[Commlist] New book: How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the Way We Play

*How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the Way We Play*

*Aaron Trammell *

https://mngbookshop.co.uk/9781478039044/how-dungeons-and-dragons-changed-the-way-we-play/ 
<https://mngbookshop.co.uk/9781478039044/how-dungeons-and-dragons-changed-the-way-we-play/> 


*__*

*20% Discount code*: LSFMNGUP*

*Valid until 11:59 GMT, 30^th  June 2027. Discount only applies to the 
MNG website.

First released in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons revolutionized game design 
and interactive media by allowing players to create and perform their 
own fictional characters in a fantasy world as expansive as their 
imaginations would allow. That freedom, and the rules that governed it, 
weren’t a creative coincidence. In /How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the 
Way We Play/, Aaron Trammell excavates the game as an artifact of a 
burgeoning counterculture obsessed with individualism as well as 
quantification. Mapping the world onto a grid, building characters whose 
every trait is assigned a point value, and advancing the game’s 
narrative through dice throws—countless core mechanics are tied to 
numbers. Putting the game design of D&D into dialogue with the social 
and political tensions of the 1970s and 80s, Trammell illuminates how 
the integrated quantification in the game design led to reductionism, 
reinforced oppressive gender and racial norms, and accustomed 
generations of players to the bigoted, xenophobic mores of the Cold War 
era. He delivers a history of both how games can shape players and how 
players, united by their own shared values, can shape games in turn.

*Aaron Trammell* is Professor of Informatics at the University of 
California, Irvine, author of /The Privilege of Play and Repairing 
Play/, and senior editor of /Analog Game Studies./

*Duke University Press | Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture | 29 
September 2026 | 182pp | 9781478039044 | PB | £18.99**

*Price subject to change.

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