Tibtarnitallimardarian

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The idea for this book popped into my head in 1979 as a title, general concept and quickly sketched (on graph paper) map. Two things were hugely popular at the time: Dungeon and Dragons, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And it was these two things that inspired me.

I never played the game beyond a few tentative times with "beginner" friends, but through the last two years of high school I watched obsessed friends and acquaintances play it endlessly. Every break between classes, expected study periods—anytime they could find they huddled in corners with graph paper (to map dungeons) and dice of numerous shapes, whispering and rolling and searching out dungeon levels. It was wild to see, and for those so totally obsessed with it, a little creepy, too… It was like the game had taken over their lives.

When it comes to The Lord of the Rings, a new box set of the trilogy, plus The Hobbit, was published, and I snapped it up. I read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring fairly quickly, but in my youth reading all that background material at the latter’s end was too much for me, ending my continuing of the series. It would be years later—a lot of growing up—before I completed the series. Be that as it may, what I read of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece at the time inspired my book idea.

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