Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamer’s Handbook (1982) is one of a crop of books about RPGs that came out around the same time, pretty early in the lifespan of the hobby. What is Dungeons & Dragons (1982), Fantasy Role Playing Games (1981) and Dicing With Dragons (1982) are all further examples of the genre. I love books like this. I love the idea of having four of them on store shelves at the same time, all vying to explain this strange new phenomenon to anyone whose eye they could catch. I think Signe Landon’s is perhaps the most striking cover of the group. Landon was apparently active in the Star Trek fan zine scene (illustrating Kirk/Spock slash fic, going by one example I saw online) and also the Starsky and Hutch fandom? I never knew such a thing existed.

Anyway, TDD purports to be an introductory guide to RPGs, but functionally, it is an introduction to best practices for D&D. Granted, at this point in time, those best practices generally apply to all the other fantasy adventure games on the market as well. After the basics of play, Author Robert Plamondon goes through just about every aspect of the game and explains the various ways they function, how game masters should present them and what players should expect from them. I have said previously that RPGs have always had a hard time explaining what they are to people outside the hobby. Plamondon honestly does a much better job of it than anything that would appear in an RPG rulebook for close to another decade. Unfortunately, he explained RPGs so well in a 300-page hardcover that cost more than more RPG rulebooks at the time, so most folks probably missed it.

I love these sorts of books as much for the glimpse they provide of the hobby scene as anything else. There is less of that material here, though there is a primer on painting miniatures and some reviews of magazine and RPGs. There’s only ten RPGs in the review appendix, if you can believe it. My favorite review is for DragonQuest: “I haven’t read DragonQuest.”