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| First UK edition (1982) |
Many collectors and fans now know that Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson were asked by Penguin Books to write a book explaining what role playing games were. For various reasons they instead published in 1982 The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (under Penguin' Kids label, Puffin), the very first book in the world famous Fighting Fantasy gamebook series. But the original idea was not shelved and in 1982 too another UK publisher, Routledge and Kegan Paul, published Dicing With Dragons - An Introduction to Role Playing Games by Ian Livingstone. The book was (it seems) quite successful getting a Revised Edition in 1983 (with a reprint in 1985), at least two US edition (including a hardback Book Club one) and a foreign translation (in Italian) in 1986. Dicing With Dragons is a 216 pages long, paperback book with beautiful artwork by Russ Nicholson, concentrated mainly in the solo adventure chapter.
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| UK Revised edition (1983, 1985) |
As the title implies, Dicing With Dragons amis to let the reader understand with role playing games are, both as a concept and as a hobby. There are an Introduction, a general explanation of the concept of 'role playing', a solo adventure with rules substantially identical to the Fighting Fantasy ones, an overview of RPGs available (at the time) on the market, another for 'accessories (meaning adventures, sourcebooks, magazines, fanzines...), one about miniatures and painting them, suggestions about being a GM, a chapter on computer games, another one for what now we call LARP and a chapter with some ideas on starting to play and finding gamers. The book is closed by a list of game and miniature manufacturers (both US and UK) and of magazines (seeing this long list will make the heart of the magazine lover of today sank).
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| First (?) US edition by Plume (1983) |
The revised edition is different from the original ones for removing three pages of the Accesories section covering the Judges Guild's products for Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. Everything else is the very same. The US editions (except the cover images) have the very same content of the original UK ones except for the small Mail Order Companies listing which is, of course, UK centered. The Book Club edition is an hardback book with dustjacket and a cover who portraits people playing what seems Dungeon!
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| US Book Club Edition (1983?) |
The Italian edition, released in 1986 (the very same year the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set was released in Italy) is the translation of the very first UK edition (four years after its original release - Italian publisher Longanesi did not bother to use the Revised edition text...) and so still lists all the JG products. However it has an introduction by Gainpaolo Dossena (Italy's leading authority about games at the time) and a new chapter written by Italian contributors updating the RPG list and the computer games section. This chapter is of course unique to the Italian edition.
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| The Italian edition by publisher Longanesi & C (1986) |
Dicing With Dragons is, of course, obsolete today but it was a great introduction to RPGs when it was released and covered a lot of terrain and subjects of interest (for example, the amazing number of games that did exist and how to paint miniatures...). The Italian edition was very influential being released when Italy has the princely number of three RPGs in Italian, two of them out of print and virtually unavailable (the third one was, of course, the Basic Set and its three modules). Seeing all this abundance of games, accessories, miniatures and magazines... in English was both a shock and a surprise for many budding Italian gamers who never forgot Dicing With Dragons.
From a collecting point of view Dicing With Dragons is not particularly difficult to find, except for the US Book Club edition, but prices may be quite high due to the high tide in the collecting market right now. The Italian edition is far more pricey.