Retrospective: Dungeon of Dread

It's increasingly my contention that the years between 1982 and 1984 are among the most interesting in the history of TSR. It's during these years that the company is clearly struggling with the faddish popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, trying to find ways to harness that popularity for both immediate and long-term profit. Consequently, the period is one of wild – and often absurd – experimentation, one not inaptly encapsulated in the metaphor of "throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks." 

There were a lot misfires during this time period, as TSR seemed to adopt a two-pronged approach to broadening the market for their products. On the one hand, there were the bizarre craft items, like D&D-themed needlepoint sets, targeted at non-gamers, while on the other hand, there were the toys and storybooks, aimed at children, presumably with the goal to seed an interest in the kind of fantasy that D&D offered. As a somewhat self-serious middle aged man, it's easy for me to cringe at both these approaches, but, from a purely business perspective, they're not inherently flawed. Indeed, focusing on younger children had great potential, even if I might balk at the specific products that TSR approved for sale under the banner of the Dungeons & Dragons brand.

Part of this strategy involved the publication of a series of "choose your own adventure" style books in a series called Endless Quest, the first four of which appeared in June 1982. All of these initial offerings were written by Rose Estes. I know nothing of Estes prior to her work on this series, except that she was apparently employed by TSR and may have worked under James Ward in the company's Education Department. A few months ago, I wrote a post about this, in which Ward makes reference to "a simplified version of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game … geared for the people who have never heard of the D&D game, and don't know how to play it at all." If this is correct – and I have no way of knowing if it is – this "simplified version" of which Ward speaks evolved into the Endless Quest series.

The concept of solo adventure books was not a new one. The aforementioned Choose Your Own Adventure series began in 1979 (based on the earlier Sugarcane Island book by Edward Packard) and Tunnels & Trolls released its pioneering Buffalo Castle in 1976. Producing D&D-branded versions of the same was actually a very good idea, one that Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone also had, releasing The Warlock of Firetop Mountain a couple of months later in the same year. I'd been an avid reader of the early Choose Your Own Adventure books, to which I'd been exposed by a librarian several months prior to my introduction to D&D. Had the Endless Quest books been available at the time, I have no doubt I'd have been a fan of them as well. As it was, they came out a little too late – I was almost thirteen at the time – and scoffed at them as yet another example of "kiddie D&D," tween-age boys being almost as insufferable as middle-aged men.

A few years ago, I picked up a used copy of the first entry in the series, Dungeon of Dread, and read through it. The book assumes that the reader is an adult human fighter, described rather specifically as 5'9" tall and weighing 150 pounds, outfitted with a sword, a dagger, leather armor, and a collection of typical adventuring gear, like rope and flasks of oil (no 10-foot pole, alas). Your adventure begins as you awaken one morning to find a halfling, named Laurus, rifling through your belongings, looking to steal them while you slept. He begs for his life and tells you about an evil wizard named Kalman, whose prisoner he once was, and whose lair is filled with equal amounts of treasure and danger. Naturally, you decide to seek out his lair and explore it with the halfling, hoping to defeat Kalman and enrich yourself in the process.

While far from a great work of fantasy literature, Dungeon of Dread, isn't awful, especially when compared to, say, the Choose Your Own Adventure books. The prose is more sophisticated and the numbered sections longer, more like that of a light novel aimed at older children, than a mere gamebook. Again, I should emphasize that it's nothing spectacular as a work of fiction, but it certainly achieves its goal of painting a picture of what adventuring in the implied setting of Dungeons & Dragons might be like, aided by Jim Holloway's illustrations. The dangers the reader encounters are a mix of classic monsters, along with a goodly supply of vermin, which, I think, firmly anchors it in its time period. Overall, I think Dungeon of Dread is more forgiving in its choices than either Choose Your Own Adventure books or Fighting Fantasy, but I also think that's at least partially a function of its more novelistic style, which sets it apart from its competitors.

I get the impression that, of all the strategies TSR attempted to appeal to a younger audience, the Endless Quest series was one of the most successful. Over the course of five years, the series swelled to three dozen entries by a number of different writers and encompassed multiple game lines besides Dungeons & Dragons, as well as licensed properties like Tarzan and Conan. I don't doubt that they succeeded in their intention of introducing a new generation of kids to roleplaying games.