Signal Boost: "The Elusive Shift", by Jon Peterson

This is the follow-up to Peterson's fantastic Playing At The World. Everyone interested in the history of gaming--especially RPGs--should get themselves a copy of this book and take their time reading it for comprehension because Peterson returns from the mists of history what actually went down.

Here we see something very intersting being teased out, focused upon, and finally put into the spotlight: how "RPG" came to be the term for this new gameplay medium. If you've followed Jeffro Johnson's Twitter-based reports on his rediscovery of how D&D and AD&D actually worked as-written, and how that compares to how many believe it to be, then this book is the sort of thing you'll devour.

From here I'll quote the ad copy. It actually does what ad copy is meant to do: tell you what to expect.

How the early Dungeons & Dragons community grappled with the nature of role-playing games, theorizing a new game genre.

When Dungeons & 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 wargame. 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.

Peterson examines key essays by D&D early adopters, rescuing from obscurity many first published in now-defunct fanzines. He traces the evolution of D&D theorizing, as writers attempted to frame problems, define terms, and engage with prior literature. He describes the two cultures of wargames and science fiction fandom that provided D&D's first players; examines the dialogue at the core of the game; explains how game design began to accommodate role-playing; and considers the purpose of the referee or gamesmaster. By 1977, game scholars and critics began to theorize more systematically, and Peterson explores their discussions of the transformative nature of role-playing games, their responsibility to a mass audience, and other topics. Peterson finds that the foundational concepts defined in the 1970s helped theorize role-playing, laying the foundation for the genre's shift into maturity in the 1980s.

I've got quite the To Read pile these days, so it will be a while before I can dig into this book, but it's on the list and I'm looking forward to seeing what Peterson says. When I do, I'll hit up the image above and buy myself a hardcover copy; this is too important to be left vulnerable to the whims of digital publishing's ephemeral nature.