Tabletop role-playing games

This chapter traces the history of tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs). It treats Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) as a key textual expression of TRPG experience with which other designs and play communities are in dialogue but which itself changes over time and discusses the tension between D&D as commercial intellectual property on one hand and as a folk cultural play practice intertwined with popular media fandom on another. We examine the design responses to D&D and the articulation of tabletop RPG practices by players, and discuss the impact of new technologies on TRPG publishing, distribution, and engagement since the turn of the century. In doing so, we present TRPGs as an active cultural form, rather than merely an obsolescent predecessor form of digital games.