The third book in the series, as a reference guide to the roleplaying industry in the 1990's it is excellent. ( )

The third part of this history of roleplaying games covers a period I wasn't particularly interested in, so I struggled a bit. Also the constant "as we'll see" and "we'll get to that" of the author's style became tedious. The 10 Things You Might Not Know About Roleplaying in the 90s appendix probably explains why this wasn't a very enjoyable read for me:

1. The Splatbook Cometh: I did not like these rules-free adventure-free background-only books

2. Metaplots Took Over: It's not fiction, it's roleplaying. Metaplots usually interfered with my own games

3. LARPs became a Major Focus: not my cup of tea

4. The Urban Fantasy and Multigenre Genres Exploded: OK I didn't mind these and played a few (Shadowrun, Rifts)

5. Templated Character Generation Took Over: I used it in Shadowrun but it seemed like dumbing down character creation

6. Everyone Loved Dice Pools: except this turkey

7. Alternate Resolution Methods Appeared: this means cards, coins etc apart from dice, which seemed like a gimmick except for a few games (Deadlands, Castle Falkenstein)

8. Product Lines discovered Marketing - to the woe of the rest of us

9. White Wolf Ruled: I tried Vampire the Masquerade but didn't get into any World of Darkness stuff

10. The Old Guard Died: no real comment about this inevitability, but some of the big company closures and personal deaths were surprising. ( )