By Kevin Morales

Samuel Sattin has been playing tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons since he was an adolescent. The game and others like it have slowly expanded into the mainstream since the 1970s. The connection of communities has grown thanks to the proliferation of the internet and the game finding its way into the homes of anyone who watched Stranger Things on Netflix, or the players of the popular Baldur’s Gate video games. Time Magazine also recently published a massive edition in honor of Dungeons & Dragons’ 50th anniversary. But where did this game come from? How did it evolve? Sattin and his co-writer Steenz did an incredible amount of research to investigate the origin of a phenomenon for their book Side Quest: A Visual History of Roleplaying Games.

The colorful graphic memoir and history book follows our intrepid writers’ journey to learn more about the games they love. It’s presented in a way that can be easily digested by young readers or people who haven’t played the game or its many iterations. As someone who has played since the sixth grade, before there was internet, at a boarding school where kids always had to find stimulating ways to entertain themselves, I found the book fascinating. The Coachella Review succeeded with its Tracking check and located Sattin to discuss his fun and informative exploration of strategy games that date back to antiquity.

 

The Coachella Review: Was there a book that inspired the creation of Side Quest or inspired you to make it as a graphic novel?

Samuel Sattin: Speaking for myself personally, I wasn’t inspired by any books I’d read on the subject of tabletop role playing games. Rather, I was inspired by TTRPGs themselves, and their contributions to global culture. I believe Steenz is inspired by the works of Box Brown, whom I also enjoy. But for me, I just wanted to work on a book that looked at TTRPGs from a more expansive historical standpoint. One that reaches beyond the creation of Dungeons & Dragons itself.

TCR: How did you and Steenz come to partner on this?

SS: Steenz and I met years ago at a [convention], through mutual publishing acquaintances and friends. At the time, she was the editor of a wonderful magazine called Rolled & Told, which was centralized around D&D Fifth Edition gameplay, including articles, campaign modules, and more. I really enjoyed her work on that project as its editor, and I approached her with the idea of pitching a more expansive history of TTRPGs than what was currently available. We agreed on a direction and soon got to work. After a lot of revision and reorientation, we finally landed on a format that truly worked.

TCR: Your book goes deep into the history of gaming. Of all the things you learned from your research, what struck you as the most mind-blowing?

SS: For me, it was the fact that modern TTRPGs were made what they are by the introduction of the fantasy genre as a whole—J.R.R. Tolkien, in particular. It may seem obvious on the surface that Tolkien inspired the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, but I don’t think many people are aware just how much he, and other authors like Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, created the necessary imagined space to project a rule system upon. Without the sci-fi/fantasy literary revolution in the twentieth century, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson would have gone through life playing Napoleonic Wargames, instead of departing from them.

TCR: Dungeons & Dragons created a community. What about the game continues to speak to people more than two generations later?

SS: When I was growing up, D&D was still a taboo. Far more so than today, where it’s found more salience in mainstream culture. For me, it was a way for people who perhaps didn’t feel comfortable in their own skin to explore their identities in different ways. Though we didn’t know this at the time, we were discovering more about who we were by exploring different personalities, gender roles, and more. And overall, I think that kind of exploration builds community. When you find a group of people who are excited about playing a game where all of your internal, imagined world becomes a shared one, you form bonds and learn a lot about acceptance.

TCR: Outside the game itself, is there a story or iteration in a different medium you think captures the spirit of the game? A novel or movie or video game?

SS: I’ve thought about this, and honestly, the answer for me is no. Movies are movies, books are books, games are games. Playing TTRPGs is like playing a living story—one that is always in the process of changing and evolving. They are fluid, and that’s why they’re both special and unique. They lean heavily on sci-fi/fantasy conventions in a big way, mining for material. But the game itself is played by interacting directly with a story. This is different from the kind of indirect interaction a reader has with a text. Books and films are entertaining, yes. But TTRPGs are play.

TCR: The book’s illustrations visualize your journey learning more about the history of the game. What else did you hope presenting it in this way would do for the book?

SS: To put it frankly, I love comics. I also love nonfiction prose, but with a subject like TTRPGs, there are advantages to being able to show how everything looks. The goal as I see it is to create more of a personal connection with historical figures and places that can get lost at times in prose. Additionally, most TTRPGs contain a good few visual elements, from boards and figurines and polyhedral dice to illustrated companion books. This makes a graphic novel my preferred medium through which to explore this subject.

TCR: Did you have other ideas for titles before you settled on Side Quest?

SS: Yes! Many. I can’t even remember them now… I think one of them may have been the horrifically boring “A Visual History of Tabletop Roleplaying Games.” Thank the gods we didn’t go in that direction.

TCR: What was the most challenging part about writing the book?

SS: The research, most definitely. I’m mostly a fiction writer who has delved into a few nonfiction pies over the years, but I’m not a seasoned journalist or academic. Researching is careful business. You have to make sure everything-—everything—is as accurate as humanly possible. This means cross-referencing, double, triple, and quadruple rechecking. It means making sure that you don’t make ahistorical or anti-factual leaps just because you want to get a point across. In short, you have to read a lot. And then you have to cross-reference everything you read with other sources that may disagree. It’s hefty on the head—or at least that’s how I felt. This is especially true when you’re researching, say, Han Dynasty China, and you realize that it’s kind of hard to figure out how to visually depict that period in history, due to the fact that it existed nearly 2,000 years ago.

TCR: Did you let the research guide the writing, or was there a structured way you approached it first?

SS: The research definitely guided the writing. I did months of near full-time research—about four months in total—before I even got started on the script. I had to know what I was going to write about before the pen hit the page.

TCR: What’s next for you?

SS: I’m currently working on a very exciting series for Scholastic/Graphix following the adventures of a character called Unico. It’s based off the work of Osamu Tezuka, also known as the God of Manga, in Japan. That’s the biggest portion of my plate right now, though I’m also working on a mystery/thriller book for Viz Media and cooking up a few more ideas when I can find the time. I also plan to sleep a bit more. That’s definitely next for me. Sleep, and lots of it.

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Kevin T. Morales is a writer and filmmaker from California working and living in New York. He is the former Artistic Director of two professional theater companies, has directed over thirty productions regionally and Off-Broadway, and had several of his original plays and musicals produced. His first feature film, Generation Wrecks, played several festivals, winning the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Florida Film Festival. A graduate of NYU, Kevin is currently pursuing his MFA at UCR and is writing his first novel.