On June 6, Daniel Dower, 16, of Bristol, Wis., was sentenced to life after a jury found him guilty of killing his 41-year-old foster father. The youth's lawyer tried to convince jurors that Dower lived in a fantasy world of Dungeons and Dragons and violent movies. Dr. Thomas Radecki, a psychiatrist regarded as an authority on the game, said Dungeons and Dragons dominated the youth's life for a year.

In 1979, James Dallas Egbert, a 17-year-old computer whiz who played Dungeons and Dragons in the eight miles of steam tunnels winding under the Michigan State University campus in east Lansing, Mich., disappeared. Dallas detective William Dear, who found the youth and reunited him with his parents about a month later, said at the time that Egbert was trapped in a real-life version of the game.

Dungeons and Dragons became a major issue in the recent case of Armando and Angela Simon of Angleton, the couple accused of using the game to lure a 15-year-old girl into having sex with Simon.

It's a game of magic, monsters, charms and spells. It has carried its creators into the land of fame and wealth and transported millions of game players for more than a decade into a world of make-believe.

Dungeons and Dragons has captured the imagination and interest of college students and teen-agers since the late 1970s, but the medieval fantasy game also has been shrouded in controversy.

A growing number of people blame Dungeons and Dragons for teen-age suicides and other deaths, and the debate over the game's benefits and side effects has played an important role in several court cases.

Attorneys have tried to prove that their clients, many of whom were on trial for murder, were under the game's spell and could not be held accountable for their actions. In at least one case, prosecutors successfully argued that the game was used to influence a teen's moral values.

In Angleton last month, a former state prison psychologist was sentenced to a nine-year term after being found guilty of raping a 15-year-old girl. Brazoria County prosecutor Ken Dies argued that the man used Dungeons and Dragons as a tool to strip the youth of her inhibitions.

On June 6, Daniel Dower, 16, of Bristol, Wis., was sentenced to life after a jury found him guilty of killing his 41-year-old foster father. The youth's lawyer tried to convince jurors that Dower lived in a fantasy world of Dungeons and Dragons and violent movies. Dr. Thomas Radecki, a psychiatrist regarded as an authority on the game, said Dungeons and Dragons dominated the youth's life for a year.

In January, James A. Stailey, 17, pulled a sawed-off shotgun from a briefcase and shot himself in the right temple in front of his drama class at Arlington High School. An intellectual and devotee of Dungeons and Dragons, Stailey pulled the trigger right after he asked another student about the meaning of life.

In 1979, James Dallas Egbert, a 17-year-old computer whiz who played Dungeons and Dragons in the eight miles of steam tunnels winding under the Michigan State University campus in east Lansing, Mich., disappeared. Dallas detective William Dear, who found the youth and reunited him with his parents about a month later, said at the time that Egbert was trapped in a real-life version of the game.

Egbert's situation was one of the most highly publicized involving fantasy games.

A 23-year-old man claiming to be Egbert's friend later said that Egbert tried to commit suicide in New Orleans while police searched for him in a maze of steam tunnels.

Egbert also was emotionally troubled and didn't reveal his whereabouts because he was interested in selling movie rights linking his disappearance to the game, claimed the man, who identified himself only as David.

Egbert shot himself in the head in a Dayton, Ohio, apartment in August 1980. He died four days later.

``It's one of the many fantasy role-playing games on the market, but it's the most popular,'' says Pat Pulling, who formed a group called Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons in Richmond, Va., after the 1983 suicide of her 16-year-old son. She blames the death on the fantasy game.

``He played the game for several months. On the day of his death, he received a death curse from another player, which he carried out,'' says Pulling, 37. Her son, Irving, shot himself to death outside his home.

Pulling's group maintains that the game can be linked to at least nine and as many as 45 teen deaths nationwide.

Officials at TSR Hobbies Inc., the firm that manufactures the game, contend that blaming Dungeons and Dragons for such deaths is a gross oversimplification of a serious national problem.

Special interest and religious groups are using the game to satisfy their own narrow needs, says Dieter Sturm, a spokesman for the Lake Geneva, Wis., firm.

``It's a bunch of bunk,'' he says. ``It's very convenient to blame teen deaths and suicides on the game. We're being used as a scapegoat. It's ridiculous how `D and D' is becoming an emotional and political issue.''

Dungeons and Dragons was created in 1973 by Gary Gygax, a former insurance salesman and cobbler who relied on his shoe repair business until the game began to pay his bills. The first 1,000 games assembled by Gygax and his children took a year to sell.

Based on J.R.R. Tolkien's ``Lord of the Rings,'' Dungeons and Dragons was heralded by Games magazine in 1979 as the ``most popular fantasy game of the decade.''

The game tests one's imagination, pitting the player against mythical characters that can be destroyed and resurrected with a roll of the dice.

The traditional board is replaced with guide books - from a 48-page beginner's version to advanced sets filled with hundreds of pages of instructions.

Figurines that players of traditional games push around after each throw of the dice are replaced by characters inside their minds, although elaborately detailed figurines can be purchased separately.

The action is controlled by a Dungeon Master whose task it is to throw obstacles in the form of traps and monsters in the way of the characters in search for various hidden treasures.

The characters include magic users, clerics, thieves, fighters and elves. Their powers vary with the roll of specially designed dice, but each character is assigned basic qualities such as wisdom, intelligence, dexterity and charisma.

Dungeons and Dragons became a major issue in the recent case of Armando and Angela Simon of Angleton, the couple accused of using the game to lure a 15-year-old girl into having sex with Simon.

Teen-agers who testified during the couple's trial said the weekly game at the Simons' apartment often took on a sexual meaning.

One teen-ager said Mrs. Simon frequently played the character of a prostitute while her husband acted out the role of a man preoccupied with women.

``I would play a character that had special powers until she did something wrong, and then she lost her powers,'' said the girl.

Mrs. Simon, 21, received a five-year probationary sentence after she was found guilty of sexual assault. Simon, 33, was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Of course, many people are involved in the game for the sheer fun of it.

``It's a world you can lose yourself in and do something that you were never able to do,'' explains U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Larrison of Sugar Land, who has been playing the game for nine years. ``You have a good time. I use it to relax.''

That's exactly what's wrong with the game - teen-agers can become engrossed in a fantasy world - and why the number of people are joining the fight against the game is gradually increasing, says Pulling.

BADD now has 1,000 names on its mailing list and its board of directors is contemplating opening regional chapters, including one in the Dallas area.

``The game is supposed to be for adults, but they found that it was more profitable to market it for children, who are more prone to confuse fantasy with reality,'' says Pulling.

A handbook dealing with Dungeons and Dragons published by a Longview educational research group is the most requested item among the organization's page-long list of recommended materials, says its founder, Mel Gablers.

``The reason we got involved with it is because many schools use the game as part of their curriculum in their gifted and talented classes. We average two calls a day asking about it,'' says Gablers, who requests a $5 donation for each handbook.

The game is closely related to the occult and devil worshipping, which violates the United States Constitution that requires a separation between church and state, contends Gablers.

``We don't see how you can teach `D and D' and at the same time you're not allowing prayer in school. That's the main reason we got involved,'' he says.

Houston school officials maintain a neutral stand about the benefits of Dungeons and Dragons in the classroom.

Many educators believe it reinforces reasoning and thinking skills, and officials leave it up to individual teachers to decide whether the game would fit into students' regular curriculum, says Houston Independent School District spokeswoman Trudy Herolz.

On the state level, educators are discouraged from using any fantasy game in the classroom, according to Evelyn Hiatt, an education planner at the Texas Education Agency in Austin.

``I'm somewhat sorry to see the subject of Dungeons and Dragons come up again,'' says Hiatt. ``I'd hoped it had died down. We urge that educators stay away from games and stick with the curriculum.''

The controversy surrounding the game has added to its popularity, even though TSR officials maintain that bad publicity based on half-truths can tarnish sales and the game's image.

TSR has grown from a mom-and-pop operation that started with $1,000 borrowed against a life insurance policy in 1973 to the largest role-playing game manufactured in the country.

Dungeons and Dragons grossed $29 million last year. Mostly because of the game's enormous success - more than 3 million sets have been sold - TSR has cornered the $96-million hobbies market.

The firm now has a new, $3.5-million corporate headquarters and employs 140 people. It markets a variety of items and publications connected with Dungeons and Dragons, has sold 28 licenses to toy manufacturers and co-produces a Saturday morning cartoon show on CBS based on the game.