Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds

Shared Fantasy is an ethnographic description of the fantasy role-playing games community circa the early 1980s, linked to a functional, if not exactly scintillating, theory of fun and games. Fine is a sociologist, and he's interesting in the workings of status in the young, male, gaming group that he studied, and also the creation of a shared culture around an imaginary world of magic, heroics, violence, and ever fickle dice. He treats RPGs as entertainment, with all the care that the subject deserves--games won't save the world, they won't turn kids into satanic monsters, but they're a great way to spend and evening with your friends.

This book is most valuable from a historical perspective, in that a lot of modern 'serious gaming' show more culture was formed in these D&D clubs, and the conflicts that Fine studies are the same as the ones argued at length on RPG.net today. Rules vs rulings; problematic players and arbitrary GMs; the troubles of moving beyond adolescent male power fantasy. There are some choice quotes from Gary Gygax when he truly was the high priest of a rapidly expanding hobby, and a lengthy section on the world of Tekumel developed by the incomparable Dr. M.A.R Baker. show less

As an occasional developer of Games, I found this book informative, and it was an easy source to quote in some of my arguments with other gamers. The prose was workman-like.