Hey! HEY! This is my book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, coming to a bookstore near you on October 10, 2023 thanks to MIT Press. Pre-orders are live now pretty much everywhere, though I recommend using Bookshop.org, as I have been impressed at their packaging skillz. I have a real live copy of the book in my possession and I gotta say, it’s pretty neat.
What is the book? It’s a look at the history and development of tabletop RPGs, one product at a time, arranged in chronological order across five decades. It’s sort of like this Instagram feed, actually, but way more polished, and, you know, on paper. I covered the classics, but this is also very much an exercise in expanding horizons — I hope there is at least one game featured for every reader that they never heard of. To that end, there are lots of lesser known games, weird games, silly games, even a couple board games. All pulled from my collection, all illustrated with something like 350 photographs.
There’s original art, too. Kyle Patterson did the amazing cover, somehow transforming my deeply silly post-it sketch (last slide) into a canny encapsulation of the RPG experience. He did a two-page spread introducing each decade, and effortlessly capturing its essence. He also did a handful of gorgeous spot illustrations. All of Kyle’s art makes me low-key angry. How dare he be so talented? I’ll share more of it, and some sketches, later on. You’ll be annoyed by his talent, too, I guarantee.
We (that’s myself and Derek Kinsman, who did the layout) also filled some empty spots with rights-free art from Amanda Lee Franck, evlynmoreau and natetreme, which is pretty rad - Amanda did the wizard van in the next to last slide - and also some Giovanni Battista Piranesi, cuz that dude had aesthetic for days.
And there you go, a first taste of 450-something pages of full-color RPG goodness. Go snag a copy now, yea? (Worth noting, this is the Standard edition. I’ll show you the Deluxe edition tomorrow.)
Back in the ps2 days I would have gotten a booklet with game instructions and lore, a booklet on how to not have a seizure while playing the system, and a coupon for a gaming magazine that doesn’t exist anymore.
it makes me sad as hell. I use to pour over that little booklet 5 or 6 times before even starting the game. I’d look at all the little concept art and lore. I’d try to imagine what the game would be like in my head based on what the game prompted me with. I’d imagine being in the world myself and what the heck the dash button meant.
There have been a lot of reblogs insulting me about this, but nah. I stand by it. It’s not a giant sadness, but a tiny tinge of feeling like something is missing in the same way that I miss cd booklets with lyrics sheets, art, and listed credits or dvds with features. Somehow I as an adult move on with my life. Fuck, I even make my own art y’all.
For me it’s about presentation of it an an experience. Going to see a movie in a theater vs. watching it on netflix. I like the presentation. I also have a fondness for pop culture ephemera on a layer beyond that. Booklets often had lore and art that helped you get into the mindset of those creating it. It was interesting to see what they thought to be important lore, or trying to cram in stuff they couldn’t fit into the game itself.
Also, less universally, it was cool to read credits. See who worked on what. The little dedications and special thanks. Credits exist in games still, but it was like a theater program for your game.
it was neat and a reminder that it was people that made the things I like, not corporations or some big auteur.
Not to be Old On Main but one of my favourite books when I was a kid was the Diablo 1 instruction manual.
This thing wasn’t a lil’ tiny booklet, it was almost a novella sized brick of paper, and I read that thing over and over again.
And it had all the usual stuff in a game manual, like technical support, troubleshooting, installation instructions and so on, but then next to those instructions you’d also get stuff like… a little poem, or a little lore tidbit from the game just hanging out in the dark margins, spicing up the place.
It also contained instructions for things which, nowadays, you probably wouldn’t even get an in-game tutorial for in a lot of games, like “It also contained instructions for things which, nowadays, you probably wouldn’t even get an in-game tutorial for in a lot of games, like "you can’t walk through walls” or “clicking on a character interacts with them.” This was a time when gaming wasn’t ubiquitous, where a lot of people saw computers mainly as data entry work tools, and a time when in-game tutorials simply were not a part of game design yet.
You want to know how to operate the software? Consult the manual.
But the REAL prize that got me reading the thing over and over again was the concept art and the lore, the story, this literal VOLUME of background and information about the game world that, much like the tutorial, would never be explained or be accessible in-game.
Oh, bad anatomy Chris Metzen warrior illustration, you informed so much of my younger self’s idea of what cool fantasy aesthetics look like…
Besides those biographies of the warrior, rogue and sorcerer, there were extended details about the items and weapons, diagrams and drawings of the magic system and the bestiary and, most fascinating of all to young me, literature and art from the deep stories of the setting.
Playing Diablo itself, you would only ever really get the cliff’s notes and hints about the full breadth of the lore and story created for the game, and so the developers took great time and care to cram it into - as I remember it - almost a 100 page booklet full of all the creative ideas they couldn’t fit into the game proper.
The instruction manual felt like a true companion piece to the game, an equally important part of the experience if you wanted to fully understand the game you were playing. Getting to read the instruction booklet for a game you you had bought after only ever playing it at a friend’s house, back then, felt like being let in on something. I guess the closest equivalent would be… it felt back then kind of like how discovering a really fascinating fan-theory, or a really great video essay about a game, feels today. Like a step deeper into something that’s otherwise closed off to you.
Now, I don’t want to wax TOO nostalgic, though. A lot of game manuals weren’t this elaborate and interesting (Blizzard always took special care with theirs), and for all that I loved the Diablo instruction manual, it’s not like any of the writing in it would make for literary classics. It hits about the level of the worldbuilding notes for a really cool homebrew D&D campaign, deeply stewed in 90s fantasy cheese and underground comix aesthetics, complete with… that particular cultural moment’s approach to female characters.
(this is an approach to character design Blizzard has never grown out of, even to this bloody day)
And for all that I love the instruction manuals of old, yeah, I’m not gonna pretend like it’s not more convenient and holistic to have an in-game codex and in-game tutorials, I’m not gonna act like the registration cards and ads and half-baked and incomplete attempts at troubleshooting and tech support aren’t relics of a time when better options weren’t available.
There is not a lost golden age of manuals when games were more magical and the experiences were more real, no prelapserian utopia from whence the modern world has fallen.
But game manuals were, once upon a time, a thing that creative folks at game companies poured a lot of time into, a lot of care and attention, and buying a big box brand new video game for a game with a really good manual felt that much more special and revelatory for it.
I do miss the physical media of games, the game boxes and manuals and jewel cases for CDs or floppies. A steam library is way more convenient and often better, but there is just a different feeling to holding something physical in your hands.
being on tumblr has in fact shown me that no <3 lesbians are not immune to giving massive amounts of praise to thin women specifically and never fat women
it SUCKS to see thin (usually white) women getting three four even five times as much attention on here than fat women do and the fat women that are praised are the ones with wide hips big boobs and no stomach lmao
from the site that claims lesbians love fat women too no less
this post is ONLY for the fat girls who are broad shouldered, who have no hips, who have no ass, who have no titties, and have a big belly
i love you, and your body is deserving of praise, love, and lust. you walk this earth looking ethereal every single day and i’m so, so sorry if you don’t hear it from more than just one person in a tumblr post
for real once you realize that you can actually wear whatever you want and call yourself whatever name and pronouns you want and have whatever interests you want and be whatever gender you want your life gets so much better and more fun
Ok a couple ppl have asked, so I’m adding this info. The music video I reference in this comic is the one for Giovanni Wannabe by Pinguini Tattici Nucleari. :)
