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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8664298" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Yup.  I finished it last night, and it's definitely an enjoyable read for anyone who's interested in the history, though in parts you want to shake these guys and say "Stop acting like idiots!  You've made fortunes on a genius idea!  Being jealous, petty egomaniacs does not become you!  Hundreds of people came to work for you and deserved better treatment and leadership!"Gary definitely worked his ass off publicizing the game and turning it into a success.  He still did some amazing stuff despite his incompetence as a CEO of a real company.Most of that kind of stuff is in Playing at the World.  Exhaustively tracking down lots of the original influences in fiction and media, the prior history of wargames and weird hybrid simulation games which involved play similar to role-playing, leading up to the development of Dave Wesely's Braunstein, and from that into Dave Arneson's Blackmoor.  I believe some is also in Secrets of Blackmoor, the documentary about Dave's original gaming crew.Game Wizards is more focused on the business side.  Peterson dives into the documentary evidence showing who was working on the game when, including at the beginning, and bits of correspondence between Gygax and Arneson, corporate records and meeting minutes, contracts and audit records, internal newsletters, etc.  It doesn't get into stuff like "Who came up with the lich?"  More "How did they fund and keep the company alive in those first few years when it easily could have failed entirely?" "How much were they actually selling?" "What deals were they making with distributors and publishers?" "How did they use conventions, and why was there such a bloody rivalry between GenCon and Origins that Gary publicly lied about attendance figures?" "How did the fallout between Dave and Gary occur?"  "How long did Dave actually work there and what other stuff was he working on?"  "What were the main details of the feud and the lawsuits?"  "How did the game and company become a huge success, and how did Gary and the Blumes squander that success and waste so much money that they lost control of the company and repeatedly nearly went bankrupt?"</blockquote>

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