This is Shannon Appelcline’s indispensable Designers & Dragons. The set is four volumes, with each book tackling the history of publishers founded in a given decade (so, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s). Thus TSR’s history is entirely contained in the first book, the 70s, even though the company survived through the 90s. It is primarily a business history, too, which is nice because that’s the sort of material that is hardest to dig up and it tends to be less subjective than pondering the various threads of game design evolution over the years. So if you want to get insight into just how miraculous the survival of Chaosium as a company to the present day is, or to get a sense of the terrifying cycle of boom and bust that besets the industry at large is, this is the series for you.

Which isn’t to say there is no insight into the way tabletop RPGs have developed creatively since 1974. There is plenty to learn on that front, Appelcline just favors the lens of the nitty gritty business side of things. That makes for fascinating reading since I can think of no other industry that routinely turns large numbers of amateur hobbyists into legendary professionals. Even the glossiest productions are only separated from the field’s DIY origins by a couple of degrees.  

The big takeaway from these books for me was just how massive the RPG industry is while still being fairly niche. There so many publishers, both alive and defunct, with massive product lines, the idea of getting a handle on all of it is daunting. I’ve been seriously attempting just that for several years now and the main lesson I’ve learned is that there is ALWAYS another thing to discover. It’s crazy.

Maybe the lone drawback of the books is that, given the focus on business, enthusiast and fan projects get less of the spotlight, which is a bit disappointing given the blurry lines been amateur and professional in the hobby, but also totally understandable given the scope of the books.