Negative Space: gaming history
- The deep history of roleplaying
- Rob MacDougall talks about roleplaying before roleplaying.
- Dungeon 112 (July 2004)
- Dungeon 112 is a special issue of Dungeon Magazine devoted to old-style TSR goodness!
- Experience and Advancement in Role-Playing Games
- Kill monsters. Take their stuff. How has character advancement in role-playing games changed over the years? Starting with original D&D and on up through a handful of modern games, I’ll be surveying methods of experience and character advancement over the years.
- Experience in Generic Role-playing Games
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After D&D, it seemed as though anyone could write up game rules and publish them—and many did. From Tunnels & Trolls through GURPS, how did these games deal with experience and character advancement?
- Experience in thematic role-playing games
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Thematic games combine a love of rules with a love of setting. In these metagames, the rules are the setting, and the setting is the rules. Further, acknowledging the rules makes it easier to remove them. Such games are usually acutely aware that character advancement is a reward encouraging the actions that incur the reward and which move the game towards a specific conclusion.
- Experience in world-based role-playing games
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In the eighties and through the nineties, people started writing games where the world was more important than the rules. In theory, this should make for a different kind of character advancement as well.
- Game Junky II: The Hall Closet
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I keep the box sets and gaming props in the hall closet, mainly because I don’t open them as often and they just don’t fit on a shelf without falling open.
- Gary Gygax’s game
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Links around the net to people talking about Gygax.
- History is Rewritten by Avid Wargamers
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An article by Jim Crossley appearing over December 1969/January 1970 about the “elite hobby” of wargaming.
- Order of the Astronomers
- Follow the adventures of Sam Stevens, Gralen Noslen, Will Stratford, and Charlotte Kordé as they delve into the abandoned castle of the Order of the Astronomers. Start here if you’re new to the game or to role-playing games in general.
- Poisoning the Magic Well: RPG Distribution
- Ron Edwards writes a short history of RPG distribution that’s fairly accurate to my recollection.
- Rewards and improvement in Dungeons & Dragons
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Kill monsters. Take their stuff. How has character improvement in D&D changed over the years? This article in the RPG experience series looks at changes in experience point acquisition from early D&D through later versions of the game and later games by the authors.
- Was table-top gaming inevitable?
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Gods & Monsters rolls an 18 for age today, pioneer game writer Greg Stafford died two weeks ago, and stories about the early days of gaming has me wondering, was the discovery of table-top gaming a perfect storm, or was it inevitable?
More Information
- Playing at the World
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“An author investigating the history of wargames and role-playing games.”
- Playing at the World• (paperback)
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“Explore the conceptual origins of wargames and role-playing games in this unprecedented history of simulating the real and the impossible. From a vast survey of primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World distills the story of how gamers first decided fictional battles with boards and dice, and how they moved from simulating wars to simulating people. The invention of role-playing games serves as a touchstone for exploring the ways that the literary concept of character, the lure of fantastic adventure and the principles of gaming combined into the signature cultural…•” (Jon Peterson)
