Dicing with Dragons

by Ian Livingstone

Explains how role-playing games are played, looks at four of the most popular commercial games, and tells how to create one's own games

Genres: Gaming, Nonfiction, Role Playing Games, Gamebooks

Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Sir Ian Livingstone is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. Along with Steve Jackson, he is the co-founder of the Fighting Fantasy series of role-playing gamebooks, and the author of many books within that series. He co-founded Games Workshop in 1975 and helped create Eidos Interactive as executive chairman of Eidos Plc in 1995.

Reviews

[Andrew]

Really fun book that gives a great overview of the hobby in its early days. If you aren't interested in the history of role playing games, this won't interest you, but if you have even an inkling of interest you'll have a good time!

[John]

Hopelessly outdated now, it was a little outdated even as the Signet edition was first published. Mainly interesting today as a snapshot look at the RPG industry as it existed in 1983.

Ian Livingstone is best known as the co-founder of Games Workshop, and when he wrote this book he was still editor of their White Dwarf magazine (and White Dwarf was still primarily an RPG magazine).

The book itself covers a wide number of topics, including:
A general introduction to RPGs
A choose-your-own-adventure style solo game
An introduction to four of the more popular games of the time (D&D, Traveller, Tunnels & Trolls, and RuneQuest)
A listing of other games & accessories available with a couple of lines of description of each.
A figure painting guide (focusing on enamel paints!)
A guide to gamemastering
An overview of RPGs on computers
A discussion of early LARPs (so early that they aren't called that yet).

[Gio]

Questa lettura è un must per chiunque sia appassionato di giochi di ruolo. Ogni pagina è un tuffo nel passato, quando ancora tutto si stava definendo, specialmente l'avvio di D&d in Italia.
Ho trovato molto interessante il capitolo sugli aspetti informatici e sui primi videogiochi degli anni 80, specialmente perché da piccolo ho iniziato con il Commodore 64.
In conclusione, questo è un libro che potenzialmente dice poco al giocatore che inizia adesso con i nuovi GDR. Credo che sia adatto agli appassionati di settore e a coloro che giocano BECMI.

[Otis Campbell]

Dicing with Dragons is a handy-dandy 1982 beginner’s guide to them tabletop role-playin’ games. Written by a fella named Ian Livingstone—one of the big cheeses who started Games Workshop—right when that whole RPG craze was catchin' fire like a dry hayfield, this thing acts just like a school textbook for folks who don't know beans about it.

[Eric]

I don't know what made me think of this. I loved this book growing up. I read and reread the chapter of the example role-play dialogue. I guess I longed for a gaming group growing up just reading the books by myself and invisioning what it would be like.

This book is definitely dated in as far as exploring the available RPGs on the market. D&D may be the only one still around. But it was an interesting peek into another world and probably still is, in fact a more distant world now that its in the past.

[Hel Gibbons]

Very dated but historically amusing - especially the section on computer RPGs!