David's Reviews > Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventure from Chess to Role-Playing Games

I have to take issue with this book. Primarily that the title on the cover, Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games, does not even remotely prepare the reader for what to expect inside.

This book is about Dungeons & Dragons. Period.

It's 720 pages about Dungeons & Dragons.

It happens to be so incredibly thorough in exploring the historical roots and inspirations for Dungeons & Dragons (and the historical roots and inspirations for those roots and inspirations and so on ad infinitum) that it manages to actually contain some of what is described on the cover. Namely, it does have a history of wargaming, war miniatures, miniatures wargaming, and imaginative gaming in general - as well as fantasy and science fiction genre writing and its fandom. But make no mistake, this material is all here just as background material to understand its later influence on Dungeons & Dragons.

My second issue with Playing at the World is the chopped-up chronology. If this had truly been "A History...from Chess to Role-Playing Games" as the cover indicated, then I would have expected this to have followed a strict chronological order. Instead, we begin with 20th century wargaming, right where Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson first create Dungeons & Dragons, then dive deep, deep into Dungeons & Dragons specifics (for example, an entire sub-chapter on just its class system alone).

Then, in Chapter Three, fully a third of the way through the book, after being pummeled with excruciating detail about the Dungeons & Dragons game system and its origins, we jump way back in time to explore the real origins of war-gaming (way before the 20th century). I really enjoyed this part of the book. It was very well written and contained some real gems such as:

"On the eve of the Great War, Britains, Ltd...hastily withdrew an 'exploding trench' contrivance, which spring-launched its resident Tommies to their reward with a sharp bang when a flag on its exterior is struck..."

I also learned that H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson were both avid war-gamers (Wells even wrote a book of instructions). And that the most famous example of "let's pretend" is that of the Brontë children, who had an incredibly rich and elaborate shared fantasy world of imagination (which sounds pretty awesome).

Once the historical portion was complete, however, we find ourselves butting up against the time period first described at the beginning of the chapter. And now we head back through that time period, mining the 20th century for examples of imaginative play: the game of Diplomacy, science fiction fandom, and the Society for Creative Anachronism.

These things were pretty interesting, but as with everything in this book, mired with brutally thorough detail. Peterson has collected his details from an enormous body of fanzines and game instructions, etc. It was a herculean task, I'm sure. Unfortunately, rather than give us a summary that imparts the fun and excitement of these games, we have to read a staggering amount of details about hit points and dice systems and innumerable other bits of ephemera. It sucks the fun right out of the reading.

The last third of the book is all Dungeons & Dragons. It's reasonably interesting, if you have any interest in Dungeons & Dragons, but as sluggish as the rest of the book. And if you didn't come to this book with the express desire to read about Dungeons & Dragons, you're probably sick to death of Dungeons & Dragons. And Dungeons. And Dragons.

It's an impressive book. It had to have been an incredible labor of love to compile and write. But it's also an incredible labor to read and it's horribly, horribly misleading if you don't know what to expect.

I highly, highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in every damned thing you could possibly want to know about the origins of Dungeons & Dragons.

If you just want a "A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-Playing Games", then I most emphatically do not recommend this book unless you're willing to jump straight to Chapter 3.1, skip 3.2, and then read 4.1 to about 5.3 or so.

By the way, this has the longest epilogue I've ever read in a book. There are something like five sub-chapters in the epilogue alone. I also dare anyone to try to get through the introduction. I couldn't do it - and that's coming from someone who made it through the entire rest of this book!

Tags: dungeons, dragons, ponderous, laborious, thorough, long, hard