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See, Shannon's motivation behind Designers & Dragons – to catalogue the successes and failures of the cyclic industry of hobby role-playing games – also drove me to write EFRPG. The tabletop role-playing industry is an ego-driven, creative niche that repeats itself endlessly in an effort to innovate often without innovating at all – the "fantasy heartbreaker" being the foremost example. What was lacking from the industry was a sense of history. I tried to cover multiple game channels in TEFRPG, but could have easily focused on tabletop role-playing alone. If I had Designers & Dragons on hand, TEFRPG would have been a heck of a lot easier to write.
Shannon was kind enough to give me a hardcover copy to review. It's gorgeous, a thick tome worthy of any RPG monster manual with over 300 pages of content in two column format and almost no illustrations. Designers & Dragons is written in chronological order, covering each game company's rise and (all too often) fall. Sidebars provide occasional digressions into other game formats to clarify what else was happening in the game industry. Each game history concludes with jumping off points to other topics. In an industry as tangled as tabletop role-playing, this approach makes perfect sense.
Reading the book cover-to-cover gives a true appreciation for Shannon's depth of knowledge. He also crowdsourced RPG.net's collective experience as a check and balance. As if that weren't enough, Mongoose approached many of the publishers for their input. Designers & Dragons is the most thorough history of our favorite hobby to date.
Read enough of the histories and a pattern develops: creative designers dabble in the industry, start an unofficial fan-supported effort for their favorite game, become successful enough to produce a professional periodical, eventually move into mainstream game publishing by publishing their own game or being a licensee, underestimate market forces by taking a risky gamble into a new market (like card games) or failing to adapt to changing conditions (like the D20 boom and bust), and eventually run out of money, resources, and business. A few are pushed over the edge by unscrupulous employees, a disturbingly common occurrence. Of all the game companies, Shannon points out that only a handful of these ventures began with a business plan; it's no coincidence that Fantasy Flight Games is still in business. If you're considering becoming a game publisher, Designers & Dragons' record of failed hopes and dreams might convince you otherwise.
On the other hand, it's comforting to know that the industry is cyclical. Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller are at the center of these cycles, spawning thriving communities that eventually branch out on their own. The hubris of developers drives them ever onward, and if the recent Atlantasia is any example, this will likely never change. The 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons design team's attempt to embrace disparate Old School Revolution (OSR) players is evidence that the cycle is on the upswing once more.
This book is not without its flaws. Designers & Dragons is not going to improve public opinion about Mongoose's editing department: there are incorrectly attributed pull quotes, British vs. American misspellings, and numerous typos. None of these seriously detract from the book – I blame Shannon for none of them – but they stand as mute testimony that the tabletop role-playing game industry is always going to struggle with professional print publishing. I would have also liked some sort of concluding chapter by Shannon about what's next for the industry. Fortunately, Shannon has an online column that gives much more commentary on the current and future state of gaming.
None of these issues detract from the important scope of this work. Shannon has crafted a critical building block for future role-playing game scholars. I just wish it had been published earlier.
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