What's your #1 book that you think every tabletop gamer should read? And why?

[TrippyHippy]

This statement surprises me. I find tv & movies far too claustrophobic to use as any kind of significant inspiration, so frankly I forget that they're there. I could see them being inspiring, but having "most" inspiration come from tv & movies?

Reading takes effort. TV and Movies take minimal effort and appeal to our immediate senses. Someone watching Lord of the Rings is as likely as a source of new players, as someone reading it these days.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

It's not just that TV and movies are easier. TV and movies are also a valid art form. Both can have superb plots, characters, and character development. They can demonstrate how to tell a story and how to pace an episode/session. And since we're all amateur improv actors when we roleplay, it demonstrates how to deliver lines and dialogue with the other actors.

 

[Ulrick]

On one hand, it really depends upon genre. On the other, there really is no book that every tabletop gamer "must" read.

Also, these threads tend to devolve into people listing My Favorite Book That Everyone Else Must Read To Be Fully Human.

Sorry to be a grump, but I this thread would have been better titled "What Random Book Do You Recommend Other Tabletop Gamers Might Benefit From?" Or something less absolutist like that.

lol

Maybe I should rename this thread: "Appendix O" As in "O! I can't believe you haven't this book!"

Yet there are some great books out there that help people at least feel "fully human." And those books are worth reading, better than any gaming manual.

 

[Ulrick]

Jon Peterson's Playing at the World, which discusses the pre-history of how the tabletop role-playing game came to be.

That skirts the line of "can't be gaming related," but since it's not a rulebook, I figure it's just barely allowable.

I'd say if we were making a list of say, the "Top 10 non-gaming books every tabletop gamer should read," that would definitely go on that list. It straddles that boundary--but I think gamers should know a bit about the history of their hobby.

 

[Ulrick]

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. It's a great read about heroic stories and mythology.

That's definitely a good choice. It's a book I think every GM should read, at least.

 

[Mercurius]

lol

Maybe I should rename this thread: "Appendix O" As in "O! I can't believe you haven't this book!"

Yet there are some great books out there that help people at least feel "fully human." And those books are worth reading, better than any gaming manual.

Well if we're talking about those kind of books, then I might suggest The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks, or The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, or The Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu...well, now I'm really digressing from RPGs.

But to go back to the OP, here's one book, or one long essay, that comes to mind: J.R.R. Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories," which is published in Tree and Leaf and other places. It is his definitive statement on sub-creation.

Another book might be The Candle of Vision by "A.E." (George Russell) which is beautiful, poetic expression of imaginative vision that sparks the inner workings.