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    The Elusive Shift

    How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity

    Part of Game Histories

    Author Jon Peterson
    Paperback
    $32.00 US
    The MIT Press
    On sale Mar 29, 2022 | 328 Pages | 9780262544900
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    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.
    1 The Two Cultures
    2 Best Intentions
    3 Designing for Role Playing
    4 The Role of the Referee
    Intermezzo: Transcending Design
    5 Toward a Philosophy
    6 Maturity
    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.
    Jon Peterson View titles by Jon Peterson

    About

    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.

    Table of Contents

    1 The Two Cultures
    2 Best Intentions
    3 Designing for Role Playing
    4 The Role of the Referee
    Intermezzo: Transcending Design
    5 Toward a Philosophy
    6 Maturity

    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.
    Jon Peterson View titles by Jon Peterson

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