Why I wrote this book ....

In the 1970s and the 1980s, I used to play Dungeons & Dragon and read J.R.R. Tolkien. 

But I was a kid. I stopped playing D&D when I went away to college. I didn’t want to be a geek any more. Since my teenage years, I had kept role-playing games and similar activities at a distance for a reason. I just didn’t quite know what that reason was.

Then about two years ago, I rediscovered my old D&D gear --- books, maps, dice, miniatures. And when the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I got hooked.

A collage of the author's teenage D&D maps (here, with cool negative-image, radioactive red treatment)And the more I reflected on my interest in fantasy and gaming, the more doubts I had. Yes, D&D had helped me "escape" a difficult adolescence and my mother's medical trauma: a life-altering brain aneurysm that struck when she was 38 and I was 12. I played D&D religiously every Friday night, for five years.

The more I reflected, the more I worried about the residual damage. How healthy was it to have devoted so much mental energy to a fantasy world that didn’t exist? Had me and my D&D gaming buddies checked out of real life? What were the long-term effects? Did fantasy escapism explain why the person I’d become at forty --- a person who felt unsatisfying and unsatisfied?

I knew that the perception of fantasy hobbies had changed since I was a card-carrying member of the D&D tribe. Today, geek is no longer a four-letter word. Fantasy subcultures have shifted from the fringe to pockets of cool, and their associated terminology and cultural references—Gandalf, leveling up, griefing—have been absorbed into the mainstream. Playing fantasy games, reading fantasy books, and watching fantasy movies are infinitely more permissible now than when I was exploring dungeons in rural New Hampshire. Eleven and a half million (and counting) subscribers to World of Warcraft (WoW), and their spouses, attest to that, as does the international literary phenomenon called Harry Potter. Adult men and women own Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and arrange Yoda and R2-D2 Pez dispensers on their computer monitors. Online worlds like Second Life have made role-playing second nature and a widely acceptable behavior. Even Muggles understand it.

Sigh of relief. At least I’m in good company. Millions now turn away from the “real” world to inhabit others. But just because it seemed like everyone was headed to a Renaissance fair or was hooked on Nintendo Wii or Warhammer didn’t mean all these neo-medieval or magical-themed options were necessarily good for you. Fantasy as a cultural phenomenon felt vaguely unsettling to me. I wondered if pervasive escapism had infantilized an entire generation. Was fantasy in all its forms fundamentally good or evil? Were some subcultures more dangerous or doomed than others?

Deep thoughts.

Perhaps nobody else spent time pondering these matters. Or maybe I just wanted to reassure myself that I wasn’t any more of a freak than they were.

Whatever the reason, as a recovering D&Der playing the role of a so-called “grown-up” arts and travel writer for national newspapers and magazines, I started to take on any assignment I could find that would let me write professionally about Tolkien, gaming, or fantasy. I embarked on a nonlinear, noncontiguous odyssey of self-reflection, cultural analysis, and free mead. 

I crisscrossed the country, the world, and other worlds, from Somerville, Massachusetts, to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; from France to New Zealand; from Planet Earth to the realm of Aggramar. I asked gaming and fantasy geeks how they found balance between their escapist urges and the kingdom of adulthood. I questioned Tolkien scholars and medievalists. I spoke to grown men who built hobbit holes and learned to speak Elvish, and to grown women who played Warcraft and EverQuest. Old, young, male, female, able-bodied and disabled—I wanted to hear, in their own words, what lured them in, and for what reasons, whether healthy, unhealthy, or in between.

I needed to put myself face-to-face with these escapist pursuits. Before, as a kid, my D&D obsession was a haphazard consequence, a symptom of being lost. I was oblivious. This time, I would get lost on purpose. I wouldn’t be escaping again; I would be excavating. Examining the unexamined in an effort to find out what fantasy meant to me, to all of us.

My journey became this book. I hope you'll join me on my quest.