What is Reddit's opinion of Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games?

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Everyone should immediately buy Playing At The World and then spend six months reading it because it's 720 pages of extremely dense history. And it's amazing.

(I bought this just a few months ago and it seem to be out of stock now which sucks, but buy the ebook version or hit up your local library or whatever)

Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-Playing Games by Jon Peterson is not only a comprehensive study of the evolution of roleplaying games, which have been central to defining the modern perception of fantasy across all mediums, but also explores its literary influences which includes a thorough rundown of the history of fantasy literature.

Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures, from Chess to Role-playing games, by Jon Peterson. The subject matter is super niche, so I know literally no one else who has read it, even among my nerdy gaming friends. It's the most comprehensive history of wargames and RPGs ever written or that will ever be written, and it's just amazing. If anybody reading this has a serious interest in the history of warmgaming and tabletop RPGs, with an emphasis on the early development of Dungeons & Dragons, this book is simply a must-read.

thanks, i'll have an eye on it, love the way you are doing this, for sure you have me for this game! You should get on twitter an tweet your progress... i'm also there (@WLueger), making a card game about the habsburgs, also always wanted to make a war-game, especially the "stalingrad" theme i was interested in. but as i started with this book: https://www.amazon.de/Playing-World-Simulating-Adventures-Role-Playing/dp/0615642047/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1479442167&sr=8-18&keywords=history+war+game+book i realised that i'm not that far ;-)

Maybe in a very general way you could say that. But the history is quite complicated.

If you haven't read Playing at the World, I would highly recommend it. It is, hands down, the best academic study of the history of roleplaying games. Peterson did a mind-boggling amount of research, and mines obscure old gaming 'zines for some really interesting stuff.

One of the biggest revelations to me was that Arneson had been playing a kind of proto-RPG called a "Braunstein," invented by a college kid named David Wesely. These were games where people would take on the roles of average people in a medieval or Napoleonic town, like the Mayor or the Baker. They would run entire campaigns around these towns and the lives of the people in them and it heavily influenced Arneson's later work on D&D.

In fact, it was Arneson's Braunstein-style world called Blackmoor that would later evolve into a D&D campaign. (Monsters literally showed up in the castle dungeon...)

You may want to give "Playing at the World" by Jon Peterson (https://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047) a read. The emergence of RPGs as a k ow them required a few different things.

Is this it? There’s a copy for sale at Amazon right now.

https://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047

It may be a bit on the nose, but I recently began to read the Playing at the World and I watched the Secrets of Blackmoore. I also think Rick Priestly's Tabletop Wargames is a superb resource. I also think Interaction Design by Preece, Sharp and Rogers is a great read, although it is kind of tangential to RPG design.

Hi, I'm not affiliated with the documentary in any way, but I frequent the community spaces that their team does. They're hurting a bit right now due to the difficulty and expense of making something like this, so it'd be great if you guys support them and at least see what they have to say.

Blackmoor was in many ways the prototype for D&D. Arneson handed his notes off to Gygax, and then Gygax did a little bit of alchemy with those and Chainmail, to create the game we love today. As a fan of the series, and also someone with a love of history, I believe that everyone should know where they came from. We don't get things like this for D&D often but when they come out, you should really give them a look. These guys did a really good job and I hope that they have the ability to continue working on future installments, especially while many of the original Twin Cities gamers are still living.

I also highly recommend reading Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. Dude is a proper RPG historian and he shows how the game evolved and developed into what it is today. Peterson also a blog where he looks at a lot of historical documents and even does interviews related to the history of D&D, if you want to check that out.

Art and Arcana has also been strongly mentioned before in this sub but I would be remiss if I didn't bring it up to complete the D&D history trifecta.

I strongly encourage anyone to check out these resources, but I also urge people to check out the film. Rent it on amazon or something, I think most of you will be pretty impressed.

Pretty positive that is reference to Arneson's Blackmoor campaign.

This is the definitive guide to RPG history https://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047

Different flavor of advice, but many of the GMs I know (myself included) are also system collectors, poring over games for different approaches and advice. If this is true, or if your friend is generally interested in the history of RPGs, there's some great general RPG history out there. Playing at the World is focused on the birth of D&D but also covers all the history leading up to D&D, including some really crazy stuff about the role-playing communities that began to develop prior to the existence of formal RPGs. Then there's Designers and Dragons, which is a crazy comprehensive history of RPGs from about 1974 to 2014 (there is one addendum volume as well).

If you want history the best you can get is "Playing at the World". Very thorough.

https://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495168274&sr=8-1&keywords=playing+at+the+world

Playing at the World was also a suggested book by Adam and Steven a while back.

No information? You didn't look very carefully. There are whole message boards dedicated solely to the campaigns currently running and modding it.

http://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/

http://odd74.proboards.com/

The modules are easy and cheap to buy: http://www.dmsguild.com/product/28306/ODD-Dungeons--Dragons-Original-Edition-0e

Believe it or not, the rules weren't arbitrary and were playtested extensively. Here's a fantastic document that goes through the rules and the reasons behind them: http://www.grey-elf.com/philotomy.pdf

Here's a popular essay on the playstyle and mindset behind 0th edition. http://www.lulu.com/shop/matthew-finch/quick-primer-for-old-school-gaming/ebook/product-3159558.html

Playing at the World is one of the most well-known book son D&D and it covers the development of 0e in ridiculous detail. https://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047

There's even a youtube channel by that book's author that really fascinating: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwYnGnADL76LauJhAYPoivA/videos

Read for yourself, as this is THE definitive history of tabletop RPGs. You may have a copy in your local library system. Also, the testimony (included in the book) of surviving original gamers make this quite clear: THEY DID NOT CARE.