God, there’s a sequel. Here’s Gary Gygax’s Master of the Game (1989), which is aimed entirely at game masters who want to hone their skills at running conventions, publishing their own games and passive-aggressively driving problem players from the table. We have codified the Seven Serious Flaws of Game Mastering — ignorance, laziness, bias, impatience, detachment, lack of improvisational ability and lack of acting ability. Truly, it’s like he wants the GM to behave like Buddha instead of, you know, having fun playing a game. He also recaps the broad strokes of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey theory. A deeply insufferable read.

The lone chapter of interest to me is the one where he discusses how to deal with the folks who were morally panicking about RPGs. His argument is correct: conspiracy theorists are coming from an irrational position, so there is no reasoning with them. Rather, the goal is to come off as less weird than them. Even here, though, Gygax struggles. He famously came off as smug and combative in the infamous 60 Minutes interview on the topic and he isn’t much better here. Still, he is in the right, which counts for a lot.

I like the cover by Bryn Barnard though.