Troll Lord Games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTrXrOPL ... ed&search=[/i]

Interesting and sad. Did the guy really end his life that way? I don't always believe everything that's on the internet or you tube!!
I do remember reading about him missing and thinking how cool the game would be if you could play it live as it were in underground tunnels and such. But I never thought about steam/electrical tunnels when I was in college ~ only mundane, boring subjects like women and drinking.
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Count Rhuveinus - Lejendary Keeper of Castle Franqueforte

"Enjoy a 'world' where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!" ~ Gary Gygax

"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes:" - Macbeth

He didn't die anything like what was presented in the movie. Not sure about the novel, never read it.

He suicided after he was "found", not because of D&D, but because of depression, aggravated by drug addiction. The same combo that kills thousands every year, without D&D.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

Next Con I am attending: http://www.neoncon.com/

My House Rules: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... llordgames

I read this book - The Dungeon Master - in university, wanting to finally get the straight goods on how this whole situation came down, and so I could actually have some sort of hard-edged proof to throw back when the "D&D will destroy your delicate young mind! The children! Won't somebody think of the children?" crowd dropped in with its programmed hysteria, which tended to be fairly common back in the halcyon days of RPing.

Dallas Egbert did, in fact, die at his own hands...but, as William Dear himself states in the story's epilogue, it was only a good long while after the whole quoted incident had blown over; the two of them were in regular contact after Dallas had finally been located, and remained such until the end of Dallas' life. Dallas Egbert had a myriad of personal and social difficulties - not the least of which was a dysfunctional family situation - and the drug problems were a consequence of common adolescent issues (including questions surrounding his sexual identity) that, I think, any one of us would have a measure of compassion for.

The underground dungeon stuff was really nothing more than live-action RPing that has been attempted countless times before; it wasn't strictly legal, but it sure as hell wasn't the Queen of the Demonweb Pits stuff. The whole story, as William Dear wrote it, was highjacked by and robbed of its context by the aforementioned programmed hysterical forces, so that what was simply one gifted young man's tragically short life became a manufactured clarion call for censorship.