ABSTRACT
Final Fantasy VII is a role-playing game, and so in one sense it is relatively easy to write about it. Role-playing games (RPGs) are probably more popular now than they have ever been, and that familiarity makes the audience for this book a little larger and a little more familiar with its technical terms. The RPG genre is built upon three essential design ideas: the simulated skill, level-ups, and orthogonal roles. The wargame genre goes all the way back to the late 1700s, but the history of the genre first became specifically relevant to RPGs in the 1820s. The game in question is called Kriegsspiel, and it was the long term project of a father-and-son team of Prussian aristocrats. Players of tabletop RPGs will immediately recognize what the neutral umpire eventually became: the dungeon master, a role which is tremendously important in the tabletop RPG.
