Play Story Press is excited to announce the upcoming release of Gathering of Gamers: Dungeons & Dragons and other Games through Gen Con, by Matt Shoemaker.
Gen Con is the largest and oldest continuously running convention that is focused on analog games. It has been an important fixture in the development of modern tabletop games not just for role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, but also boardgames, collectible card games, miniature games, live action role-playing games, and others. Each year over 70,000 people make a pilgrimage to Indianapolis, Indiana to celebrate and play these games. Gathering of Gamers explores the convention through a year-by-year history from 1967 through 2022. The book not only discusses the prominent games at each annual convention, it also examines the major milestones in tabletop game development over the years, how gamer culture and the perception of gamers in society has evolved, how technology has impacted conventions and the games we play, and the relationship between game conventions and the cities and other entities that host them.
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For anyone attending Gen Con, author Jon Peterson and Matt will be talking about the process involved in writing histories on tabletop gaming. The event is at noon on Friday August 1. For anyone at the con that wants free tickets they can get them here:
https://www.gencon.com/events/283676
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Matt wrote a great blog post for Gen Con on the book.
https://gencon.blog/2025/07/23/gathering-of-gamers-a-book-on-the-history-of-gen-con-and-tabletop-games/
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On 7/15, Matt will be the guest for an episode of All Year I Dream About Gaming Conventions podcast where we talk about the book. The episode has already been recorded, and the link below will work when the episode goes live on 7/15:
https://shows.acast.com/all-year-i-dream-about-gaming-conventions/episodes/episode-138-the-man-who-wrote-the-book-on-gen-con
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On Friday July 11th at 9:30 eastern, Matt will be on another streaming show Friday Night Live for the PAGE gaming convention talking about the book and the PAGE convention.
http://www.youtube.com/@PhiladelphiaAreaGamingExpo
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On Sunday, July 6, Matt will be on a live streaming show, Tabletop Weekly by Solarian Games, to talk about the book. It starts at 8pm eastern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_alln6kZkg
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During Origins Matt was interviewed by the Caster’s Guild podcast. This episode is currently live, He is the first interview of the episode and starts at roughly 2m45s and he talks about the book and also the Origins50.org project.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BYbIpCibg36eFeuI71Qdu?si=xY3vMPylTTSpIf8ozeUwtw
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