Playing at the World, 2E, Volume 1 The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons

The first volume of two in a new, updated edition of the 2012 book Playing at the World, which charts the vast and complex history of role-playing games. This new edition of Playing at the World is the first of two volumes that update the 720-page original tome of the same name from 2012. This first volume is The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, which explores the publication of that iconic game. (The second volume is The Three Pillars of Role-Playing Games, a deeper dive into the history of the setting, system, and character of D & D.) In this first volume, Jon Peterson distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson s seminal role-playing game, D & D. It augments the research of the original editions with new insights into the crucial period in 1972 3 when D & D began to take shape. Drawing from primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists,