From front flap: Here is an illustrated introduction to the intellectual pastime that has become almost a way of life for an astonishing number of participants - fantasy role playing games of the Dungeons and Dragons type. The book describes the development of these addictive games from their origins in the early 70's, and presents a state-of-the-art summary of their variations, their physical paraphernalia, their statistical tools and props, and the special imaginative atmosphere that each is likely to develop. Less abstract than cards or chess, the fantasy role playing games have a large element of genuinely social inprovisation. Given a world and characters defined in ways that more or less directly reflect our values and assumptions, the drama that is developed by the participants in each such game is likely to have surprising relevance to life in the last quarter of the 20th Century - despite the deliberate invocation of times past and future, and of locates highly elaborated to the grotesque.