Role-Playing Games
05 Oct 2022 15:19
I am not the least bit embarrassed at how much time I spent playing these, all the way through my twenties; in fact I'd probably still be playing them if I had near-by friends who were also into them. But they are now old enough that these artifacts of my child-hood have a history.
I am at least half serious when I say that if you've never played these, it is probably hard to appreciate just how easy it is to take seriously something you have yourself made up, and to combine stuff you've borrowed from elsewhere with genuine (if not necessarily good) inventions. This in turn has implications for things like mythology and the history of religion...
See also: The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s
- To read:
- Peter Bebergal (ed.), Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons
- Douglas E. Cowan, Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes: How Myth and Religion Shape Fantasy Culture
- David M. Ewalt, Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It
- Gary Alan Fine, Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds
- David Kushner, Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D
- Joseph P. Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds
- Daniel Mackay, The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art (GV1469.6.M33 2001)
- Jon Peterson
- Michael Witwer, Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons (GV 1469.62.D84.W57 2015)
