In 1974, a semi-employed cobbler named Gary Gygax published a tabletop game he co-designed in his home in Lake Geneva.
In the game, a group of friends could transform into elves, barbarians and wizards, the success of their fight against monsters and other foes determined by a roll of the dice. Gygax and his co-creator Dave Arneson called it Dungeons & Dragons.
Fifty years later, the game is a cultural icon, an epic legacy that will be celebrated at Lake Geneva’s Dragon Days Fantasy Festival from Sept. 27-29. The street fair-meets-ren faire event features an “enchanted bazaar,” a hay bale “dungeon maze,” and a costume contest. Gygax’s home, now called the Center Street Dungeon, will be open for tours and gaming sessions.
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“D&D created not just a new style of game, but an entirely new medium – the tabletop role-playing game,” explains Milwaukee author Ben Riggs, who wrote the 2022 book Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons. “It’s the only medium where writer, performer and audience are fused into one person.”
To publish the game, Gygax formed his own company in Lake Geneva called Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Sales exploded, and TSR became a multi-million-dollar company in just a couple of years. Instead of moving to a bigger city, TSR hired hundreds of editors, writers, artists and designers to live and work in Lake Geneva. At the company’s peak, it employed about 400 people in a town of around 5,000.
Old Guard Games (3132 N. Downer Ave.), Milwaukee’s newest game shop, has everything you need to start a session of Dungeons & Dragons or dozens of other games, from chess to Warhammer 40K. The store’s huge floor space has suits of armor, paintings, dragon statues and loads of game displays. And in the dungeon-themed basement, there’s plenty of table space for game sessions.
But Gygax had a harsh falling out with Arneson, who left TSR and later filed suit for royalties. Gygax was eventually ousted from his own company in a hostile takeover in 1986 after accusations of mismanaging money.
TSR was bought by the Seattle-area company Wizards of the Coast in 1997, which continues to produce the game. Gygax, who died in 2008, has received criticism for misogynistic comments, and in recent years, D&D has been re-examined and edited to remove racial stereotyping.
Despite this baggage, the game is still popular today. Riggs says there are several reasons for that – the game’s starring role in media like “Stranger Things,” popular internet shows of gameplay like “Critical Role” and the rise of D&D campaigns during the pandemic.
But most of all, the appeal remains the spark of imagination and adventure. “It takes the pleasures of writing and acting and democratizes them,” Riggs says. “Everyone can make up stories and pretend to be someone else. That pleasure is so addicting that it arouses passionate intensity in its fans.”
Until recent years, there was little to entice those fans to visit the game’s birthplace, but that’s changed due to the efforts of the Gygax Memorial Fund, which works to preserve TSR’s history in Lake Geneva. Along with organizing Dragon Days, it’s raising money to establish a memorial statue, featuring the game designer sitting at a table where people can join him to play a D&D session along the shores of Elm Park.
For more info, visit dragondays.org.
