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

The book is a vast achievement, single-handedly expanding the early history of roleplaying games and D&D by a massive degree. If I were to teach a course on the history of roleplaying games, the first half would come from here. I was amazed at all the details, like Gygax's religious beliefs, that I never knew despite thinking myself well informed. When on the core subject of D&D prehistory and events around the game's publication, the book is solid gold. The only small criticism I have is that when Playing at the World ventures out of its comfort zone, the results are not always excellent. Sometimes sweeping statements are made concerning things like story, immersion, or the research of games and play, seemingly without awareness of the recent studies of these subjects. The epilogue draws links between D&D and early videogames in a way that doesn't really work. But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise superb book. Whatever issues there are, they're in the framing, not the real content.