Dec 3, 2025
Guiding Principles
"Even in theory, a 'game' like Dungeons & Dragons is less a game than a game system, and in practice it's less that than a system for designing a game system." - Jon Freeman, quoted in Jon Peterson's The Elusive Shift
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Guiding Principles
"Even in theory, a 'game' like Dungeons & Dragons is less a game than a game system, and in practice it's less that than a system for designing a game system." - Jon Freeman, quoted in Jon Peterson's The Elusive Shift
As alarming as the notion that “there is no such game as Dungeons & Dragons” might have been to Gygax and his colleagues, it also boded poorly for any competing designs as well. The sheer prevalence and scope of variant implementations of D&D deflated any presumed urgency to base a campaign on any “next-generation” system published outside the D&D franchise....If every published design represented only a starting point for a lengthy and open-ended process of patching or extending rules, then how much did it matter whether the referee based a game on D&D or on any of its competitors of the era?
Whether a set of variant rules had achieved sufficient autonomy to warrant designation as an independent game also had no objective markers: as Lee Gold would advise in 1977, “If your house rules run more than thirty pages, I suggest you consider you’ve invented a new game and copyright it." It was not hard to hit that mark because everyone was constantly hacking the system. Kevin Slimak, feeling “tired of trying to kludge a good game out of Gygax D&D,” decided on a solution: “Stop pretending to be playing D&D; call the game something different and rework/rewrite the rules to my own taste.”
—Jon Peterson, “The Elusive Shift.”
From D&D to Call of Duty, this bundle from MIT Press explores the histories, cultures & theories driving games of all types! Your purchase h
WHY DID I HAVE TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS AFTER IT ENDED!!!!? I REALLY WANTED TO READ THE ELUSIVE SHIFT!!!
This is about to detail my entire day 😭
From D&D to Call of Duty, this bundle from MIT Press explores the histories, cultures & theories driving games of all types! Your purchase h
WHY DID I HAVE TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS AFTER IT ENDED!!!!? I REALLY WANTED TO READ THE ELUSIVE SHIFT!!!
This is about to detail my entire day 😭