Roleplaying games have been a staple of pop culture and gaming enthusiasts for decades, and it’s little wonder why. RPGs give players the opportunity not only to use their creativity and imagination to live in any number of worlds and scenarios, but also help build communities among people, to bring folks together who can share and revel in their love of play and communion.

What’s also just as important as the bonds and outlets that roleplaying games provide, however, is the history of the activity. What are the origins of the RPGs? Who are the pioneers and developers who had hands in the winding road that led us to we think of and know to be roleplaying as it is today? Those are questions that writer Fred Van Lente (The Comic Book History of Animation) and artist Tom Fowler (known for his art for comics and Wizards of the Coast) tackle in their new book Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games from Clover Press. In Gamemasters, Van Lente and Fowler put the spotlight on the origins of tabletop roleplaying and the creators who have had contributed to the development of decades worth of RPGs.

Clover Press recently launched a Kickstarter to bring Van Lente and Fowler’s Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games to the printed page. I spoke with Mr. Van Lente and Mr. Fowler recently about the genesis of Gamemasters, their own personal histories with roleplaying, the Kickstarter itself, and the importance of interactive storytelling and creative play in our lives.

Fred Van Lente’s “History of” books are never a miss; check out our interview with him about his history of basketball. And Tom Fowler’s art is never anything else but captivating. That creative pairing alone makes this a book worth a look.

 

Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games cover

 

FreakSugar: Before we get into Gamemasters and the Kickstarter, I’d like to talk about your personal histories with RPGs outside of your professional work. Do you play or have you played in the past? What was your first introduction to RPGs?

Fred Van Lente: I played D&D with my friends after my parents got me the Basic D&D set, but I’ve never been a huge High Fantasy guy, and quickly migrated from there to other games, particularly Call of Cthulhu and TSR’s espionage game, Top Secret. I also loved “Choose Your Own Adventure” books and Infocom text adventure games. I grew up in a small town in Ohio in the 1980s and there were only so many nerds to go around that you could start a game with. That’s why I like being an adult so much. Nerds as far as the eye can see! 

Tom Fowler: I played a lot when I was a kid. AD&D, Top Secret, and later TMNT mostly. Then a 20+ year lull between the ages of 13 and 37 (?) when I picked back up with 4th and then 5th edition. I’ve been playing off and on since.

The night we moved to Ottawa, just before I turned 11, I played D&D with my older brother and a couple of other kids in the den of a family friend. It definitely hooked me. I spent the next several years pouring over the monster manuals and anything else I could get my hands on.

 

From Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games

 

FS: The history of roleplaying is so expansive at this point. Where do you start? RPGs in general? Fantasy? I feel like there are so many places you could go with this.

FVL: You are very right. We go back to the very very beginning. Dungeons & Dragons started out with a long tradition in “wargaming,” and one of the oldest, and definitely the most popular, is chess. So we start in the 6th century with the birth of chess. The other great thing about chess is that it’s a game that almost everybody knows, so even if you’re not a huge D&D nut we can draw you in and start you in a common foundation everyone’s familiar with.

FS: Fred, you’ve done other biographies and histories before in graphic novel form. Why roleplaying this time around?

FVL: It was Tom’s idea. I had contracted to do The Comic Book Story of Basketball for Ten Speed, and he wasn’t interested in that, but told me if I ever did a history of RPGs to drop him a line. Well, guess what I got started on that very same day. Well, week. Or month. I don’t remember. But it was not long thereafter.

 

From Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games

 

FS: Tom, you’re known for your work with Wizards of the Coast, Disney, Marvel, and a whole host of other companies. How does that inform your work with Gamemasters?

TF: I tend to try and bring whatever a particular job requires whenever I start something new. I don’t believe in developing an art “style” per se. I’d rather just draw. I think of any given job as existing on a scale between abstract and “realistic,” then I slide the scale according to its needs. With a book like Gamemasters that scale can get slid not just from page to page, but sometimes panel to panel! It’s been fun attempting to flex all of those muscles over the course of one job.

FS: In a similar vein for both of you, comic books and RPGs are all about storytelling. Have RPGs impacted or influenced your comic book storytelling or vice versa?

FVL: I’d like to think so. They’re certainly great practice! I actually stopped playing RPGs when I became a professional writer because making up stories in my spare time seemed like work. If you want to stop eating sausages, go work in a sausage factory. But when I turned 40 I had this huge wave of nostalgia for Call of Cthulhu and started a gaming group with my friends. We’ve been doing it well over a decade ever since. 

TF: I think that if you’ve had that sense of collaborative play from RPGs baked into you at an early age, it can only aid you in any branch of art, entertainment, and storytelling.

 

From Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games

 

FS: Was there anything that surprised you in the research and development of this book?

FVL: I was unaware of how close the comics and D&D connection is. Doctor Strange comics heavily influenced the magic system, and a swipe from Strange Tales is actually the illustration of the lid of the original box set of D&D. In the famous Appendix N of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, in which Gygax lists all of his influences, he mentions his love of comics. Though specifically he mentions EC Comics, which I don’t really see very much of D&D. Was a “Dungeon Master” originally supposed to be called a “Crypt Keeper?!” 

TF: For me, honestly, most of it? Despite being the one who initially said to Fred: “What if we did a history of RPGs?” I really didn’t know much about the history. Even after working in the RPG industry for a decade or so. It’s been fun to learn, almost in real time with the audience, about the very odd, tangled, and often tragic history.

Also, there’s a robot!

FS: From your personal and professional experiences and your own research, why do you think RPGs are so popular and have such staying power?

FVL: Interactive storytelling is as old as humanity. In our digital age, we’re looking for ways to connect each other beyond the screens. Even though plenty of folks play on-line nowadays (including me), there’s still that one-on-one connection that social media has paradoxically interfered with. 

TF: I’ve been talking a lot lately, in the lead up to this campaign, about “creative play.” As a parent, we’re always told about its vital importance in child development, cooperation, stress relief, etc… A number of years ago I hit a wall with my depression. It was actually, in part, through starting to play RPGs and learning to carve out the time for myself to draw for myself, that I managed to pull my way back up through it. I’d argue that both of those things, for me at least, constitute “play.” As a result I’m very much of the opinion that that childhood need for creative play doesn’t go away as we enter adulthood. I think it’s just as important in building communities, stress management, and just having fun now as it was then. Whether that’s a fantasy football league or bashing goblins into pink mist of graph paper.

FS: In terms of rewards, what can backers of the Kickstarter expect?

FVL: If we get enough dough, we’re going to have some guest artists do some “Fetch Quest” short stories peppered in with the main chapters. Who? Pledge to the campaign and find out! 

FS: What are you reading and/or playing right now?

FVL: As it’s the anniversary of Marvel Super Hero Secret Wars, I am rotting my brain re-reading that side-by-side with Crisis on Infinite Earths for my “Comic Book Deathmatch” column over on 13th Dimension. Even though I’ve been dissing D&D, I am running the Isle of Dread 5e conversion on my weekly Zoom group, something I don’t think I would have had the confidence to do if I hadn’t sunk 200 hours into Baldur’s Gate 3. And in my monthly group, my Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages players have been zapped back to Imperial Rome. Good times. 

TF: I haven’t actually played anything since lockdown, but during that time I dabbled a bit with Mothership and really enjoyed it. I love reading SF by people like Iain M Banks, Ann Leckie, and Martha Wells. I’ve been wolfing down the audiobooks in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series and just got home from vacation where I read four different Kyle Starks (et al) GNs and John Scalzi’s Lock In. All great!

 

From Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games

 

FS: Do either of you have any other projects in development that you’d like to discuss?

FVL: In October, everyone should pick up Murder Kingdom #1, a Mad Cave creator-owned book I’m doing with the great French artist Chris Panda. It’s a slasher movie set at a certain amusement park in Florida where a masked killer is murdering employees in the gory style of the original fairy tales. You must be this tall…to DIE! 

TF: I’m currently doing a lot of covers for Oni Press’s new line of EC Comics and others, beyond that… French stuff. (That’s all I can say.)

FS: If you had one final pitch for the book, what would it be?

FVL: It’s Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games, baby, it’s exactly what it sounds like, and a ton of fun. Would Tom and I lie to you? I would not. 

TF: Please buy our book. It’s neat. There’s a robot. It’s been 7 years. I’m very tired.

As of press time, the Kickstarter for Clover Press’ Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games has already hit its initial funding more than twice over, with 22 days still left! This looks to be a very special book for fans of roleplaying, comics, history, or all of the above, so give this campaign is definitely worth a gander!

From the official press release for the Kickstarter:

Roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons have solidly moved from the geek fringes to the mainstream in recent years, inspiring hit podcasts, massively successful crowdfunding campaigns, and blockbuster films. Now New York Times-bestselling and award-winning comics creators Fred Van Lente (The Comic Book History of Animation), acclaimed Wizards of the Coast and comics artist Tom Fowler (Books of Magic) and colorist Bill Crabtree are sharing the epic history of the tabletop’s triumph in their latest graphic novel Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games. The graphic history will be crowdfunded by publisher Clover Press via Kickstarter.

The story of the tabletop’s triumph even in our digital age begins in the day of actual sword-wielding warriors, leading right up to the fireball-casting avatars of today. Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games takes readers on an incredible journey from the mists of the past to the screen-lit present, showing not just how these games work and why we love them, but what they can tell us about ourselves.

“This project has been a labor of love for Tom and me since 2019, and it’s so exciting to bring it to fruition on the fiftieth anniversary of D&D,” said Van Lente. “It’s been so cool to follow the story of an idea, from the invention of chess and the earliest wargames, up through the birth of TSR in the 1970s, through all the innovations gamers and designers have added to the RPG genre since then, right up to Baldur’s Gate 3, really.”

Cartoonist and illustrator Tom Fowler has worked for Disney, Simon & Schuster, Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, MAD, Marvel, and DC Comics on acclaimed comics including Books of Magic, Rick and Morty, Venom, and Mad Magazine.

“The tabletop gaming industry is where I learnt to be a professional artist,” said Fowler. “After some years away, it’s been a privilege to reimmerse myself in the strange history of of that world!”

Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games follows Fred Van Lente’s earlier New York Times-bestselling nonfiction graphic novels: The Comic Book History of Comics, which NPR said was “done with wit, energy, a healthy dose of insolence and a dedication to getting it right.” The Comic Book History of Animation, called “a must-read comic that will both entertain and educate” by ComicBook.com; and the American Library Association award-winning Action Philosophers, which the New York Times called “intensely goofy but intellectually rigorous”.

“Fred and Tom are both hardcore gamers, and it shows in this meticulously researched history of the tabletop RPG,” said Clover Press Publisher Hank Kanalz. “Their passion for gaming comes through in their dramatic and often humorous take on how and why these games work, and why we love them so.”

Here’s what folks are saying about GAMEMASTERS…

“When researching DIE, I read the vast majority of the existent histories of the RPG. What Van Lente and Fowler have done here is in the first rank of them, absolutely the most accessible and certainly the funniest. I’m actively envious.”— Kieron Gillen, Die, The Wicked + the Divine, Young Avengers

“A raucous, personal history of tabletop gaming — and especially the personalities who shaped it.”  — Patton Oswalt, Minor Threats

“A fascinating history of real live people who sound like they should be made up and how they made a living making stuff up.” — Blaine Capatch, Nerd Poker

For updates, follow Clover Press on X, Instagram, and Facebook. To support the campaign, visit Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloverpress/1974448294?ref=4e200j.