Tom Van Winkle's Return to Gaming

REVIEW Jon Peterson, The Elusive Shift: How Role-Playing Games Forged Their Identity , Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, US$35.00. Did you think that there was an original Dungeons & Dragons style of play that can be recaptured and revived? Did you think that D&D (or Blackmoor, or Braunstein) was the first game in which players adopted individual imaginary roles described by numerical statistics for ongoing campaigns? Did you think that the first role-playing games were only one step away from tabletop wargames, and that storytelling and acting out a role were secondary developments in role-playing games, and possibly even untrue to the original concept? If you have thought any of these things, you need to read this excellent book, which demonstrates in 310 pages, with a gentle, witty tone, that all of these views are false--although the book is not written as a corrective, to its merit. It nevertheless does so on the basis of irrefutable primary sources, including plenty of first-...

Mention the Fiend Folio , then let the debate begin! With this recent entry, the Grognardia blog stimulated response and further discussion elsewhere of The Fiend Folio , which appeared in August of 1981. Apparently this discussion was raised six years ago , too, on G+, and it's a recurring topic among gamer nostalgia experts. It was a debate back in the '80s, too, as I recall (and some of you readers may, too). What's the discussion about? Basically the question is whether the original Fiend Folio was (is) good. It's an odd exception to the adulation lavished on the old-time game stuff published by TSR, because retro-style ("OSR") gamers today put most TSR products from this period on a pedestal. But not the Fiend Folio , not regularly. Why not? The Fiend Folio was, in effect, a sequel. The standard for judging it is its antecedent, the Monster Manual of 1977. During the initial wave of D&D leading up to 1981, players in the USA had wanted a sequel ...