Playing at the World

author: Jon Peterson

name: Wayne

average rating: 4.35

book published: 2012

rating: 1

read at: 2013/04/24

date added: 2013/04/24

shelves: non-fiction

review:

'Playing at the World' is a 720 page book about the history of the game Dungeons and Dragons that is exhaustive and completely exhausting. So much so, that I gave up on page 345, and I wasn't even halfway through. I wouldn't normally review something that is unfinished, but I did look through the remainder of the book to see that is was more of the same.



The book discusses everything that influenced the creation of the game. While much of this is interesting, the amount of detail bogs everything down. Starting with Avalon Hill's wargames in the 1950s, we see the development of a gaming community. Discussed are fanzines, gatherings, and play by mail campaigns. The early days of GenCon are discussed (which is still an annual convention).



From there, we move to an extensive discussion of much of the fantasy literature of the 20th century that D&D finds inspiration from. As a fan of SF, this was also interesting, but more detailed than it needed to be. Mixed in is a discussion of the political times during the forming of the game, and the backlash that more modern wargames were suffering from a nation at war in Vietnam.



The third section of the book goes way back into the history of wargaming, discussing chess and moving forward to D&D. This is really where I lost complete interest in the book. While the Kriegsspiel games are interesting, and the formulation of dice as a randomizer for war simulation, this section should have been it's own book.



Sections four and five come back to discuss mechanics of the game as we know it today. This level of detail seems more appropriate since it deals with the actual subject matter of the book.



The writing is fine, and for true fans of the game, this is a comprehensive history. For the rest of us, the sheer scope of the book is completely overwhelming, and not likely to gain new fans to the hobby.





via Wayne's bookshelf: read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/445564747?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss