Why read The Elfish Gene?

Book cover of The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange

Book description

Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had the chance to be normal.

He blew it.

While other teenagers concentrated on being coolly rebellious, Mark - like twenty million other boys in the `70s and '80s - chose to spend his entire adolescence in fart-filled bedrooms pretending…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Elfish Gene as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Joseph Laycock

Author

Barrowcliffe is a humorist, but reading his autobiographical account of playing D&D in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, you realize humor is a way of coping with tragedy.

This book contains fascinating descriptions of the early history of D&D outside of the United States. Barrowcliffe is also adept at articulating what exactly is so compelling and fascinating about D&D. Most importantly, this book portrays the brutal culture of toxic masculinity that often existed around this game in its first decades.

Gen Z players may be shocked by Barrowcliffe’s account of how players treated one another.

From Joseph's list on The best books about the history of fantasy role-playing games.