The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity (Game Histories)

Jon Peterson

ISBN 10: 0262544903 / ISBN 13: 9780262544900

Published by The MIT Press Bookstore, 2022

About this Item

pp. 328.

Seller Inventory # 26390109559

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity (Game Histories)
• Publisher: The MIT Press Bookstore
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262544903
• ISBN 13: 9780262544900
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

How the early Dungeons & Dragons community grappled with the nature of role-playing games, theorizing a new game genre.

When Dungeon & Dragons made its debut in the mid-1970s, followed shortly thereafter by other, similar tabletop games, it sparked a renaissance in game design and critical thinking about games. D&D is now popularly considered to be the first role-playing game. But in the original rules, the term "role-playing" is nowhere to be found; D&D was marketed as a war game. In The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson describes how players and scholars in the D&D community began to apply the term to D&D and similar games--and by doing so, established a new genre of games.

About the Author

Jon Peterson, a leading scholar of Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games, is the author of Playing at the World and Dungeons & Dragons & Arcana: A Visual History.