In 1976 Andre Norton was invited to play a new sort of adventure game by its creator. It was the game that launched the role-playing game industry, Dungeons & Dragons. The creator, E.Gary Gygax, was the head of TSR Industries, the company he formed to sell his game.

Gygax played the game with Andre, introducing her to his world of Greyhawk where she took part in an imaginative session of world building, role playing, and fantasy adventuring, after which she returned home and wrote the novel Quag Keep, a tale of six adventurers from our world who journey from our world to the city of Greyhawk in order to aid a wizard and unlock the secrets of the stronghold of Quag Keep.