The Dungeon Master

Since I've been writing a bit about the so-called "steam tunnels incident" that, in August 1979, first brought Dungeons & Dragons and, by extension, all roleplaying games to wide public consciousness (if not actual knowledge), I thought I'd turn today to another book related to the subject, this time much more directly. The Dungeon Master is a 1984 book written by William Dear, a Texas-based private investigator. Dear, who's been involved in a number of high profile cases over the years, was employed by the parents of James Dallas Egbert III to locate their son, after he disappeared from Michigan State University. The Dungeon Master is Dear's account of his investigation and what he discovered.

Dear – who is still alive, as of this writing – is a flamboyant figure, the very model of what one might imagine upon hearing the words "private investigator." He is fond, for example, of having his picture taken while holding a firearm and his writing is prone to bombastic self-promotion. Nevertheless, what comes through in reading this book is that, despite his foibles, he actually cared a great deal about the fate of Egbert and genuinely sought to understand him and his situation in order to find out what had happened to him. 

It's precisely for this reason that Dear became interested in Dungeons & Dragons and publicly opined that perhaps the then-new game might have played a role in Egbert's mysterious disappearance. As it turned out – and as Dear makes clear in this book – it didn't, but, by the time The Dungeon Master was published, four years after Egbert committed suicide, the damage had already been done. In the public mind, not only was D&D forever associated with this tragic event but it was also deemed "weird," "deviant," and "dangerous," among many more unsavory adjectives. Gary Gygax was still fielding questions about the game's supposed danger to impressionable young people in 1985, which frankly boggles my mind.

One of the most interesting parts of The Dungeon Master, particularly in hindsight, is the chapter where Dear recounts his first experience playing D&D for himself, in an attempt to understand Egbert's attraction to it. Lord Kilgore excerpts a large section of the chapter on his blog, a small portion of which I reproduce here:

My Dungeon Master and his friend arrived promptly at 2 P.M., as agreed. I’d had only two hours’ sleep, but I’d manage to shower and shave and put on fresh clothes and I felt wide awake. For reasons I can’t explain, I tingled with anticipation and curiosity. 

I didn’t know what to expect from my dungeon master. Would he show up in a Merlin costume, with a funny pointed cap and star: emblazoned all around? Would he be dressed as some authority figure, an all-knowing wizard or a god? I knew he would have complete control over the circumstances of the fantasy adventure on which was about to embark. I knew he would be absolutely fair, siding neither with me nor with the monsters I would face; he was an arbiter of the strictest impartiality, and his decisions were final. Would he com dressed in the robes of an eminent jurist? 

He came dressed in sweater and jeans and scuffed tennis shoes. He might have been Jack Armstrong, so open, friendly, and Midwest- fresh did he seem. His friend, a good-looking Mexican-American sophomore who might have been an athlete, was named Louis. The three of us gravitated to the table and sat around it, and I explained again that I had never played Dungeons & Dragons.

It's a very odd passage for a couple of reasons that strike me immediately. First, Dear once again seems have it in his head that D&D players wear costumes while they play, something I have never observed in real life, outside a handful of convention games and in those cases I'm pretty sure it was intended humorously. Second, the atmosphere of mystery and awe Dear attributes not just to D&D but to the dungeon master is odd. Having been a referee of many games over the years, I can't say anyone has ever viewed me with the reverence Dear evinces in these paragraphs. I suppose I have to remind myself that Dear, as he admits, "had never played Dungeons & Dragons" and so had little idea what to expect from it. His attitude was probably not helped by the pompous title of dungeon master for the game's referee, one I've long felt was a bit silly (mind you, I feel the same way about Call of Cthulhu's "Keeper of Arcane Lore").

The Dungeon Master has lots of flaws, both as a "true crime" book and as a recounting of the events of August 1979 and subsequently, but it's nevertheless an important document from a time that, to me anyway, seems a million years away from the present. "The past is a foreign country," as they say and it never seems more so to me than when I reflect on the bafflement and fear with which roleplaying games were greeted in some segments of society. In my own life, I only ever encountered a single adult who harbored any worries about RPGs; most adults I knew, including my own parents, looked on games like D&D beneficently and even encouraged my friends and I in our newfound obsession. In retrospect, I'm incredibly grateful for that, considering the many boons this hobby has showered upon me during my life.