Designers & Dragons

Alzrius

Well-Known Member
#1
For those who are interested in the history of tabletop role-playing games as an industry, I strongly recommend checking out the new Kickstarter for Evil Hat Games' Designers & Dragons, a four-volume set that chronicles the history of each and every (print) tabletop game company. Each volume corresponds to a single decade (the 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's) and covers the companies that were formed during that decade.

A free preview from the 70's volume, chronicling the history of TSR (the original publishers of Dungeons & Dragons) can be found over here.

For those in the know, this is a revised and expanded version of the original Designers & Dragons book that was published several years ago by Mongoose Publishing. That volume is now virtually impossible to find, and completely impossible to find for a reasonable price (fetching in the mid-hundreds for some reason).

On a side-note, for those who find this interesting I'd also recommend Playing at the World, which chronicles the pre-history of the tabletop role-playing game industry. It's a much more dense read, both in terms of the tone and in terms of the print size - a review of the book can be found over here. The author also maintains a blog where he continues to post fascinating bits about the history of tabletop RPGs.
 
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