The first volume of two in a new, updated edition of the 2012 book Playing at the World, which charts the vast and complex history of role-playing games. This new edition of Playing at the World is the first of two volumes that update the 720-page original tome of the same name from 2012. This first volume is The Invention of Dungeons & Dragons, which explores the publication of that iconic game. In this first volume, Jon Peterson distills the story of how the wargaming clubs and fanzines circulating around the upper Midwest in the 1970s culminated in Gary Gygax and Dave Arnesons seminal role-playing game, D&D. It augments the research of the original editions with new insights into the crucial period in 1972-73 when D&D began to take shape. Drawing from primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World explores the origins of wargames and roleplaying through the history of conflict simulations and the eccentric characters who drove the creation of a signature cultural innovation in the late twentieth century.