James Dallas Egbert III

• 1. Introduction

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  James Dallas Egbert III walked out of Case Hall dormitory at Michigan State University on the 15th of August, 1979, and did not come back. In the weeks that followed, newspapers across the United States turned his disappearance into a national story. One theory dominated the coverage. The theory held that Egbert had entered the campus steam tunnels to act out a session of a fantasy game called Dungeons & Dragons, becoming lost or injured in the process. The game was, at that point, largely unknown outside dedicated hobbyist circles. The search for Egbert would change that. The private investigator eventually hired by his parents, a man named William Dear, would later write a book about what he discovered. For years, however, Dear told the public almost nothing about where Egbert had gone or why.

• 2. A Prodigy's Weight

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  Egbert was born in Dayton, Ohio, on the 29th of October, 1962. He grew up in Huber Heights, a Dayton suburb, attending Wayne High School before entering Michigan State University at the age of fifteen. He declared computer science as his major. William Dear, who would later be hired to search for him, noted that Egbert's case file listed depression, loneliness, parental pressure, and drug addiction. Egbert had also been privately working through questions about his homosexuality. Taken together, these were the circumstances of a teenager who had moved through academic life faster than the social structures around him could match. He was, at fifteen, on a campus built for people several years older. His struggles remained unknown to the public until his disappearance drew attention to them.

• 3. Into the Tunnels

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  On the same day Egbert disappeared, Gen Con XII, a gaming convention dedicated to table-top role-playing, opened in Wisconsin. Some attendees reported having seen him there. Those reports were false, or at least could not be verified. Egbert had consumed methaqualone in the campus steam tunnels that day. He had intended to die. He survived, woke the following day, and made his way to a friend's house, where he went into hiding. A police search for the missing student began. Michigan State University did not notify Egbert's parents of his absence until the 20th of August, five days after he had last been seen. On the 22nd of August, his parents hired Dear, a private investigator who was an acquaintance of Egbert's uncle. In their first conversation, Egbert's mother raised the possibility that her son had died by suicide. What Dear learned next about Egbert's activities at the university would define the direction of the search.

• 4. The Game Gets the Blame

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  When Dear discovered that Egbert played Dungeons & Dragons, he publicly amplified existing police theories. Students at Michigan State were said to run live-action sessions of the game in the campus steam tunnels. The suggestion was that Egbert had entered the tunnels to do the same and had been hurt or had lost his way. On the 24th of August, Michael Stuart, a journalist for The State News, the university's own newspaper, published details of the case. Stuart's article prompted growing media interest from beyond the campus. Dungeons & Dragons began appearing in newspapers across the country. Some journalists described the game as a "bizarre and secretive cult" that players could only join "by invitation." Some Michigan State University students and faculty considered this coverage of Egbert and the game sensationalist. Egbert himself had, during this time, moved between two houses in East Lansing. He eventually left the city by bus for New Orleans.

• 5. Morgan City and the Call

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  New Orleans was where Egbert made his second attempt at suicide, this time by consuming a cyanide compound. That attempt also failed. He traveled to Morgan City, Louisiana. There, according to a 2014 article by Jason Louv, he worked as a laborer at an oil field. After only four days on the job, he called Dear and gave him his location. He had been aware that Dear was searching for him. Dear traveled to recover him; some accounts placed the meeting in Texas rather than Louisiana. On the 13th of September, 1979, Dear released Egbert into the custody of his uncle, Marvin Gross. Egbert was still legally a juvenile. He asked Dear not to disclose the details of the weeks he had been gone, and Dear agreed. When Egbert's name next appeared in print, the context had changed entirely.

• 6. The Final Year

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  Wright State University, near his parents' home in Dayton, Ohio, was where Egbert enrolled after leaving Michigan State. The New York Times obituary quoted his academic record there: he "continued to study computer systems until he dropped out last April," a reference to April 1980. After leaving Wright State, he went to work at an optical store run by his father. On the 11th of August, 1980, almost a year after his disappearance had drawn national attention, Egbert was admitted to Grandview Hospital in Dayton with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was seventeen years old. His parents were told he had no chance of survival and authorized the hospital to make his organs available for transplant. A computer network was used to identify recipients across several states, including New Jersey. Egbert died on the 16th of August, 1980. Max Peterson, the hospital spokesman, confirmed the death at 10:30 that evening, noting the delay had been to allow family notification first. Dear visited the bedside during those five days. He later wrote of feeling horror at seeing a young person of evident intelligence kept alive on machines, still legally a juvenile. Egbert's parents, Anna and James Dallas Egbert 2d, declined all comment. The New York Times noted that the circumstances of his 1979 disappearance had never been formally explained. Dear chose not to speak publicly about the case in the months that followed.

• 7. The Game's Unlikely Rise

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  In 1984, William Dear published The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III through Houghton Mifflin. A paperback edition followed from Random House in 1985. The book offered the account that years of newspaper coverage had not: a full telling of where Egbert had gone and why. The steam tunnel theory had, in the meantime, inspired books and films including Mazes and Monsters. That novel and film deepened public anxiety about role-playing games through the 1980s. That anxiety, paradoxically, also drove people to buy the game. Before the Egbert case had drawn national attention, the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set sold roughly 5,000 copies per month. By the end of 1979, that figure had risen to more than 30,000 per month. The Egbert case was, as it turned out, only the first of several controversies that would attach themselves to Dungeons & Dragons through the decade.