Fulminata reviewed Playing at the World by Jon Peterson
Review of 'Playing at the World' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A truly comprehensive and well-sourced history of the origins of Dungeons & Dragons, and by extension the origins of role-playing games.
Peterson traces the origin of the game back along three main paths: wargames, the fantasy genre, and previous role-playing activities. In doing so he gives comprehensive histories of those three areas. So comprehensive, that the reader is effectively getting three different books here that cover those three areas and then a fourth specifically about Dungeons & Dragons.
The sheer number of footnotes and citations makes this the first truly useful history of role-playing that I've seen. Elevating this beyond mere storytelling about the industry to something of academic use.
I only have two complaints, and the first is one of style. The author uses very long paragraphs, which makes reading the book slightly more difficult than it would otherwise be.
My second complaint is the title of the book. …
A truly comprehensive and well-sourced history of the origins of Dungeons & Dragons, and by extension the origins of role-playing games.
Peterson traces the origin of the game back along three main paths: wargames, the fantasy genre, and previous role-playing activities. In doing so he gives comprehensive histories of those three areas. So comprehensive, that the reader is effectively getting three different books here that cover those three areas and then a fourth specifically about Dungeons & Dragons.
The sheer number of footnotes and citations makes this the first truly useful history of role-playing that I've seen. Elevating this beyond mere storytelling about the industry to something of academic use.
I only have two complaints, and the first is one of style. The author uses very long paragraphs, which makes reading the book slightly more difficult than it would otherwise be.
My second complaint is the title of the book. It's accurate, from a certain point of view, but entirely misleading. It kept me from reading it for a while, because I thought it was a more general study of games rather than a history of Dungeons & Dragons, and I've seen reviews where people were upset because they were looking for a more general study of games and got this instead.
Neither of these complaints were enough to get me to lower my review on an otherwise excellent book.
