Playing at the World Quotes

“In 1957, a young lieutenant in the Swedish Air Force named Bjorn Nyberg decided, somewhat inexplicably, that the surest means to improve his command over the English language would be to author a sequel to the adventures of Conan.”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

“The importance of role-playing games does not lie in any artistic pretension so much as in their world-forging expansiveness, the sheer audacity of games in which an improvised table-top discussion conjures an epic world into being. It sounds absurd, even preposterous, yet it captured the imaginations of millions. Role-playing games are a testament to the curious ability of the human mind to embrace a bare sketch of a situation, to fill in its undefined areas and above all to believe it, to play at these worlds in such earnest that we lose ourselves in fictional personae.”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

“The notion that the dungeon master “wins” by designing a popular dungeon must have a special resonance for someone who writes fiction for a living—the dungeon master here succeeds in much the same way that he as an author succeeded when his novel sustained the interest of readers and impressed them enough that they might look forward to a later work. The process of running a game shapes a story collaboratively with the players, and a dungeon master who tailors events to meet player expectations will be rewarded with repeat customers.”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

“Equally noteworthy is his offhand use of “dungeon master,” a term that Lee Gold also uses in APA-L #510, in reference to her first time serving as referee: “It was a fun game, for the Dungeon-master as well as the players.” This new term certainly derived from the position of “gamesmaster” in postal Diplomacy, a title that goes back as far as 1963 (see Section 4.3).”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

“The extremely high price of $10 (in 1974 dollars) for three slim pamphlets in a box must have sorely tempted consumers to take matters into their own hands; in the American Wargamer, George Phillies judged that “the rules are rather expensive—sufficiently over the cost of copying them, I think, that there are probably more pirate Xerox copies than licit copies in the world.” [AW:v2n8] Gygax would later conjecture, “I have no way of knowing how many pirated copies of D&D were in existence, but some estimates place the figure at about 20% of total sales, some as high as 50%.”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

“in 1875, Meckel published his proposed reinterpretation of wargaming (Anleitung zum Kriegsspiel), which notably considered martial activities on three distinct scales: a “detachment” game at a map scale of 1:6,250 which emphasized the study of minute tactical details, a “grand war game” at a scale of 1:12,500 governing the larger movements of forces, and finally a “strategic” game at the massive scale of 1:100,000. It is the 1:6,250 detailed tactical maps that borrow his name, the “Meckel maps,” for which he is largely remembered: he emphasizes that the maps should depict in sufficient detail such terrain features as rivers and villages that the tactical benefits of stationing troops in these locations will be clear from the map. His greatest contribution to the future development of wargaming, however, is the idea that a single action might be considered at several scales, and thus effectively in several modes.”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World

“He ties this sorry truth to four fundamental deficiencies in existing wargames: first, that the umpire’s judgment is constrained by the rules; second, that the rules themselves are too rigid to apply to realistic battlefield situations; third, that the calculation of points of damage is overcomplicated and ultimately of little value to the simulation; fourth and finally, that the complexity of the rules is a discouraging impediment to learning the role of the umpire. These criticisms, once they became known to”
― Jon Peterson, Playing at the World