Astral Weeks: In D & D we trust

How many rules -- how many words -- do you need to create a world?

The same question could be asked of literature. Indeed, a session of a role-playing game, or RPG, with its emphasis on character and absence of winning or losing, often resembles a story, collaboratively generated by the players. Reading Maliszewski's lucid writing -- on vintage RPGs, unearthed Gygaxia, the literary DNA of D&D, and contemporary system-philosophy brouhahas -- is both a kick of nerdy nostalgia and a satisfying take on what it all means, even if you're someone (like me) who hasn't rolled a 12-sided die in ages.

If a rich, well-orchestrated RPG bears similarities to a work of fiction, what happens when a work of fiction is about an RPG? The answer, in the anthology "Gamer Fantastic" edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes (DAW: 310 pp., $7.99), is something akin to vertigo. Despite the goofy cover (a kid giddily wielding a Nintendo handset, planet exploding in the background), "Gamer Fantastic" is more about this blurring between RPGs and reality than remote-control video mayhem. The brisk opener, Chris Pierson's "Escapism," manages a clever twist on the character of the first-person-shooter-obsessed teen, but most of the other 12 stories here involve significantly lower technology. As with writing stories, the games in question are primarily built of words -- albeit with oddly shaped dice thundering in the background.

I've always liked the bottomless pit of pages 112 through 114 in 1979's "Dungeon Master's Guide." Here, author Gary Gygax (the co-creator of D&D) suggests ways in which characters from D&D's swords-and-sorcery milieu might "time/space warp" to the Wild West (via Boot Hill, a game published by TSR, who also put out D&D) or to an irradiated dystopia of mutants and enigmatic technology (via TSR's Gamma World). Worlds within worlds!

Donald J. Bingle's "Gaming Circle" opens on a typical evening of tabletop adventuring, with social misfit Alex complaining about his life (dreary job, no girlfriend) to his fellow gamers. The next scene apparently translates these modern-day players into their game-world avatars -- a group of mammoth-hunting cavemen. But then the story jumps forward several millenniums (to a man in a space station, arguing with his food synthesizer), before going back a bit for a glimpse of a secret agent garotting her way through security. That these transitionless episodes are all parts of a single game is the story's rug-pulling conceit, and the final scene turns even the opening sequence on its head. The constantly changing scenery is a gimmick -- but one that illuminates the more profound gimmick of creating worlds out of words.

The prose throughout "Gamer Fantastic" is generally workmanlike, with some flashes of humor. It's fair to say that some interest in fantasy gaming, whether nostalgic or active, is a prerequisite for enjoying the collection -- as is an appetite for Möbius strip constructions of fantasy and reality. S.L. Farrell's "The Gods of Every Other Wednesday Night" proposes that the actions described in an RPG campaign might be an evening's entertainment for the players -- but wreak utter chaos for the inhabitants of the fantasy world in which the actions transpire. Orcs and dwarfs, who rub along OK in that world, are suddenly flung against each other in senseless, murderous combat once the gods -- the unseen gamers -- start rolling their dice.