A few books that might interest the community:
http://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047
http://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047
A few books that might interest the community:
A few books that might interest the community:
Adam Koebel and I were talking about Playing at the World just this weekend while packing! He’s started it, I haven’t. I tried The Fantasy Roleplaying Game: a New Performing Art which I can’t really recommend. It’s interesting as an artifact of the time it was written, but tries way too hard to be academic and look quaint in retrospect.
Playing at the World is amazing so far.
PatW is great- it borderlines on a thesis for someone’s sociology and modern history master’s degree, but that’s what makes it so good. The downside is it weighs like 2 lbs or more and has the footnotes of a master’s thesis. I’d say it doesn’t try to be academic, it actually is. In a good way.
So far, nearly done with Fantasy Freaks, I can say that it is definitely worth reading, but I take issue with some of the author’s strategies. He presents the loss of his girlfriend as an outcome of his reentry into gaming in his early 40’s for example, giving no other reason why she may have left. He also comes at every gaming angle with a negative, “I don’t want to be seen as a geek!” lens, which grates after a time. On the plus side, he does delve into many worlds of fantasy, including tabletop RPGs, SCA, online gaming, LARPs, cons, etc, in a somewhat reporterly way. Not my favorite book, but worth a 300 page read I think.
Haven’t cracked Well Met but it gets good reviews.
All in all, I am happy with the recent attention paid to why we play these games, who is playing them now, and how they help or hinder your real life. Obviously this is a much bigger conversation than this post.
sidebar: Just got my copy of DW in the mail today!! Fucking sweet!