Strictly Fantasy : The Cultural Roots of Tabletop Role-Playing Games

Gerald Nachtwey

ISBN 10: 1476675716 / ISBN 13: 9781476675718

Editore: Mcfarland, 2021

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nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - Role-playing games seemed to appear of nowhere in the early 1970s and have been a quiet but steady presence in American culture ever since. This new look at the hobby searches for the historical origins of role-playing games deep in the imaginative worlds of Western culture. It looks at the earliest fantasy stories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the fans--both readers and writers--who wanted to bring them to life, at the Midwestern landscape and the middle-class households that were the hobby's birthplace, and at the struggle to find meaning and identity amidst cultural conflicts that drove many people into these communities of play. This book also addresses race, religion, gender, fandom, and the place these games have within American capitalism. All the paths of this journey are connected by the very quality that has made fantasy role-playing so powerful: it binds the limitless imagination into a 'strict' framework of rules. Far from being an accidental offshoot of marginalized fan communities, role-playing games' ability to hold contradictions in dynamic, creative tension made them a necessary and central product of the twentieth century.

Codice articolo 9781476675718

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Strictly Fantasy : The Cultural Roots of Tabletop Role-Playing Games
• Editore: Mcfarland
• Data di pubblicazione: 2021
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1476675716
• ISBN 13: 9781476675718
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 229 L x 152 A x 11 P (millimetri) 229 millimetri di larghezza per 152 millimetri di altezza per 11 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 298 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Role-playing games seemed to appear of nowhere in the early 1970s and have been a quiet but steady presence in American culture ever since. This new look at the hobby searches for the historical origins of role-playing games deep in the imaginative worlds of Western culture. It looks at the earliest fantasy stories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the fans--both readers and writers--who wanted to bring them to life, at the Midwestern landscape and the middle-class households that were the hobby's birthplace, and at the struggle to find meaning and identity amidst cultural conflicts that drove many people into these communities of play. This book also addresses race, religion, gender, fandom, and the place these games have within American capitalism. All the paths of this journey are connected by the very quality that has made fantasy role-playing so powerful: it binds the limitless imagination into a "strict" framework of rules. Far from being an accidental offshoot of marginalized fan communities, role-playing games' ability to hold contradictions in dynamic, creative tension made them a necessary and central product of the twentieth century.

Informazioni sull?autore

Gerald Nachtwey is an associate professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. Series editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell teaches American studies, anthropology, and writing at Pace University in New York.