Retro Books: The Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenberg

        Hi, this time I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about one of my favourite series of books, The Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenberg.
        This is a series of books which start with The Sleeping Dragon, released in 1983, the story follows a group of college students who are playing a Dungeons and Dragons style Roleplaying game, and suddenly find themselves in the game world as their characters. This suits some of the characters, most especially one of them who has Cerebral Palsy and is confined to a wheelchair in the real world, but is now a fully abled dwarf warrior.
        But the others find themselves at some disadvantage, an atheist playing a cleric finds herself unable to use her magic, the thief character lost a hand in a previous adventure and now finds himself crippled. Finally the wizards unleash their magic on finding their memorised spells in their heads just waiting to be cast and destroy some of the magic items they were equipped with.
        With only a basic knowledge of the world, they find themselves having to travel across the fantasy world to find the Sleeping Dragon which guards the gateway so they can return home. They are left a note by their gamesmaster who tells them that he has dreamt of this world since he was a youth, and he needs them to open the gateway so he can travel there, although later in the series we discover that he is lying and is actually a refugee from this world.