Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who by David M. Ewalt

off-brand version of the Trapper Keepers that were popular in the seventies and eighties. It was my constant companion to games for a better part of a decade, and even during the long years when I avoided role-playing, I kept it safe—rarely consciously, but always carefully.
    In recent years, the character keeper slumbered, forgotten, at the back of a cabinet in my living room. But once I started playing D&D again, it awoke and called to me. Like the One Ring trying to get back to its master, it wanted to be found. So on a quiet spring morning I went to it, shoving aside piles of old tax returns and pay stubs, and held it in my hands for the first time in ages.
    It looked old, and its vinyl cover was peeling along the edges, revealing a tatty cardboard core. But it felt vital in my hands, solid and reassuring. The wraparound flap was secured with a small Velcro closure, and when I peeled it open the ripping noise made me shiver—a sound, like a bugle call before a battle, that heralded action and adventure. Inside the organizer there were three expanding folders, all stuffed to bursting, and a half-empty pocket on the inside cover. I reached into the pocket and pulled out a small stack of paper.
    It was a pile of possibility . . . or a few dozen blank character records, if you want to be literal about it. Most role-playing game rule books provide one of these fill-in-the-blanks forms for players to photocopy and use when they make a new character. To devoted players, each sheet represents a chance to be a different person, anew and exciting escape. As a child I fetishized them, and constantly searched new game books and magazines for better layouts. I even made my own on the Brother LW-20 word processor I was stuck with in the days before our home had a computer and a printer. I remember the hours of painstaking work—counting presses of the space bar to ensure that attributes on one line would align perfectly with those below, and holding down “shift” and the hyphen key to produce long underscores where I’d later pencil in each character’s details. After dozens of imperfect drafts, I’d have a pile of crumpled-up pages next to my desk, like a frustrated novelist in an old black-and-white movie . . . and a single perfect sheet, tabula rasa, which I’d protect between the flaps of a stiff manila folder and carefully place in my father’s briefcase. The next day he’d use his office photocopier to make me a few dozen copies, and when he came home from work I’d tear down the stairs to our front door, give him a grateful hug, then grab the prize and bolt back to my bedroom. I’d extract the original character sheet from the folder, archive it between the pages of an oversized children’s illustrated dictionary, and then place the copies into my red vinyl organizer. There they’d stay, safe and secure, until I needed a hero.
    I loved the process of character creation so much that I’d spend hours designing characters with no intention of using them. When you’re making a new character, you may have to record anywhere from a dozen to a hundred personal details, depending on the game. Some parts of the process are simple, like when you roll four six-sided dice to determine a D&D character’s starting ability scores. 3 But you’re also required to dig deeper, imagining a character’s personalhistory and motivations. I enjoyed it as an analytic exercise (How can I exploit the rules to my advantage?) and as an act of creativity (Who is this person, and what drives them?).
    The three expanding folders inside my organizer contained hundreds of characters, and each said something about who I was when I made it. The first pocket was full of D&D characters, most of them created when I was in elementary school. They’re goofy, sweet, and naïve.
    On top of the pile was Wizzrobe, an elf wizard I based on an enemy in one of my favorite video games, The Legend of Zelda. My grandparents gave me a Nintendo