Monsters, Aliens & Holes in the Ground by Stu Horvath - hardcvr
Hardcover. Pictorial laminate boards.
A guide to tabletop roleplaying games from D&D to Mothership.
A richly illustrated, encyclopedic deep dive into the history of roleplaying games.
When Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson released Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, they created the first roleplaying game of all time. Little did they know that their humble box set of three small digest-sized booklets would spawn an entire industry practically overnight. In Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, Stu Horvath explores how the hobby of roleplaying games, commonly known as RPGs, blossomed out of an unlikely pop culture phenomenon and became a dominant gaming form by the 2010s. Going far beyond D&D, this heavily illustrated tome covers more than three hundred different RPGs that have been published in the last five decades.
Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground features (among other things) bunnies, ghostbusters, soap operas, criminal bears, space monsters, political intrigue, vampires, romance, and, of course, some dungeons and dragons. In a decade-by-decade breakdown, Horvath chronicles how RPGs have evolved in the time between their inception and the present day, offering a deep and gratifying glimpse into a hobby that has changed the way we think about games and play.
Contents:
Introduction ix
The 1970s 1
The 1980s 65
The 1990s 203
The 2000s 269
The 2010s 307
Acknowledgments 381
Glossary 383
Appendix A: The Games 387
Appendix B: Stu’s “Appendix N” 399
Appendix C: Artists of Note 403
Appendix D: Dungeons 409
Appendix E: Thoughts on Collecting 415
Appendix F: RPG Publishers 417
Contributors 419
Index 421