This linked story
collection is in the same inimitable vein as Egan’s bestselling A Visit from
the Goon Squad—and every bit as good. Egan is such a gifted storyteller. She
knows how to get and keep the narrative ball rolling and is extremely good at
creating vivid characters you have no choice but to root for.
One of the things
I love about this book of linked stories is its through-line, a fascinating science
fiction conceit revolving around the idea of a mass-downloadable consciousness.
In addition to capturing a reader’s imagination, this device allows Egan to
display her virtuosity in creating gripping narratives with various highly
creative and often experimental points of view.
For me, Egan is a genius, one of the most
important and enjoyable short fiction writers of our time!
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD A Time Magazine Must-Read 'A complex, compelling read that showcases Egan's masterful storytelling' TIME 'A dazzling feat of literary construction' VOGUE
From one of the most dazzling and iconic writers of our time comes an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity, privacy, and meaning in a world where our memories are no longer our own--featuring characters from A Visit from the Goon Squad.
It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's forty, with four kids, and restless when…
I
started playing Dungeons & Dragons back in 1977, and this book chronicles
the rise of the game and the conflicts among the men who created it: Gary Gygax
and Dave Arneson.
I saw a lot of this history from the outside, via hobby
magazines and gossip, but Peterson's exhaustive and detailed research helped me
understand what was really going on. He paints a fair picture of flawed people
trying to understand the new type of game they invented, and come to grips with
the new hobby community that grew up around it.
One comes away feeling a little
sorry for two creators who lost their friendship over business, then lost the
business as well.
The story of the arcane table-top game that became a pop culture phenomenon and the long-running legal battle waged by its cocreators.
When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success--and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game's fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson--a noted authority on role-playing games--explains…
As a Gen Xer I came of age when Dungeons & Dragons was taking young imaginations by storm and creating an entirely new type of gamer. I grew up in a small town in the northwoods of Wisconsin and spent my days imagining fantasy worlds in the woods and playing D&D when the weather made the outdoors inhospitable. Those adventures of the mind are the key inspiration for my writing and the Loresmith series, which concludes with Bound By Sword and Spirit, is my love letter to D&D. I still play and am currently DMing a campaign with my family. It’s my niece’s first time playing – such a treat!
The Unlikely Ones is a favorite fantasy novel from back in my teenage days (it is an adult fantasy, not children’s or YA).
An unsteady heroine, a cursed knight, and talking animals round out this unexpected cast who find themselves on a journey to become heroes none of them expected. The characters are the star of this book, though the story and world are also wonderful, as they grow from self-doubt and convinced of their unworthiness to beautifully realized saviors of the day.
Written over 30 years ago, this is still one of the most original fantasies I’ve read.
A band of outcasts begins an arduous journey through a world of evil witches, walking trees, and miraculous gems along a path that will reunite them with their true destinies
In the 1980s I was bullied for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Kids like to bully each other, but this was different: The bullies felt they had been given a moral license to pick on D&D players because pastors, talk-show hosts, and politicians were all claiming it was a Satanic, anti-Christian game. Those claims were my first inkling that adults did not know what they are talking about. After getting a PhD in the sociology of religion, I was finally able analyze and articulate why religious authorities felt threatened by a simple game of imagination.
Peterson is the foremost historian on the history of Dungeons and Dragons.
To research this book, he tracked down countless documents from the early history of the game––including things like greeting cards from game creator Gary Gygax. But this book doesn’t just cover D&D. It traces the history of simulation games from chess through nineteenth-century military training exercises and finally into the emergence of fantasy role-playing games.
This is the definitive source on the history of these games.
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 innovation of the late…
In the 1980s I was bullied for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Kids like to bully each other, but this was different: The bullies felt they had been given a moral license to pick on D&D players because pastors, talk-show hosts, and politicians were all claiming it was a Satanic, anti-Christian game. Those claims were my first inkling that adults did not know what they are talking about. After getting a PhD in the sociology of religion, I was finally able analyze and articulate why religious authorities felt threatened by a simple game of imagination.
Barrowcliffe is a humorist, but reading his autobiographical account of playing D&D in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, you realize humor is a way of coping with tragedy.
This book contains fascinating descriptions of the early history of D&D outside of the United States. Barrowcliffe is also adept at articulating what exactly is so compelling and fascinating about D&D. Most importantly, this book portrays the brutal culture of toxic masculinity that often existed around this game in its first decades.
Gen Z players may be shocked by Barrowcliffe’s account of how players treated one another.
Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had the chance to be normal.
He blew it.
While other teenagers concentrated on being coolly rebellious, Mark - like twenty million other boys in the `70s and '80s - chose to spend his entire adolescence in fart-filled bedrooms pretending to be a wizard or a warrior, an evil priest or a dwarf. Armed only with pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games, stopped chatting up girls and started killing dragons.
I’ve been a gamer all of my life and am a teacher of elementary school students. After finding the LitRPG genre I wished to share this with other kids... like the one I had once been. Most parents in the genre push full 200k books on their children with an expectation of found love. While I imagine it works for a few of them, I rather expect that the majority of those attempts end in failure. Kids have their own world and their own sense of humor. I write to them, to inspire them and make them laugh, to make them entertained even as I teach them universal morals and lessons about the world.
Lone Wolf is a book that is also a game. A LitRPG for Kids, originally written in the 80s, it is the start of a wonderfully long series of illustrated books that both allowed children to choose their actions as the protagonist of the story and also gave them choices on how to develop the hero and make him progress.
It’s a model of book that I really would like to see more of today.
Lone Wolf might be the series that started me on my gaming path, and it is a magical and beautiful quest that teaches about honor, teamwork, and clever tactical planning.
Even better, the author made the series free online in 2015. So it is now available all over the internet and even as a number of free phone apps.
You are Lone Wolf. In a devastating attack the Darklords have destroyed the monastery where you were learning the skills of the Kai Lords. You are the sole survivor. FLIGHT FROM THE DARK You swear revenge. But first you must reach Holmgard to warn the King of the gathering evil. The servants of darkness relentlessly hunt you across your country and every turn of the page presents a new challenge. Choose your skills and your weapons carefully - for they can help you succeed in the most fantastic and terrifying journey of your life. The LONE WOLF adventures are a…
Starting with Tolkien’s novels as a child, I’ve devoured countless SF&F stories. My love of the genre, particularly high fantasy, combined with the irritatingly fashionable trend of so many fantasy authors to stop writing their stories partway through and leave we readers high and dry, motivated me to start writing, to see if I could create something that I was missing as I hunted for new material to read. As an intense hater of winter, spring always signified to me a time of hope, of new growth, of opportunity, of the ending of difficulty, and the start of a time when all things were possible.
The 3rd and final book in the Dragonlance Chronicles installment, Weis & Hickman finished an incredible tale inspired by their Dungeons & Dragons role playing group.
Elves, humans, dwarves, and kender must work together to beat back the rise of an evil goddess seeking its way into the world to ensave its inhabitants. Having been a Dungeon Master for many years, I devoured these books, and remain appreciative to this day that role playing geeks love to read novels as well.
The third title published in the Dragonlance line is now being released in a trade hardcover edition for the first time ever. Featuring the stunning art and design that graced the cover of the paperback edition, this new version is the final edition in the hardcover release of the entire Chronicles trilogy. This release also continues the planned release of all the core Dragonlance titles from Weis & Hickman in trade hardcover, allowing fans and collectors alike the first-ever chance to obtain the entire set in hardcover.
In the 1980s I was bullied for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Kids like to bully each other, but this was different: The bullies felt they had been given a moral license to pick on D&D players because pastors, talk-show hosts, and politicians were all claiming it was a Satanic, anti-Christian game. Those claims were my first inkling that adults did not know what they are talking about. After getting a PhD in the sociology of religion, I was finally able analyze and articulate why religious authorities felt threatened by a simple game of imagination.
This was the first sociological study of fantasy role-playing games. Fine was able to detect and articulate what is sociologically significant about these games.
The book takes dynamics that role-players just “get” and articulates them as sociological concepts. For example, he uses “frame theory” to explain how players verbally transition from the frame of the game mechanics and the story world of their characters.
He also explains how games like Dungeons and Dragons are “autotelic.” In other words, you do not “win” at and these games, the purpose is “engrossment” or being absorbed into the fantasy world.
Fine also did a great deal of participant observation for this book and it provides a great historical insight into the culture surrounding these games in the early 1980s––warts and all.
This classic study still provides one of the most astute descriptions available of an often misunderstood subculture: that of fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Alan Fine immerses himself in several different gaming systems, offering insightful details on the nature of the games and the patterns of interaction among players - as well as their reasons for playing.
TTRPGs are such a powerful medium for storytelling, and a tool that can be used by therapists to help their clients. Learning how to run games can seem daunting, these books have all helped me with learning how to run games more effectively. From thinking about stories, to exploring tropes, using storytelling techniques, and sharing the narrative with players this collection of books will help you on your journey of building worlds and telling stories.
Understanding story structure, narrative drive, and world-building are incredibly helpful when running tabletop role-playing games.
As you run games you will often find that the players do not do what is expected and as the Game Master (GM) you have to adjust the story as you go. Understanding common story tropes and character arcs can help GM’s with building their world, their campaign, and adjusting the story as needed.
Hickson uses examples from literature, anime, and popular media to help illustrate the different themes explored in his series.
Writing advice tends to be full of 'rules' and 'tips' which are either too broad to be helpful or outright wrong. With over 35,000 copies sold, On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume Idiscusses specific and applicable ideas for your writing, from effective methods of delivering exposition and foreshadowing, to how communication, commerce, and control play into the fall of an empire. Volume II, a sequel with a host of new topics, released in December 2021.
On Writing
Prologues
The First Chapter
The Exposition Problem
Foreshadowing
Villain Motivation
Hero-Villain Relationships
Final Battles
The Chosen One
Hard Magic Systems
Soft Magic Systems
Magic…
I’m currently on the 3rd book in the He Who Fights Monsters series.
The story is completely unconventional yet strangely engrossing. It feels like a Dungeons & Dragon game with a phenomenal Dungeon Master. The audio narrator is incredible, although there are a ton of stats listed, and having them all read every time gets seriously tedious.
The combat scenes are unique enough to be engaging and the social intrigue (and fun powers) balance it all out. The level of detail in the world-building and magic system feels like Name of the Wind. (My favorite book of all time.)
I highly recommend He Who Fights Monsters to high fantasy lovers and players of role-playing tabletop games. Be warned: It’s not quite as accessible to the less-nerdy.
Jason wakes up in a mysterious world of magic and monsters.It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil.He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.After cementing itself as one of the best-rated serial novels on Royal Road with an astonishing…
