Tracing the evolution of fantasy gaming from its origins in tabletop war and collectible card games to contemporary webbased live action and massive multiplayer games this book examines the archetypes and concepts within the fantasy gaming genre alongside the roles and functions of the game players themselves. Other topics include how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings helped shape fantasy gaming through Tolkiens obsessive attention to detail and virtual world building the communitybased fellowship embraced by players of both playbypost and persistent browserbased games despite the fact that these games are fundamentally solo experiences the origins of gamebooks and interactive fiction and the evolution of online gaming in terms of technological capabilities media richness narrative structure coding authority and participant roles.