Elusive Shift, early thoughts

A while ago I read something from jay dragon (designer for Wanderhome, Yazeba's, etc.) that got me thinking about "alternative lineages" for ttrpgs and ttrpg players. In the traditional narrative, TTRPGs evolved out of wargaming, but there's other kinds of roleplay gaming and roleplay communities that this doesn't account for. I'm posting this on dreamwidth, so livejournal RP and other kinds of online text RP are an obvious example, but LARP also comes to mind. These are left unexplained or unacknowledged by the traditional narrative, despite recurring crossover between those communities and TTRPGs.

I've started reading The Elusive Shift, a work of TTRPG history that tries to nail down when and how TTRPGs crystallized as something distinct, not just a mutant wargaming offshoot. One of its points is that very very early dnd was of interest to both the wargaming community and the midcentury sci-fi/fantasy fandom, where LARP and collaborative writing had already established themselves to some degree!

Learning ancient fandom drama here

I'm happy there's at least a little bit out there to help fill the gap I had wondered about before.