Mazes and Monsters

by Rona Jaffe

Four university friends, obsessed with a fantasy role-playing game delve into the darkest parts of their minds and carry the game one terrible step too far

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Literature, Gaming

329 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Rona Jaffe established The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards program in 1995. It is the only national literary awards program of its kind dedicated to supporting women writers exclusively. Since the program began, the Foundation has awarded more than $850,000 to a total of 92 women.

Ms. Jaffe was the author of sixteen books, including Class Reunion, Family Secrets, The Road Taken, and The Room-Mating Season (2003). Her 1958 best-selling first novel, The Best of Everything, was reissued by Penguin in 2005.

Reviews

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 1 out of 5]

This thing was sooooo noticed in it's day. They did a TV movie with a young Tom Hanks.

The warning here? Mommas don't let your babies grow up to play Dungeons and Dragons. Oh the game in the book is Mazes and Monsters but I doubt anyone missed the point. The poor sap in the book completely loses himself in his character. I wonder what that says about the electronic games of today? I mean if it was dangerous for a few friends to sit around a table with some paper and dice (which I did and still do occasionally) how much danger does an MMORPG represent?

Come on. This thing was pathetic when it came out and it's still pathetic today.

If I could I'd give this one less than one star...but if you try to give no stars it just looks like you read the thing without rating it... Had this book not hit a fashionable inquisitory victim it would never have been so popular. It just isn't that good. But like so many things before and after (remember the foo-fa-rah over Harry Potter?) Dungeons and Dragons and the other role playing games (RPGs)that came along were (at least at first) deemed by "society" to be dangerous. Yes a group of nerds sitting around a table with some dice, a few sheets of paper and some books were in imminent danger of losing their minds because they could, for a few hours imagine themselves to be heroes, wizards, rogues and ...yes, clerics.

(I wonder how the jocks can handle fantasy football...isn't it a risk?)

Since my "hey day" as a Dungeon Master I have raised a family, had a career and been ordained as a minister (yes a Christian church...a real one). Unlike the poor schmuck in the book I don't continue to live in an imaginary world unable to get out. I don't (and never did) wander around "city steam tunnels" dress in costume (though if you do it doesn't bother me...enjoy), nor confuse fantasy with reality. I still read fantasy books, and now and then still play D&D.

But I don't own this book anymore and the only recommendation I can give is don't waste your time. Seldom is propaganda this pitifully, woefully, useless. As said before, pathetic.

Update 6/27/15

I looked back at this review after reading and reviewing Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It. I am also old enough to remember when it became difficult to find a comic book. In the 1950s there were congressional hearings about the danger of those nefarious graphic adventures...Like captain America and Bucky or Batman with Robin... Today's books would really freak them out.

Then as I noted above many here probably recall the campaign against Harry Potter. Some Christians see danger in any kind of fantasy I think.

My Pastor back in the 80s pronounced from the "pulpit" that, "If you're still playing Dungeons and Dragons you're sinning!". I had to lay the game aside for a few years to remain in good standing with the church.

Of course I'm a Pastor myself now and play both as player and Dungeon Master (that title freaked a few people out as I recall).

This book rode the tide of hysteria about D&D...sadly not only is it pretty much pure propaganda, it's not well told propaganda...

Oh well. I'm sure you can get it from the library if you want to try it. As noted, can't recommend this one.


Another update: Since I reviewed this book I have attended a Ren Fair in costume so I can't say I haven't been in costume anymore...of course I am 69 so maybe I can claim I'm in my second childhood???? Oh well, I had fun.

[GD · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I was about 14 years old, it was one of the very few books that I've read in a day. I think you might have to be a Dungeons and Dragons nerd with paranoid Christian parents to really enjoy this.

[Grady Hendrix · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first anti-RPG book to come out in the wake of James Dallas Egbert III's sad suicide in 1984 was from Rona Jaffe, extremely famous author behind the scandalicious bestselling proto-Mad Men and proto-Sex and the City novel, The Best of Everything. Published in 1958, TBoE provided not only a great late-career role for Joan Crawford in the inevitable movie, but it also provided deep insight into what it was like to be a young woman in 1958. Mazes and Monsters, on the other hand, provides no insight into what it was like to be a D&D player in 1980. It’s a book written by an author who knows nothing, and cares less, about roleplaying games, only coming to life when she devotes her time to the backstories of the RPG enthusiasts’ parents, each of whom was a young person in 1958.

Read the rest of this review.

[Drake Tungsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book a few years after it came it out. I actually liked the character sketches that Jaffe used. Finding out about the characters' backgrounds, and those of their parents, did a good job of showing how they became the people they are in the present. And where some of their individual problems came from.

With regards to the social events that were going on at the time that this book was written, I have a few thoughts. What many "protect the child" groups miss--whether they're attacking heavy metal music, Dungeons and Dragons, or Harry Potter--is that people don't do bad things because of a book or a song. Some do so because they make a conscious choice to act badly. And some arrive at this decision more as a result of their poor upbringing (not being taught right from wrong, plus concern for others) and their current environment (being bullied, being pressured to be an "A" student) than anything else.

"Mazes and Monsters" points out that the character of Robbie had problems before he played the game. And if it wasn't the game that acted as the catalyst for his break from reality, it would've been something else.

That's something I think that everybody missed.

[Frank · Rating 1 out of 5]

Want to read pure D&D fear mongering from 1980s with out a bit of truth, or need for D&D to be part of it. Well the good news is Mazes and Monsters is here to remind us of how people used to see Dungeons and Dragons.

But really what makes this book especially bad is three things.

It's poorly written in almost every way, entertainly so... though not entertaining enough to recommend it. Dialogue, characters, content, all ... bad. And then it does it in the most heavy handed method. Most people have heard show don't tell? Well Rona Jaffe definitely hasn't.

It creates the most blandest story, if instead of Dungeons and Dragons, I wanted to besmirch Rock and Roll music, Video games, or pretty much anything else, you could do it with a find and replace. Granted some small passages about the games would have to be rewritten, but the book itself is generic that you could make it about the dangers of Football and it would work.

Finally and most insulting is just as you think the book is over, it decides to make it sound like a true story, one more time. A character decides that she would write a book, in fact the very book you're reading, so you're lead to think... if you're a moron.

So take four students at a college in non descript Northeast United States. A good school but not ivy league. All four students COULD go to the ivy league, mit, harvard, but they don't for ... stupid reasons. All four have bad home lives, they are all different ages, (from 14-21). Different years of school (two are sophomores, one's a freshman, one's a senior). Abuse drugs (ok alcohol was legal for college students back in 1980... but they still do pot, I'm only shocked they don't whip out cocaine to really drive the message home). And have premarital sex (THE SIN!) In fact they pass the girl around like am object (this is 1980 so the fact she has any thoughts is pretty amazing, and yes this was written by a woman but we'll get to that).

Speaking of the girl, early on she is mentioned to have "The incident in the laundry room" ominious and evil sounding. In fact the reader can be forgiven that they might draw this out. But in fact by the time the book comes around to her again the author just blurts it out. Could it have been a traumatizing incident? Maybe. But the author really doesn't deliver, she was "almost" raped. And by that, it's not really clear what that means. And for that she's afraid of dating... until she's not a chapter or two later...

It's not only the female main character that is horribly written, all four children's mothers get a chapter given to them. Why? Are they main characters? Nope. Are they interesting? Well the first was, the second was the same, the third was the same, and the fourth? About the same again. They all have a small amount of trauma that helps explain why their kids are messed up. Except that trauma was already exposed with out a full chapter of exposition from their point of view. None of the female characters feel like they were written by a woman. Well none of the human characters feel like they were written by a human, but same problem. The women are all ditzy pointless bimboettes, that could only work in the 80s. If that's how people saw women in the 1980s I understand bra burning and feminism. Oh wait feminism became big in the 1960s, this is still 20 years after that, only making it more insulting to women.

And they play "the game". They keep calling it that, but really like I said, "the game" is just what all the characters escape with to avoid the horrible lives they lead. Those horrible lives of near unlimited money, beautiful cars, beautiful people, random sex (maybe that does happen in college, but not in my experience), and close friends. So devastating that they play a game and get lost in it... But the game isn't even that interesting, none of the rules or ideas are explained, it's just hand waved away after maybe 10 pages of explanation of what they're doing. The subject of the book, the one the book is NAMED after only really appears in about 10 percent of the pages. They make numerous references to the game, but the actual game is pretty non existent. No wonder why people reading this book might not have a good grasp of what role playing games are. The author clearly didn't.

The thing is all four characters are paper thing for 75 percent of the book, when they aren't the main character. Each chapter chooses a character and they are the voice for that chapter. The only thing is everything you hear and see and have happen is from that character's perspective, it really TELLS you what they are thinking, or even what they think of each other. But nothing interesting really happens outside of their emotions. Nothing is shown to the reader, you are told one of the characters is giving away a lot of things, by two different characters, but you never see that happen. You are told that Jay Jay now likes Robbie after a break up, but Jay Jay never really shows he dislikes Robbie except that one time he's told it.

Worse, most of these events are pointless. Darin is jealous of Jay Jay, and that leads no where. Robbie is feeling alone, and that leads no where. Kate is whoring it up (1980s woman mind you) which creates a love triangle that... doesn't lead anywhere. Am I supposed to think any of these will lead to a missing person, because the missing person case becomes really obvious about half way through and these little stories all would have been a lot better. In fact I could agree because those would involve the game into the main story. But instead... welll....

I'll just throw in the moral of the message of what the book might be getting at, because honestly, it's just the icing on the shit sandwich this book was.

If your kid has a bad home life, and is prone to have a schizophrenic episode, Dungeons and Dragons might become the basis of that delusion, during which he might move to New York, become a hobo, become a prostitute and stab someone...

But at the same time that same game will help him create friendships that may help him, and the other people move beyond "the game" to a better life... potentially.

.... At least I think that's the moral of the story, it's what the book told me it was, and considering how the rest of the book is I don't think there's much deeper, but I came up with my own moral.

People who confuse fiction with reality can be dangerous, and anyone who used it to inform policy or their decision should probably be checked out by a psychiatrist because they might have a mental problem.

And by this I'm directly talking to anyone who confused this pile of BS, with reality. In fact people used letters in this book in news reports, this book is what helped along the big scare of Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, people confused a completely fictional account of what the author thinks role playing games is like, and what college life is like, and what mental illness is like, and thought this is what really happened when people play those "games". No wonder there was a huge amount of panic about children confusing fiction with reality. Their parents were doing it with this writing.

Honestly if you want to see where all the fear uncertainty and gloom about Dungeons and dragons really came from, this is the book, it's interesting only to see how easily people were lead around in the 1980s. But besides the fact it's a quick read, it's really not worth the time or energy finding the book or reading it.

I'd rather go read Eragon again... at least that is well written.

[Mackenzie Marrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know what you're thinking "Mackenzie! You play DND every week, why are you giving the anti-DND book 4 stars???" Because it was fun, okay!! And I have a lot to say about it.

Jaffe's writing is fun and engaging if not a little goofy and overblown at times. I read a review that called Mazes and Monsters a soap opera, and that sums up my feelings while reading pretty well.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Book

We're introduced to the main 3 characters, how they all ended up at Grant College, why they are into playing M&M, and their need for a new player after their last one flunked out of school due to his obsession for the game.

Their game moves from simple graph paper to a full on (pretty sick) LARP adventure in a nearby abandoned cavern system that is supposed to be off limits to students (two had previously died in the caves, and the solution was to put up one chain across the entrance- good joy guys). Robbie, the newest member of the group, undergoes a transformation in the cave- the immersive experience being too much for his already fragile mind, and he undergoes a mental break, leading him to believe that he is actually his character in real life.

Interspersed between chapters are depictions of the college student's home lives which contain varying degrees of function and dysfunction. And each of their mothers has a whole chapter dedicated to her life, and how she ended up in her own particular situation. Here, Jaffe covers the change in societal norms and the rise of feminism that the Baby Boomers would have lived through from the 50's of their childhood to the 80's of their adult years. It's a really interesting discussion on how our situation shapes our lives, and the constraints that society puts on women to do XYZ, despite their actual desires and ambitions.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So where is the evil, the Satanic influence??
- There is none. The teenagers are shockingly normal. They stress about college, their dating life, and enjoy parties. There is a heavy emphasis on their sex lives as well, but is shown as a normal part of being in college and "in love". It's not shown as a sin or something, the extremists would have you think. Robbie's mental degradation is a foregone conclusion as a result of his trauma from his brother running away when he was a child, his broken home life, and the stressors of college (also illnesses like schizophrenia tend to show themselves in college, so wrong place wrong time). While the players believe that their devotion to the game, made Robbie lose it- the book and everyone else seems to argue otherwise.

Is Mazes and Monsters an accurate representation of the DND experience?
-Of course not! The mechanics are pretty different, giving the DM more power than normal, and it seems like the average player MUST be obsessed with the game. They are playing multiple times a week, which if anyone has ever tried to schedule a DND session- that's near impossible. The only reason I finished this book when I did, was because my DND game was cancelled because the guys would rather watch football.

There is a reoccurring theme of the game being used as a form a pseudo-therapy to help the teens as they grow into the uncertain adult world. Which is a pretty accurate representation of why many people are drawn to TTRPGS, they're a form of escape and always a safe way to express feelings and gain confidence. I believe Jaffe's intention for this was to show this being something sinister- like going into a fake world instead of getting help in the real one. But in 2024, that seems like a silly notion. Especially with our modern emphasis on "immersion".


Is this book harmful?

- No...unless you're completely removed from reality.

I, like all of you, were introduced to Mazes and Monsters as the "DND is scary and satanic" book that caused harm. When in actuality, I think those claims are as blown up as the satanic panic itself. I looked around trying to find any real world consequences that the book had, but it seems like some wackos got a hold of it and there was a cheesy movie made of it and that's about the extent of it.

I don't think Jaffe was an extremist, she was a popular writer focusing on reactionary content (like a Jodi Picoult), and thought DND seemed weird (She apparently played one session and was HORRIFIED, which is pretty funny). She doesn't seems to be conservative either, the book including sex, drugs, homosexuality (and asexuality), as normal parts of daily life. I think at the end of the day, she was just a boomer who didn't understand the latest teen craze. Which isn't against the law.

[intrepideddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I was young (well before I got into playing Dungeons & Dragons), I saw a schlock, made-for-TV movie called "Mazes and Monsters". (Shockingly enough, Tom Hanks was in it.) Schlock doesn't even scratch the surface here.

The movie was based on this book and is pretty faithful (from what I remember of the movie). I have to admit that the book was just interesting enough to keep me reading. Only just. The depiction of the game (hardly a stretch to know the author is referring to D&D) in the book is laughable. It is quite obvious that the author never read any of the D&D game books, much less played an actual game. She was going off of misinformed, third-hand reports of the game from shoddy reporting in the newspapers back when there was a big news story about a missing person that somehow got connected to the game D&D. In fact, a book was written on the the true events ("The Dungeon Master" by William Dear) and it is those events that provided inspiration for this book.

As a D&D geek, I fully expected to completely despise this book, but it wasn't too bad. Not good enough to ever want to read it again, but it had some entertainment value. This story actually had some promise, but the author went off on unnecessary tangents (about the domestic lives of the students' mothers) that, while interesting, added nothing at all to the story. There was also a mild undertone of female empowerment that was a bit off-putting, but probably a product of the time the book was written.

[Emily Kestrel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this ages and ages ago, when I was in college, so to be honest, I can't recall much about it, except that I wasn't impressed. Some of my friends at the time were really into D&D, and when they saw this book in my hands, exclaimed something along the lines of, "How can you read such tripe? We are so disappointed in you!" Personally, I was not so enthralled with RPGs, seeing them as a monumental waste of time, but to this day, as I will quite cheerfully confess, I am happy to live "in my own little world" in my head. So I was not impressed by the alarmist story here, which did seem to warn against the dangers of the imagination (an interesting point for a novelist to take, no?).

More to the point, as I recall, it just wasn't very well written and the characters were not convincing. I was disappointed as I had really enjoyed some of the authors other books, such as The Best of Everything. Would I read it again to see if my opinion has changed? Probably not, as I recall this just was not very good. Read something else by this author first, would be my 20+ years retrospective advice.

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deft, well characterized, though with the exception of Jay Jay, these kids seemed to have too much going on to be D&D types. Anyway, the mental health angle was not developed and seemed to miss the point. Though it was 1981, so maybe that was the best she could do.

[Matthew Boerschig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much more contemporary fiction than fantasy or horror. A great coming-of-age tale with deep characters. The game is background noise compared to them.

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I ended up with a copy of this a few years ago, and only rediscovered it upon cleaning my room. And while I expected it to be bad, I was not expecting it to be a friggin' romance novel. It really is as if Jaffe had a finished manuscript for a dull, coming-of-age college romance story, but nobody was buying. So, she read through the newspapers, looking for a hook, stumbled across the "Satanic Panic" surrounding D&D, and shoehorned in all the stuff about fantasy roleplaying. The entire 70-ish pages of Part II have absolutely no relevance to the plot Mazes and Monsters ended up with, but they'd feel important in a by-the-numbers romance story. (The kids go home for winter break, and we examine their home lives/relationships with their parents.) Despite ostensibly being the focal point of the book, the stuff about Jaffe's fictionalized version of D&D feels very tacked on.

And really, perhaps she shouldn't have tried to handle a fantasy angle, when it's clear she doesn't have a firm grasp of how the real world works. The legal drinking age in Pennsylvania in 1980 was 21, and yet this cast of 16-19-year-olds have massive stockpiles of booze always at hand, and their parents just offer them wine at dinner without a second thought. Also, despite belaboring how crowded a dorm room with two residents would be, apparently these same rooms are capable of comfortably housing massive parties (again, with free-flowing booze) with dozens of people. Also, RAs apparently don't exist at Grant University--it's like Jaffe learned everything she knew about college from watching Animal House.

And of course, the elephant in the room is Jaffe's insulting treatment of roleplaying in general. Like, the only reason people would play a game that utilizes their imagination, is if something was wrong with them. Though, in Jaffe's world, the only reason a person would be gay is if something was wrong with them, too, so there's that. Lest you think I'm exaggerating: "He didn't know what had turned him into the kind of man he was: a respectable, well-meaning citizen with one fatal flaw." That "fatal flaw" is being attracted to younger men.

And yet somehow, Mazes and Monsters is not the worst "roleplaying games are the devil" novel I've read; that would be Hobgoblin. At least most of Jaffe's characters are vaguely reminiscent of real people, instead of the unlikable, overblown caricatures in that book. And there's a coherent plot. Granted, it's all very dull, and offensive at times, but it truly could've been worse.

[B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was born a few short years after the D&D hate started, and while I was mildly curious as to where it came from, I never did anything about it other than giggle at the pamphlets that churches handed out at Halloween that talked about how D&D was the devil's game. Fast forward to my years as a teenager and while there was some D&D, it was mostly VTM. Well, I found out that this gem of a book existed thanks to Grady Hendrix's writing, and I sought it out. Boy am I glad that I did. From a psychological and sociological perspective, it was fascinating. It's easy to see how this book could have changed with a game of "telephone" in order to become the dire prediction that it was seen as. The prose is beautiful, and, sadly, the extenuating issues discussed within the text (climate change, pollution, etc. - all relevant issues in the '80s) were just as relevant as today, so it felt as though I was reading a book that could have been published yesterday, albeit with far better quality writing than most modern authors. Although I haven't played a tabletop or LARPed in years, it was a wonderful walk down memory lane.

[Andrew Wodzianski · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst cash-grab pieces of dreck I've ever read. I don't know what's worse; the ridiculous characters or my own lack of self worth. I genuinely think I'm dumber now that I'm done. I finished thanks only to pure stubbornness. Understanding this book was instrumental for ushering the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, I wanted to directly experience the harbinger. If this book and its TV movie adaptation are responsible for making mothers upset about Dungeons and Dragons - those mothers were/are idiots.

This thinly veiled account of the J Dallas Egbert's disappearance is just gross. It's harlequin chauvinism with completely inept understandings of RPGs, College, New York City, Law Enforcement, and Birds (to name a few). If dead kids can spin in their graves - Dallas would spiral out of his grave* so he could star in Breakin' 3: Zombie Boogaloo.

* Dallas was cremated.

[Stefania · Rating 2 out of 5]

Purtroppo davvero deludente e noioso. Non vedevo l'ora di finirlo!

[Ren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I come into the apparently still quite spicy discussion of 'Mazes and Monsters' about 40 years too late, and as a Millennial, I was mercifully spared having to live through the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980s.

As such, I find 'Mazes and Monsters' much less infuriating than some contemporary readers who were there to witness all the drama unfold in real time.

This is apparently a very thinly veiled novelization of a real case that, in part, sparked massive backlash against the game Dungeons and Dragons. Hindsight being 20/20 and google being free, it seems obvious that the James Dallas Egbert III case had pithy little, if anything, to do with D&D, and that this book, at least in part, likely (and ironically) did more to pull parents at the time into a fantasy world than the game did to their kids.

That all being said, if viewed as a relic, Mazes and Monsters is a pretty interesting time capsule of what adults in 1980 thought college life and D&D culture was like. That is to say, I have a much better understanding after reading this why older Americans now find the world such a scary place.

The four protagonists all feel at once apathetic and completely rudderless. Jay Jay wants to be a famous actor but has never even been in a play, Daniel wants to design computer games but has little ambition, Kate wants to be a novelist but has nothing to write about, and Robbie doesn't know what he wants to do.

There's a very poignant moment when Daniel returns home for the winter holidays and his family get into a discussion about the state of the world and his parents tell him they're glad he'll be making it better. To this he replies:
"What about those who just want to tend their own garden?"
"No room anymore," his father said. His mother nodded. "No room for nonparticipation. Be thankful you're bright and have something to contribute." (p.95)

Pressure is one of the major themes in 'Mazes and Monsters.' Pressure on the parents to produce perfect, bright children and have happy homes (they're all miserable, by the way), pressure on the kids to be as good as or better than their parents; to avoid their mistakes.

And so, they retreat into 'the game.' Jaffe's writing style leaves the 'telling' part a bit on the nose, but it's clear that Jay Jay, Daniel, Kate, and Robbie use the game to escape from that pressure (Daniel says this to his parents directly at the end: "in real life you try difficult things, you win or you lose, and sometimes it hurts too much." p.238)

Though certain elements of the climax sort of seem to push the 'D&D--bad' angle (that at least seems to have been the cultural impact), that isn't really there in the text. Canonically, it's clear that the disappearance referenced in the prologue isn't a direct result of 'the game'--we, the reader, know exactly what baggage that character was carrying outside of their Mazes and Monsters sessions. Yes, the world of the game is where they get lost, but if it hadn't been Mazes and Monsters it would have been something else.

That being said, every other character making a pact afterwards to never play the game again felt super contrived, as though when writing the last several chapters Jaffe forgot all the rest of the character development she'd spent 200 pages driving at. Which was too bad, because them all giving up Mazes and Monsters could have been a fine and organic ending as they moved beyond the need for it to hold their friend group and their own mental health together, but instead we get this clunky wrap-up: 'and they all agreed never, ever to play Mazes and Monsters again because it was clearly very dangerous.'

All in all, I enjoyed the ride, I enjoyed some of the characters--Jay Jay in particular felt fully fleshed out--but there was probably one character too many (Daniel and Robbie were easy to conflate), and the ending felt rushed after such a relative slow burn.

I come away from Mazes and Monsters with a surprising degree of empathy for young gen X-ers at the time. If Jaffe did nothing else, I feel she captured something of the ennui of the zeitgeist: the fear Baby Boomers had of the changing times, the sense of loss of 'the good old days' and how all of that came crashing down on kids in their late teens and early twenties. No wonder they desperately latched onto something like D&D as the root of all evil. Better a role-playing game leading their kids astray than a world in upheaval, the kick-off of the climate change discussion, the AIDS crisis, and god knows what else that was brewing in the 80s.

However, despite sympathy for that position, the damage that has come out of a couple of decades clinging to random 'problems' (D&D, heavy metal, rap music, the culture war, etc.) rather than focusing on broader, systemic solutions has, if anything, only made escaping into 'the game' all the more appealing.

[James Vachowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apparently the 1980s were a hell of a time, back when video games and rock and roll were responsible for warping the mind of an entire generation. As if Ozzy Osbourne and KISS weren’t bad enough, parents also had be on the lookout for dangerous games like Dungeons and Dragons. Although D&D has somehow gotten a lot more popular in recent years, almost to the point where it’s considered mainstream, back in the day a lot of people actually thought that role-playing games might be secretly luring kids over to the dark side.

These types of sensational news articles didn’t escape the notice of Rona Jaffe, a New York author who started her career writing articles for Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1950s and 60s. In 1981, Jaffe published the book “Mazes and Monsters”, a cautionary story about the role-playing games of that era. In the book, a group of college students become bored with the basic table-top game, and decide to increase the realism by taking their quests to a nearby cave network. One of the students, already suffering from a schizophrenia-like personality disorder, starts to devote an inordinate amount of time to the game. Eventually, as his condition progresses, he loses the ability to distinguish between reality and the fantasy world.

It’s thought that this book was based (at least loosely) on the story of James Dallas Egbert III, a Michigan State University student who disappeared from his dormitory in 1979. Egbert was suffering from a number of personal and psychological problems at the time, and entered the university’s steam tunnels with a plan to commit suicide. In the days following his disappearance it was revealed that Egbert was an avid Dungeons and Dragons player, a fact not lost on local media outlets. In the weeks that followed, Egbert’s family went so far as to hire a private investigator, William Dear. Dear would later write about the sad case and its connection to D&D in a book of his own, called “The Dungeon Master.”

Thankfully, calmer heads have since prevailed. Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons are now more popular than ever, no doubt thanks to endorsements from celebrities like Vin Diesel and Wil Wheaton (now I ask you, would those two guys ever lead you astray?). But even though Ms. Jaffe may have been way off base with her plot in “Mazes and Monsters”, it’s still a terrifying adventure story that’s a lot of fun to read. Back in 1982, the book was so popular that it was even turned into a made-for-TV movie. And you know what’s even more terrifying than the deepest dungeon or the scariest monster?

Tom Hanks in his mid-20s.

[Strawberry Witch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book came out around the time a lot of nerds were getting really into Dungeons and Dragons. I think a lot of people feel it’s a cheesy warning type of book about the dangers of role playing games, and, well, it sort of is, but that’s not the message I took from it.

The book centers around four characters, Kate, Daniel, Jay Jay (who I always picture as looking a lot like Ducky from Sixteen Pink Candles or whatever that Molly Ringwald movie is), and new kid Robbie. They’re all pretty decent kids; smart, make good grades and all. Robbie had an older brother who ran away a few years before the events of the book started. So the four of them start playing M&M together. (I saw people in a few other reviews say that the author clearly had never played a tabletop RPG before based on how she talks about the gameplay, but honestly, I’ve never played one either, so it seemed fine to me). Then they start LARP-Ing (live action role playing; where they dress up and play the game). Except Robbie starts getting way too into it and starts thinking he’s his game character, Pardieu, a holy man, and he has to go on a quest to find his brother.

Poor Robbie...it wasn’t the game. He was gonna snap anyway.

This is most definitely a “problem book;” as I believe they’re called, and in that sense, it fails, as the author clearly doesn’t understand the types of people that played D&D in the early 80s (all four of the main characters are really attractive and one’s a girl), but aside from that, the characters are all pretty fleshed out and it’s a good, if quite tame, little story.

[Mir · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this under the misapprehension that it would be something like Anderson's Gamearth. In fact, it seems to be a rather overly "telling" (versus showing) psychological portrayal of some college kids in 1980 who become obsessed with their D&D. We are told on the first page that something awful and probably fatal happens to one of them as a result, but I didn't read far enough to find out whom or what.

[Libby · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cannot remember(in 57yrs of reading) when a work of fiction disappointed me as much as this one. As a lover of RPGs, I had great hopes for a rousing read, but got a tiresome polemic instead. Don't waste precious reading time on this one. Call a friend, mow the lawn, catch up on back issues of National Geographic or dye your hair purple, but find something, anything more worthy than this tired piece of trash.

[Mary Slowik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too often unintentionally funny. While we have stereotypes of pen-and-paper, tabletop gamers which are not always true, Jaffe may have been trying a little too hard to break them. Or more likely she was working before enough information was out there about D&D.

But seriously... all the players are wildly attractive, successful, sleeping with each other... iiiiii don't think so.

The ending's pretty laughable too.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book much more than I thought that I was. Jaffe's writing is quick, to the point and entertaining. I rushed through it in a night and even after I closed the back cover, that unexpected character twist stayed with me. Enough so that I can half-way review the book after 10 years. This book was teh reason I picked up more Jaffe through the years, but seems like this may be the best so far.

[Kristyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was awesome! If you read it as a piece of ridiculous fiction, it's an enjoyable book. I loved Jay Jay's character and his Mynah bird. This book does demonize Dungeons & Dragons or rather, Mazes & Monsters, but I think most people know that going into these days. I read this out of pure curiosity and soon I will watch the movie starring a young Tom Hanks. I'm glad I didn't pass this one up!

[Mary Fran Gualandri · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible, thought provoking novel based on true events. Jaffe dives into the depths of the human mind and showcases juat how easy it is for the lines between fantasy and reality to become blurred in the midst of a larger than life game. The story is gripping and the writing is fantastic. I highly recommend this novel.

[Christa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story. Weird ending. I think that most folks who commented that they do not like the book are D&D fans. Who knew their was such concerns, but then again I was a kid at the time that D&D became popular.

As always i enjoyed that characters that RJ created and following along with their lives.

Too bad this author has passed away.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book.
It is about a group of college students who are into a Dungeons and Dragons-like game. It is one of those suspenseful stories where you already know something horrible os going to happen and you are waiting to find out what.
i liked it.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four college students from various backgrounds start playing Dungeons and Dragons (called Mazes and Monsters in the book.) The characters they choose possess the qualities that they would like to have. When they actually find a cave and start enacting the game for real, it leads to real danger.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good

Read this when it first came out and thought it was good so read it again for nostalgia. Things are often not the same as they remember-some better and some not so much....

[Annevthompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book over 10 years ago and I remember what a GREAT read it was--hard-to-put-down, suspenseful and great story. Always have enjoyed Jaffe's books...

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick and interesting read that pulls you in. The dialogue was a little unrealistic, but there was enough going on around it to make up for it.

[Jesi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this about a week after I started it. really enjoyed it! It was not what I was expecting at all.