The more we do this, the more I think we sound like Axl Rose…but for the first time in a long time, I’ve blocked out 1/2 a month work exclusively on the Second Edition of Dungeons and Dreamers, which now also makes it likely the Tenth Anniversary Edition of the book. Regardless of delay and […]
I just saw this interesting tidbit about the lost treasures of Dave Arneson thanks to this piece by GeekDad over at Wired News. His original gaming dice. His original Dungeons & Dragons and Blackmoor campaign manuscripts. His first printing, woodgrain boxed set play copy of D&D. Letters from Gary Gygax. Other letters, notes, documents, artwork, […]
Today would have been Gary Gygax’s birthday. Gygax, one of the co-creators of the game Dungeons & Dragons, inadvertently helped create the massive computer game industry that exists by inspiring three decades of future game designers. There’s been much written on the subject [you can read our chapter on the D&D Creation Myth], and there’s […]
I had a chance to visit the Origin Systems building in 1997 when I first moved to Austin, at the time the only THX-certified game studio in the country. Starr Long even gave me a demo of naked Ultima players running around a rather barren virtual landscape. When we were working on the book, Richard […]
The Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down just a bit ago, marking the end of the Shuttle Space Age in America. Throughout my life, Americans have gone to space regularly. Now that is over. As I dug through the Dungeons & Dreamers yesterday constructing a draft of the Second Edition introduction, I was struck by how […]
I was never much sold on the cover for our book. It looked too much like a business book (which it wasn’t) without any of the modern flair of say Tron. It seemed to be designed by committee. That said, this particular version of the cover came out infinitely better than the first draft we […]
The idea of professional computer gamer was in its nascent phase when John and I started writing the book. Jonathan Wendall, better known as Fatal1ty, was making headlines, and Stevie Case was the new nerd pinup girl. We spent a good deal of time traveling to QuakeCon and the Cyberathlete Professional League events to understand exactly […]
The first computer game was SpaceWar!, we all know that. However, this is the first game produced by Richard Garriott, the man who built the first commercially successful massively multi-player game. Akalabeth would eventually morph into Ultima, launching a franchise of games that built — and then changed — the gaming landscape. This is the […]
I’m selling my house in Austin, which is only interesting to this tale because I purchased the house with the advance onDungeons & Dreamers, and then moved here to finish the book. As I was digging through my files, I came across this little gem, the map of some of the early Ultima games. Throughout […]
It’s been almost 10 years since we first started working on Dungeons & Dreamers, a fact that I hadn’t thought about until just now. Time flies. In the game world, not much has changed…and everything has changed. The timing is right, and John + I decided upon a basic framework for the Second Edition of […]
The Second Edition looks a bit different: New chapters, expanded sections, and a paring of pieces that didn’t work
Writing Dungeons & Dreamers was a team effort. Read up on everyone who was involved in the process.