Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures: From Chess to Role-Playing Games

Abstract

Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures: From Chess to Role-Playing Games Jon Peterson San Diego: Unreason Press LLC, 2012. Introduction, contents, images. 698 pp. $34.95 paper. ISBN: 9780615642048Jon Peterson's Playing at the World traces the history of the practices, ideas, and cultural forces that led to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's invention of the role-play- ing game Dungeons & Dragons (DD it has a clear narrative that covers the key historical events in the devel- opment of D&D. The next three chap- ters each explore in great detail a theme important to understanding the history of role-playing games. Chapter 2 traces the history of the medieval fantasy genre (such as the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Robert Howard) and its rise to popularity in the middle of the twentieth century. Chapter 3 tells the history of war games, from the countless chess variants that led to Prussian kriegspiel in the early nineteenth century to the emergence of modern war games in the midtwentieth century. Chapter 4 examines the history of enacting fictional roles and characters. These three chapters provide copious details and testify to the author's years of dedicated research. Chapter 5 resumes the more narrative approach of chapter 1 and describes audiences' reactions to Dun- geons & Dragons. The epilogue discusses D&D's influence on early video gaming and concludes the book.I do not know how long Peterson spent writing this book, but the amount of research is staggering. In this respect, the book is an invaluable resource for schol- ars interested in the history and origins of games. However, the middle chapters' depth and detail will likely deter casual readers. On page 303, Peterson writes: Readers in whom this justification does not spark an eagerness to explore the minutiae, however, should not hesitate to skim over the technical detail in the rest of this chapter. Reading this I laughed to myself, thinking this warning would have been better placed some two hun- dred pages earlier. The outer chapters are the most narratively driven, and I believe Peterson could use these three sections to create an abridged version better-suited to the casual reader. But this complaint is minor and should be taken as such.A key theme of simulation runs through the book. Peterson shows how game designers began the pursuit of realism in the early nineteenth century, which led to two design methods that still figure large in role-playing games. …

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