Needed Help," with Adkison discussing the buyout as buyer and Ed Stark describing it as part of the buyee. Both are useful perspectives, but the layout is frustrating. Part 3, "The Acquisition of TSR" is from the perspective of Ryan Dancey, who at the time was working for Five Rings Publishing. This shows how Five Rings wanted to buy TSR, and instead got sold to Wizards and let Wizards by TSR in one fell swoop. Part 4, "Wizards of the Coast," has Adkison explaining why he bought TSR, and then what he did once he bought it. Part 5, "Building TSR to Last," again has stories from both Adkison and Stark, but in that aggravating arrangement from Part 1. Finally, Part 6 gets to the inevitable discussion of 3E. This has input from Adkison and Stark, but at least this is laid out with Stark's comments as one page sidebars. Only one of these bleeds over onto a second page and gets interspersed with Adkison's comments.
Overall: The 3E stuff is good, but nothing new really comes out. The rest...well, if you like corporate takeover stories, this is a pretty good one. Otherwise, skip it.
7) Into the Future- I said before that Section 1 was the worst section. In hindsight, I take that back- this is the worst. Where one would think you'd get visions of where D&D is going from insiders, both concrete and conceptual, what you get instead is three things, all of them in the past. First is BioWare's creation of Neverwinter Nights. Second is Hasbro's purchase of Wizards and the trepidation in releasing the "mature" Book of Vile Darkness. Third is again dealing with Hasbro's purchase and how R&D's main goal was to stay off the scandal radar.
That's it. The end. Cut to credits (literally).
No visions of the future. No previews. No foreshadows or hints of bold directions. Truthfully, I checked my book to make sure I hadn't missed something, and then realized that I had, in fact, reached the end of the book.
What adds insult to injury is that, while the whole section contains Eberron illustrations, not ONE mention is made of the setting. In fact, the only real mention in the entire book made of it and the new settings contest, something that was a really interesting, creative and risky concept, is at the end of the Introduction. What was an o.k. book now becomes only mediocre thanks to a bad anti-climactic and incomplete ending.
Final scores:
Style: 2. While the illustrations are good, they don't save the book from some very poor layout and graphics choices. The fact that there is no art original to the book took away from this too.
Substance: 3. I really considered a 2 because of the ending and the redundancies in the Intro and Section 1, but there was enough good content in each section, and in most of the celeb essays, that it made it an average 3. If the ending had been better, I would almost be tempted to go into the 3/4 range rather than 2/3.
Price: $50 is a bit much for this, even though the production material explains the price. If you can find it discounted, though, it'd be a justifiable purchase. The problem at most bookstores is that all the copies are shrink-wrapped, so you have no way to flip through and see if it's your cup of tea. Try to find some place with a preview copy before you decide.
In the end, if you want a decent scrapbook of memories of D&D, with some of the best images from the game's history and a lot of good memories, this book is worth it. If you want a detailed history of the game, this is not it. If you want to see lots of coverage of your favorite world, this is may or may not be it. Finally, if you want a perfect piece that looks at every single aspect of the game we love, this is not it. But it'll work until that book gets written.
