The first volume of two in a new, updated edition of the 2012 book Playing at the World, which charts the vast and complex history of role-playing games. This first volume is The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, which explores the publication of that iconic game. In this volume, Jon Peterson distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's seminal role-playing game, D & D. Drawing from primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World explores the origins of wargames and roleplaying through the history of conflict simulations and the eccentric characters who drove the creation of a signature cultural innovation in the late twentieth century.