The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity

Book review by Deane Barker • • tags: rpg • 1 min read •
An image of the cover of the book "The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity"

This is a wonderful book that investigates how role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragon’s happened. Not the mechanical history behind it, but rather how they made “the elusive shift” from wargames to a more personal experience.

(If you’re looking for a more traditional history, I recommend Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It.)

In particular, the seeks to answer the questions:

And so on.

The author is a RPG historian of note, and his sources for the book are hundreds of different fanzines, it seems. I used to be involved in the RPG community, and I remember Dragon, but the author has collected hundreds of references to articles and essays about theory.

The book goes deep on the subject, but stays incredibly readable. Along the way, it really makes you think about the concepts of storytelling, and how being part of a story alters your perception of it.

RPGs are fundamentally interactive storytelling, and the biggest question in the book, it seems, is whether the story matters more than the dice or the rules.

There’s no clean answer to that – opinions differ wildly – but the book is an absolutely joyful attempt to figure it out.

Book Info

Author
Jon Peterson
Year
Pages
336
Acquired
  • I have read this book. According to my records, I completed it on .
  • A hardcover copy of this book is currently in my home library.
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