Historian Jon Peterson traces tabletop wargaming’s lineage from 19th-century Prussian military headquarters to Gary Gygax’s basement and the birth of D&D.
Key Takeaways
The piece is historical narrative: Peterson maps a direct institutional path from Prussian military wargaming to hobby tabletop gaming.
Prussian military headquarters are the named origin point, suggesting Kriegsspiel or a related staff-training simulation as the ancestor.
Gary Gygax’s basement is the named endpoint, placing D&D’s creation as the consumer terminus of that military-to-hobby transfer.
Jon Peterson is the author of “Playing at the World,” the primary scholarly history of D&D, giving this piece weight beyond popular retelling.