Rona Jaffe's source novel was probably inspired by the disappearance of Michigan State University student James Dallas Egbert III, who was thought to have gone into the college's steam tunnels to play a live action game of Dungeons & Dragons. In reality, he had gone there to commit suicide. In fact, his depression probably had nothing to do with the role-playing game, but was likely brought on by the pressures of school, drug addiction, and other personal issues. The truth of Egbert's disappearance didn't come out until William Dear, a private investigator hired by Egbert's family, published his own account of the incident three years after Jaffe's novel was published. It could be argued, then, that Mazes and Monsters was born of a public hysteria based on an urban myth surrounding Egbert's disappearance.

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