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

by Jon Peterson

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262544900
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	03/29/2022
Series:	Game Histories
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	519,241
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the 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.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii

Acknowledgments ix

A Note on Sources xi

Introduction xv

1 The Two Cultures 1

The Legacy of Wargaming 4

Gaming as Characters 13

Collective Authorship 20

Early Perceptions of Difference 28

2 How to Play 37

Wishful Thinking 42

Deciding for You 48

Resolution 52

3 Designing for Role Play 65

Self-Determination 71

Ethical Calculus 84

Personal Goals 94

4 The Role of the Referee 109

Steering a Story 115

Destiny's Mark 128

Unsupervised Adventure 137

Intermezzo: Transcending Design 147

5 Toward a Philosophy 159

Wargamers Counterattack 166

Definitions and Controversies 176

Simbalist's Paradoxes 186

The Generation Gap 199

Just a Game? 206

6 Maturity 219

The Blacow Model 226

Applying the Model 233

Starting from Scratch 240

Invisible Systems 246

The Elusive Shift 253

Epilogue 263

Notes 271

Bibliography 287

Index 301

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Peterson shows how the disparate sci-fi/fantasy and wargaming fandoms formed the collective discourse about RPGs in the 1970s, early discussions that have since determined today’s RPG theory."
—Evan Torner, Associate Professor of German Studies, University of Cincinnati 
 
"A terrific gem that articulates the richness and influence of early theorizing on our current understanding of RPGs. It’s a contribution to role-playing game studies that neither scholars nor RPG fans should miss."
—José P. Zagal, Professor of Entertainment Arts Engineering, University of Utah; coeditor of Role-Playing Game Studies and DiGRA Distinguished Scholar
 
"The philosophical conundrums at the heart of role-playing in the 1970s that Peterson lays out in this book are still with us, still challenging us to meet them with fresh insights and new perspectives. An eye-opening and inspiring book!"
—D. Vincent Baker, cocreator of Apocalypse World
 
"In Playing at the World, Peterson gave us the definitive history of how Dungeons & Dragons came to be. Now, he lays bare what happened next, as geek intellectuals wrestled to understand this dynamic new form of gaming let loose from its lair. A deep and fascinating look at the exciting, formative years of a new category of games searching for a way to define itself."
—Peter D. Adkison, Owner, Gen Con
 
"This book is required reading not just for scholars interested in game history and the tension between games and their players but for all role-players interested in learning how the debates about stories, systems, simulation, and immersion have been going on for decades."
—Jaakko Stenros, Center of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, Tampere University