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What you get: Your GBP 34.99 (from the publisher's site) or USD 49.99 (price on the book itself) buys you a hard-cover, 448-page book called ‘Designers & Dragons, A History of the Role-Playing Game Industry’ published by Mongoose Publishing. This is a brand new end-2011 release. The book is thickly written in black and white, with minimal use of pictures or artwork. The fonts used are smallish (probably a size 10) and the information presented covers an unbelievable scope and volume. Its author, Shannon Appelcline, is anything but unknown with numerous publications in the industry and the running mind behind RPG.net that hosts this review.
The blurb from the publisher: 'Compiled over many years from hundreds of interviews and research projects, this book is a history of the role-playing game industry, and forms the most complete record of all the games, companies and talented individuals that have propelled role-playing games to where they are today. Rather than being a simple, linear history, this book takes a unique perspective on the role-playing industry. Reflecting that it is the creation of thousands of talented individuals and scores of talented companies, this book instead devotes individual sections to describing the histories and products of almost 60 different companies that have published role-playing games from 1974 to the present day. The companies are laid out in a chronology based on when each began publishing in the role-playing field. Designers & Dragons comes in a quality black leather finish, ensuring its collectability for years to come.'
The description given is almost fully accurate (and we will get back to this). It is very interesting to see how this book began, and one needs nothing more than to read the first post on designers-and-dragons.rpg.net. Shannon's continuing column about the gaming industry called 'A Brief History of Game' which run from August 2006 to January 2011 was supersized, reworked, exponentially expanded and then some, and then polished to present the more comprehensive book that was ever done concerning the industry of our hobby. Mongoose Publishing has a preview available free of charge in the product’s page. It includes the content page where one sees the at least 61 companies that get a major treatment of a minimum of two pages each. The book is laid out in two columns per page with relevant quotes from the industry's protagonists interspersed in-between. In addition to these entries, there are another 40 minor treatments (a 'mini-history', a 'settings of yore', a 'magazine history' or simply a titled mention) of up to one page of systems, worlds, smaller companies or something of interest within the company's description with which they are mostly linked. Companies are allocated a different page count depending on the impact they are judged upon having on our hobby. As an example TSR gets 26 pages while Grey Ghost Press slightly more than 2. At the end of each entry suggestions are provided on what to read next. The last suggestion is always the following entry, but the ones preceding it relate to either what happened with the main designers of the company, how its games ended up, what the competition of that era did etc.
Let me say clearly that the history of the role-playing games industry covers much ground on yet is not identical to the history of role-playing. Just so that there is no misunderstandings or disappointment about what the book is about.
The strong points: As a follower of Shannon's initial column, I can't describe how excited I was upon the announcement of this book. Books like this on a hobby validate its existence in a sense. As much as other attempts at histories or other serious discourses concerning role-playing games have existed in the past, none used the prism of the industry as the primary means of narrative, nor did many see print. 'Designers' contains an unprecedented wealth of information about the English-speaking RPG industry that nobody could have possibly collected on his own. Here however things have been researched thoroughly. Shannon himself acknowledges that in many occasions there were conflicting accounts even about hard facts as to when a product was printed. The writing is thus authoritative on the issues that it has verified, while it acknowledges the divergence of opinions on what it couldn't. The honesty is appreciated: in some cases not only different accounts were given by different people, but even the same people told the story differently, with the time having passed and all.
In any case, and as stated, the heavy tome can effectively turn the biggest ignoramus who up to yesterday wasn't even aware of the existence of our hobby into an RPG industry knowledge geek. There are snippets of info that even hardened role-players are unaware off, or info which contradicts long-held convictions and urban legends. I can't fathom the amount of man-hours this book demanded, and especially on an industry in which the companies that publicize their financial data in order to gauge their success can be counted in one hand.
The advantages of owning and having read this book are enormous. The reader can just make the obnoxious know-it-all un-FLGS employee shut up, and I know quite a few of those. The tome's sheer weight can be used in full force as a final argument. On a more serious tone though, through the numerous and quite exhaustive company histories that the book provides, it can give valuable lessons on how to run or not to run a company. Do not get me wrong, this is no financial analysis or an audit report on what to do or not to in the commercial part of our hobby; there are other columns on RPG.net for that. However, as a good, researched and vibrant read 'Designers' allows its dedicated reader to be rewarded in what he can learn about our industry, its traits, its shortcomings, its cyclical nature and its history up to now. The non-dedicated reader will still get a sense of awe and understanding of how our hobby came to be. It’s no small feat for a book to cater to both the dedicated and the passive reader.
Finally, the book receives online support on designers-and-dragons.rpg.net. Shannon continues writing articles under the same premise, expanding on the initial material and adding new.
The weak points: It's disappointing to see typos and editorial mistakes. I must have spotted around 40 of them (roughly one per ten pages), along with a few editorial mishaps. In the funniest of all, even the author's name was cut short. A focused editorial control could fix that for the next printing.
The same can be said for the lack of indexes. The book is unforgiving in the amount of information that it presents. With the exception of the table of contents though, no index exists. That can be outright overwhelming for the non role-player, since I can think of at least three indispensable indexes: companies, titles and designers; four if you wished to break the titles in systems and worlds. Even more so, these indexes should be fully cross-referenced. Again, this is nothing that a devoted editing cannot resolve for the material to be provided complimentarily and free of charge online. Shannon has already stated on these fora that they will be forthcoming. It’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity.
In a similar vain the lack of footnotes was heavily felt. Taking into account the tons of information provided, the lack of annotation and footnotes makes the text difficult to read, while leading to needless repetition throughout. A parenthesis after the text to be annotated looks like a relic of the previous incarnation of the entries as web-pages. This strongly demonstrates the main structural problem of the book from which others (like the lack of footnotes) appear to stem.
It was stated already that the book is the logical evolution of a series of articles on RPG.net concerning the role-playing game industry. I understand that this knowledge comes from the author’s dealings with the industry, as well as his extensive presence in US conventions. Obvious as some things might be for RPG.net’s readers, they are definitely not for people who are not into the hobby and whose industry knowledge might be rudimentary.
Effectively I feel that the main problem with the book is that the transition from a series of web-articles to a concrete, single, printed entity was not made smoothly. The author strove for modularity and for being able to read any entry in any order. The result is however not fluid and sometimes incohesive, while the book seems uncertain in what ground it wants to cover and what its target group is. A few examples:
-There is a blurb after each company’s title about something that characterised it. Yet at no point can someone see what the company has done in a glimpse. This is very unfriendly to those not in the know, or the random non-hobbyist that will get the book. And even if there were there indexes, they would have done part of the job only. I feel that omitting those few lines and putting some bullet points of each company’s half-dozen (or dozen) major creations, the prizes they won, along with the designers that worked for the company would have demonstrated a profoundly methodological approach. Mind you, this approach is not necessarily lacking now; it’s just that the reader has to make sense of the information on his own.
-The downfall of the d20 market is covered (and thus takes valuable space) extensively in some companies and in passing in some others. All this is however redundant: it should have been mentioned extensively once only, probably in WotC, while a simple footnote in any other company could have directed the reader to the relevant page or company or subchapter. Repetitions (which make full sense when in a series of articles published week after week on a website) make the text tiresome while taking up space from other info that didn’t make it in the book.
-The three and a half page entry on Creations Unlimited has one page on the company with the rest devoted to who Rob Kuntz was and what happened to Kuntz's creations after CU got bust. Again, the premise behind the book ('follow the companies, not the worlds, not the systems, not the designers') is a valid starting point; it is not always followed though. On the Kuntz example, the CU entry should have covered only his CU years. The history of TSR should have covered his early steps, while his later history on other companies could be covered on those with a simple referring footnote doing the job. The Kuntz example is a major example of an incidence that repeats itself numerous times in the book in varying degrees of offence for a fair number of companies. Were the initial premise of the book followed to the hilt, this couldn’t have been the case.
-The book's undertitle is 'a history of the role-playing game industry', however the companies with named entries or mini-entries are exclusively English-speaking: American, Canadian and British. At one point in the book within a particular entry (and unfortunately I can't easily find the quote at hand) it is stated that this history covers mostly the American industry. I feel there is a serious problem there. Everybody agrees that our hobby, as well as the biggest part of its vast corpus, has been created in the English-speaking world and that English-speaking companies probably hold the major share of fans and buyers. Going from that though to the point of having no companies outside of the English-speaking world as contributors to the history of the RPG industry will make any reader very skeptical. Games that did or did not fare so well in the US were killers in their home grounds: Das Schwarze Auge in Germany consistently outsold AD&D back in the day. The French games In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas and Metabarons were considered commercially successful enough to get an English edition by non-French companies. Why aren't their mother companies mentioned as contributing in the history of the industry? The licensed companies certainly do. Even obscure companies with a limited production at the beginnings of our then fledgling hobby get mentions, yet powerhouses outside the US, the UK and Canada do not. Being neither a national nor a resident of these three countries, I think the omission is astounding. I do not believe that Shannon did it on purpose out of spite or in a sense of exclusion; he presents the history that he is aware of with his multiple involvement and connections in the US industry. However, his international readers should have been taken into account, seeing how this book by a UK publishing house finds its way around the globe (I just spotted three copies in a shop in the heart of Helsinki). Thus, if the reader knows of a local company that dominates his country’s market for years but does not get an entry, his trust on the thorough research will be breached. In addition, as my case is, it will make him wonder about other companies from other continents that were potentially left out. In one line: if it's about the global industry, local powerhouses that made or make a difference must be in by their own merit, with their own contributions, with their own history of glory or failure; not as a mere mention in another entry. If it isn't about the global industry, a simple declaration on the title would have sufficed.
-Having this breach of trust in mind, I wondered how to confirm the contents of a random US entry in the book. Lacking the resources, I couldn’t have gone with companies long gone. After some soul-searching I opted to contact Kenzer and Co., publishers of Knights of the Dinner Table, Aces & Eights and Hackmaster. I have followed some of their product lines and their magazine for a while now. I was very happy to see Mr David Kenzer, owner and designer in the company, reply with his thoughts on the entry of his company. Try to read this through a broad lens: this is not a commercial presentation. It could have been any company and it should be interpreted as such.
Mr Kenzer commented that the article is fairly accurate as to products, however there were things missing; many of their board-games and RPGs his company produced won accolades; even though the RPGs are always mentioned, the board-games or the accolades are not always there. He was very proud to talk about what he considered the best premium printed book ever made in the industry, their newly available Hacklopedia of Beasts for Hackmaster Advanced. Unfortunately this got a one-line only in the entry, with no mention of the production values which the designer considers higher even than collector’s editions rulebooks from other companies. He also clarified quite extensively that their biggest thing has varied throughout their years, as much as some people might consider The Knights of the Dinner Table their biggest success. As steady as its success is, at many times their other creations surpassed it. Finally however, and I could really see the Mr Kenzer’s pride there, was when he vividly wrote about how his company has never missed a payment or gone bankrupt since they started in 1993. Taking into account the horror stories on other gaming companies’ bankruptcy and embezzlements, this is no small feat indeed. However it doesn’t get mentioned.
Let’s take a step back and ponder abstractly upon these thoughts doing the devil’s advocate at the same time. It is rather obvious that every game publisher could have found something lacking in his entry and would have wished for his company to be depicted in a more positive light with long mentions of all his products. On the other hand, giants like Fantasy Flight Games have multi-page entries on their boardgames only, which is not the main subject of the book. It is thus not surprising that a primarily RPG publisher is disappointed since his few board games that won accolades and awards are not mentioned. Idem for the non-mentioning of some of his RPG accolades, along with one of the most colourful events in convention history (sending the fans to pick the award). Since Kenzer & Co is only an example the moral is that, setting history and dead companies aside, 'Designers' isn’t shy of stating what is alive and goes well and what not. In that sense, companies should have been treated in an identical fashion. I fully respect the author’s prerogative to devote as much space as he wished per entry, depending on how important he felt the company was for the history of our hobby. On the other hand, I also sympathize with any publisher who honestly asks ‘but, why aren’t you saying that we are doing fine, that we are producing premium luxury products and that we are winning awards?’. There is no easy fix for this however and it certainly isn't of an editorial nature. More research and personal contact with all the currently existing companies would be needed in order to cram additional infromation in each single entry without expanding the page count.
Conclusion: Designers & Dragons is not perfect. It is still however a must-have for anybody interested in the hobby as opposed to simply playing the game. If I have dedicated so long a part to describe its weaknesses, I did it with great love for a volume that could have used not as much additional research but a more active editing from its previous article incarnation to its current book form. Such a book was sorely missing from our hobby. For all the times we were jaw-gapingly fooled into pathetic rumours and bad purchases by unscrupulous merchants, all the times we got entangled into flamewars about companies and products that in retrospect we knew very little about, this book must succeed. It must succeed and get the reprint it deserves with the corrections and additions necessary for it to be the authoritative tome it aspires to be. I hope it becomes a resounding financial success so that other books concerning the hobby follow suit, by the same author or by others. Shannon has stated in these fora that the initial print run is 1000 copies ('only', I might add). So we have to decide whether we want horizon-expanding books like 'Designers' with all the (sometimes serious) mistakes that the pioneer is bound to make. My vote is a resounding yes.
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