I have made no secret of my affection for Jon Peterson’s study of the origins of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), both in its original single volume form and in the new two-volume second edition from MIT Press. I reviewed the revised first volume at the end of last year, and having now completed the second volume I have a greater appreciation of why it was split in two. I am one of the self-confessed sickos who really liked how in the original Playing at the World you were somewhat unceremoniously dumped into extended chapters on the history of fantasy and early wargaming after a brief introduction to D&D, before the story returned to the main arc of D&D’s creation. In the new second edition, all these chapters have been split away from the core narrative of the more personal story of Gygax and Arneson’s gaming histories and the collaboration that led to the creation of D&D. This creates a cleaner first volume, and that is probably the book that most people should read, while volume two is essentially three books (or Pillars, as Peterson calls them) stitched together. The first “Pillar” covers the development of fantasy literature, particularly those works that influenced D&D; the second examines the history of wargames from Chess variants through kriegsspiel and up to the state of the hobby in the early 1970s; and the final one studies how the idea of players role-playing a single character came to be, primarily through the Science Fiction and Fantasy fandoms of the mid-twentieth century but also through wargames campaigns and other interesting avenues. The final product is a massive tome that took me probably two months to read, and it’s not something that is for everyone, but for weirdos like me who are interested in this stuff I cannot recommend it highly enough.
If there is a group I would be a little hesitant about pointing towards volume two, it would be those who are just interested in the history of fantasy section. As Peterson himself notes in the opening pages, a lot of excellent work has been done on the history of fantasy literature over the past decade or two. Jamie Williamson’s The Evolution of Modern Fantasy is a particular favorite of mine, and Peterson name drops it among others in the opening of this pillar. My point being, if you are only interested in the history of fantasy literature there are more focused works on those topics that will probably serve you better. However, if you are interested in the specific origins of a strand of sword and sorcery fantasy and its impact on the creation of D&D, then you are the kind of person that this pillar is for. By picking his niche Peterson manages to add more information to an increasingly rich area of scholarship, but it is a niche. I particularly enjoyed all the moments where a magical effect from a story is directly linked to a spell from early D&D – that’s the deep nerd shit that I come to Playing at the World for.
As someone who routinely writes about wargames and history, few things are more directly attuned to my dork brain than a history of wargames. I’ve read some abridged histories of the hobby over the past few years, usually in the opening sections of a book on studying contemporary wargames, but there is no denying that this is by far the most thorough I’ve yet encountered. It starts with early Chess variants and then explores simultaneously the history of German (and then English) kriegspiel alongside the development of miniatures wargames, before moving on to how they came to create the concepts that would arrive in D&D. It is arguably a little light on information about Avalon Hill and its competitors, favoring instead the earlier history before the rise of commercial wargaming, but then much of that information was already in the first volume as it had a more direct impact on the gaming scene that Gygax and Arneson were participating in. This is maybe the one chapter where I wish this information wasn’t split between the two volumes, but I can still appreciate that I’m a minority audience. Really, I just want a Playing at the World (or maybe Game Wizards) level study of the history of Avalon Hill and SPI. Wishes aside, this is a great deep dive into a thorny history that has is easily overlooked despite its wide reaching impact on our culture and history.
The final pillar is in some ways the least well defined but also the most interesting. In this section Peterson examines how the idea of role-playing as a character came to be, from early psychoanalytic techniques, through experimental theater, and finally to RAND political games and the SFF fandoms of the mid-20th century. What is most striking is all the near misses; things that were almost D&D but not quite there. Most prominent among these is the Midgard phenomenon, a play by mail campaign that looks a lot like an RPG but didn’t quite have that special sauce to attract a wide audience. Peterson does an excellent job arguing that while the idea of the role-playing game was probably inevitable, there was something in the air at that time that meant many people were experimenting with similar ideas, the exact combination in D&D was distinct from its competitors. In a way this is the book’s thesis at its core: that D&D is the product of many different influences, which we can identify through careful study, but also that D&D is more than the sum of its parts and it took that combination to create the phenomenon that is the TTRPG. That’s not to say that had Gygax and Arneson not created D&D there would be no RPGs, someone else surely would have done it in their stead, but also that finding an earlier example that has part of the D&D formula is not the same as finding the real First RPG. It’s a precise argumentative line to walk, and Peterson does an excellent job walking it.
I must pay some tribute as well to the appendix, in which Peterson writes an extended essay about sources. Playing at the World is not particularly dense in terms of references, but it has a mammoth bibliography, and this appendix essay goes a long way to helping the reader understand what sources were used and many of the challenges involved in working with them. I love history and I love it when historians explain the weird sources they must work with, so Peterson describing the challenges of working with fanzines was right up my alley. My greatest joy, though, came with the extended aside on the challenges of oral history. D&D is recent enough that many individuals involved in its creation are still alive, and even more were when Peterson first began this project many years ago. He has spoken to many key figures and read their oral histories published in various volumes over the years, and in this section, he explains why he doesn’t rely on them very much. This is very much a historiographical argument for those who like discussing history as a process, and I was so here for it. Great stuff.
While I would happily recommend Playing at the World, 2e Volume 1 to pretty much anyone with an interest in D&D, I’m not sure I can do the same with volume two. I probably enjoyed them both equally, but volume two is targeted more at the niche weirdo audience that I am a member of rather than wider D&D fans. I think that Peterson would probably agree, although maybe not in exactly those words. This is one of those reviews where if the book I described above piques your interest, you should go read it, I swear it lives up to that potential. However, if the prospect of nearly three hundred pages on the history of wargames, including details on multiple generations of nineteenth-century Prussian military officers, sounds like an unpleasant way to spend a week then you may be better served reading something else. Couldn’t be me, though, I loved it.