is there books about d&D?

[rossik]

not the rules per se, but about the history of the game..i know tsr 25 aniversary box had a little one, and theres some for the 30 , if i rememeber right.


anymore?

would be a great thing to have a history book of the game and the designers?

 

[Pat]

You're probably talking about Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons, with a foreward by Vin Diesel. It's still dirt cheap on Amazon, if you want a copy.

These focus more on the history of RPGS in general, but D&D is inexorably meshed with the more general history so they're definitely relevant:

Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Roleplaying Games, by Lawrence Shick is probably the best index of pre-1990s RPGs, with some brief histories.

The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games by Rick Swan is similar but less comprehensive.

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible by Sean Patrick Fannon covers the origins of the hobby, from wargaming on.

A History of Role-Playing by Steve Darlington is another easily accessible source:
http://ptgptb.org/0001/history1.html

Shared Fantasy: Roleplaying Games as Social Worlds by Gary Alan Fine is a sociological study from the 1980s about RPGs, with some history.

The Brief History of Game column, by Shannon Applecline focuses on companies instead of the industry as a whole and is more recent, but has some good research:
http://www.rpg.net/columns/list-column.phtml?colname=briefhistory

 

[rossik]

You're probably talking about Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons, with a foreward by Vin Diesel. It's still dirt cheap on Amazon, if you want a copy.

These focus more on the history of RPGS in general, but D&D is inexorably meshed with the more general history so they're definitely relevant:

Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Roleplaying Games, by Lawrence Shick is probably the best index of pre-1990s RPGs, with some brief histories.

The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games by Rick Swan is similar but less comprehensive.

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible by Sean Patrick Fannon covers the origins of the hobby, from wargaming on.

A History of Role-Playing by Steve Darlington is another easily accessible source:
http://ptgptb.org/0001/history1.html

Shared Fantasy: Roleplaying Games as Social Worlds by Gary Alan Fine is a sociological study from the 1980s about RPGs, with some history.

The Brief History of Game column, by Shannon Applecline focuses on companies instead of the industry as a whole and is more recent, but has some good research:
http://www.rpg.net/columns/list-column.phtml?colname=briefhistory

niiice! are they in preference order?

 

[Pat]

niiice! are they in preference order?

No. The first three are lumped together because they overlap, but the rest are fairly different. Heroic Worlds and Shared Fantasy are probably the best, given their limitations (HW is mostly an index, and while SF is a landmark, I've seen some claims that they double-counted some of the people in the study so it's less representative than it implies). Steve Darlington's webpage is probably the the most accessible overall summary, but there is less focus on D&D than you'd think. The author is one of the few who didn't come into the hobby via D&D; there might be something more D&D-specific on the web at Dragonsfoot or the Acaeum or elsewhere, but I haven't seen it. Just straightening out the early editions of oD&D and Gygax versus Arneson is a trick.

The wikipedia article on D&D made Featured Article status a few months ago, so it's in pretty good shape:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons

Incidentally, the big web indexes for D&D are probably:

The Acaeum for pre-1990 D&D:
http://www.acaeum.com/

Brad Renfrow's archive for more recent D&D:
http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/index.htm

-Pat

 

[Brund the Decrepit]

Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but I found it funny.

 

[rossik]

Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but I found it funny.

ehehe, not quite. this is rules for dummies, i need history for dummies

 

[Zander]

Within certain criteria, I have every book about RPGs.

Dr John Kim's bibliography is the most complete one online though it's missing a few references.

Another good source is RPG Studies which includes some academic papers and print media articles.

HTH

 

[Devin Parker]

What, no Mazes and Monsters?




::covers head::

 

[Zoatebix]

This doesn't do the history thing at all, but it's (for the most part) an good read: Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media.

 

[S'mon]

"Are there books", not "is there books".