Books - Designers & Dragons (2014) [+]
Feb 28 2022
Shannon Appelcline's Designers & Dragons (2011) was originally a one-volume hardcover book published by Mongoose. This review is for Designers & Dragons (2014) second edition published by Evil Hat in four smaller hardcover volumes, though more total content.
Each volume covers a decade from 1970's to 2000's. In general it's a history of the tabletop RPG field organized by company though also focusing on the people in those companies. Each book has about a couple dozen companies describing their origins, history, and demise (or aliveness) and their contributions to the RPG field in terms of products and innovations. Since most companies start out as one or few people's endeavor the histories are often the histories of those people and how they got into RPGs and decided to start making products.
There are many sidebars. Many cover very small companies related to the current company. Some sidebars cover other topics such as what is GNS or a short history of some esoteric niche market. There are also many scanned product pictures, though the books are black and white which is a shame.
Each history ends with a related links section telling you where to go to continue on the history of related companies or a person discussed in the current history.
I like the format as the smaller sized books are easier to do a walk-and-read than with a big leather hardcover. I like the subject (history of the RPG field) and like the organization by companies because growing up it was the companies and their products that mattered. Doing it by people would be jumping around from company to company. Doing it by timeline you would lose all sense of company histories.
Appelcline is working on a third edition or a sequel and I'm looking forward to it.
Each volume covers a decade from 1970's to 2000's. In general it's a history of the tabletop RPG field organized by company though also focusing on the people in those companies. Each book has about a couple dozen companies describing their origins, history, and demise (or aliveness) and their contributions to the RPG field in terms of products and innovations. Since most companies start out as one or few people's endeavor the histories are often the histories of those people and how they got into RPGs and decided to start making products.
There are many sidebars. Many cover very small companies related to the current company. Some sidebars cover other topics such as what is GNS or a short history of some esoteric niche market. There are also many scanned product pictures, though the books are black and white which is a shame.
Each history ends with a related links section telling you where to go to continue on the history of related companies or a person discussed in the current history.
I like the format as the smaller sized books are easier to do a walk-and-read than with a big leather hardcover. I like the subject (history of the RPG field) and like the organization by companies because growing up it was the companies and their products that mattered. Doing it by people would be jumping around from company to company. Doing it by timeline you would lose all sense of company histories.
Appelcline is working on a third edition or a sequel and I'm looking forward to it.