A couple years ago I reviewed Secrets of Blackmoor – a documentary about Dave Arneson, and the development of the Blackmoor campaign leading up to the development of the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Kickstarting around the same time was Dreams in Gary’s Basement, a documentary focusing on the life of Gary Gygax. I’ve covered a couple of biographies of Gygax’s life in the past – Empire of the Imagination and Rise of the Dungeon Master. When Dreams in Gary’s Basement went up for Kickstarter, I felt that this was an appropriate documentary to back as well. Well, now I’ve received my physical copy and I’ve watched it – so now it’s time for my thoughts.

Dreams in Gary’s Basement ultimately covers a lot of the same ground as Empire of the Imagination – admittedly over a shorter amount of time. The documentary briefly goes over Gary’s childhood before moving into the early wargaming scene and Gary’s involvement there, before going into the development of the Braunstein and how Gary’s developments of the rules for Chainmail – particularly the additional fantasy rules – would feed into Blackmoor and eventually Dungeons & Dragons. It then goes into the Blume family, their eventually taking the company over after Don Kaye’s death, and the turmoil leading to the Ambush at Sheridan Springs. Through this, we do get some mention of Gary’s “exile” to Los Angeles (though it isn’t presented as such), the divorce, and the falling out with Dave Arneson with the ensuing lawsuit. We also get a discussion of the impact of the Dallas Egbert disappearance and the Satanic Panic & the disastrous D&D episode of 60 Minutes. Like Empire of the Imagination, we don’t get a lot of coverage or discussion of Gary’s projects after his ouster and before Wizards of the Coast bought TSR and with it D&D.

What makes this film valuable to watch in addition to Empire of the Imagination is the interviews and video footage we get. We have lots of wonderfully shot footage of Lake Geneva – including in the winter – showing the cold Great Lakes winters that would create the perfect incubator for the development of tabletop RPGs – when you’ve got a bunch of really cold winters where it’s too cold to do anything outside, hanging out inside in a heated basement playing miniature wargames is a really good option. The Pacific Northwest has – or historically had – a similar situation with exceptionally cold rainy falls, winters, and early springs.

We also get photos of some of the TSR D&D licensed products – some which we had pictures of in Art and Arcana, but many we did not (like the Dungeons & Dragons tricycle) – not to mention commercials (like for the Dungeons & Dragons action figures). We also have clips of TV broadcasts about D&D when people were trying to figure out what the hell this new craze is, newspaper articles from around the same time, interview footage with William Dear on late-night talk shows which made him look like a self-aggrandizing ass (the footage at the time that is).

We also get some important clips of the 60 Minutes episode – which was a planned hit piece from the start, along with home movies from Gary’s exile in Los Angeles. Weirdly, when talking about some of the poor spending decisions made under the Blumes’ tenure at TSR, while they show a news article of the excavation of a sunken vessel in Lake Geneva, we get a glimpse of a newspaper article – when SF Debris piece on the history of TSR managed to find a clip of TV news coverage (maybe they couldn’t get the clearances?)

If I have a complaint about the film, it’s that the film doesn’t get into Gary’s poor mismanagement of TSR after regaining control of the Blumes, leading into the Ambush at Sheridan Springs. Nor does it get into how his own hubris lead to him ultimately losing control of the company again. It’s painted as Lorraine Williams running a power play in response to poor treatment and an admittedly misogynist flexing of muscle in front of TSR staff by Gary, after he regained control. The film also repeats without question Frank Metzer giving the apocryphal story that Lorraine Williams got the Jimi Hendrix Experience kicked off the UC Berkley campus for smoking weed. And, ultimately, its discussion of Gary’s involvement in the game industry after TSR and before the WotC buy-out begins and ends at Cyborg Commando, without getting into TSR’s lawsuits on pretty much everyone who did business with him – I would have loved to have gotten some comments with Loren Wiseman (as he was still alive when the documentary was shot) about the Dangerous Domains/Journeys deal.

In short – this is a good presentation for an important part of the Gary Gygax story, but it’s not really a complete version of the story. You still need something like Designers and Dragons to get an important chapter in the history. Some of the people in this documentary would have been around for that part of the history and could have commented about it, but we sadly didn’t get it then – and as some of them have passed since then, we won’t have an opportunity to interview them about that further now.

Do I recommend this documentary? Absolutely – if you are interested in roleplaying history, you absolutely need to have this in your collection, alongside Secrets of Blackmoor. It is available for streaming and digital purchase at RPGHistory.net. I do hope that both those documentaries (and, for that matter, The Dwarvenaut and Eye of the Beholder) get picked up by Kanopy or Hoopla.

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