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TheDiceMustRoll

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Comte

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APPENDIX N: INSPIRATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL READING

Inspiration for all the fantasy work I have done stems directly from the love my father showed when I was a tad, for he spent many hours telling me stories he made up as he went along, tales of cloaked old men who could grant wishes, of magic rings and enchanted swords, or wicked sorcerors [sic] and dauntless swordsmen.
Then too, countless hundreds of comic books went down, and the long-gone EC ones certainly had their effect. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror movies were a big influence. In fact, all of us tend to get ample helpings of fantasy when we are very young from fairy tales such as those written by the Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang. This often leads to reading books of mythology, paging through bestiaries, and consultation of compilations of the myths of various lands and peoples.
Upon such a base I built my interest in fantasy, being an avid reader of all science fiction and fantasy literature since 1950.
The following authors were of particular inspiration to me. In some cases I cite specific works, in others, I simply recommend all of their fantasy writing to you. From such sources, as well as any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading! Anderson, Poul: THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS; THE HIGH CRUSADE; THE BROKEN SWORD
Bellairs, John: THE FACE IN THE FROST
Brackett, Leigh
Brown, Frederic
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: "Pellucidar" series; Mars series; Venus series
Carter, Lin: "World's End" series
de Camp, L. Sprague: LEST DARKNESS FALL; THE FALLIBLE FIEND; et al
de Camp & Pratt: "Harold Shea" series; THE CARNELIAN CUBE
Derleth, August
Dunsany, Lord
Farmer, P. J.: "The World of the Tiers" series; et al
Fox, Gardner: "Kothar" series; "Kyrik" series; et al
Howard, R. E.: "Conan" series
Lanier, Sterling: HIERO'S JOURNEY
Leiber, Fritz: "Fafhrd & Gray Mouser" series; et al
Lovecraft, H. P.
Merritt, A.: CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al
Moorcock, Michael: STORMBRINGER; STEALER OF SOULS; "Hawkmoon" series (esp. the first three books)
Norton, Andre
Offutt, Andrew J.: editor of SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS III
Pratt, Fletcher: BLUE STAR; et al
Saberhagen, Fred: CHANGELING EARTH; et al
St. Clair, Margaret: THE SHADOW PEOPLE; SIGN OF THE LABRYS
Tolkien, J. R. R.: THE HOBBIT; "Ring trilogy"
Vance, Jack: THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al
Weinbaum, Stanley
Wellman, Manley Wade
Williamson, Jack
Zelazny, Roger: JACK OF SHADOWS; "Amber" series; et al
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The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. For this reason, and for the hours of reading enjoyment, I heartily recommend the works of these fine authors to you.
- E. Gary Gygax, 1979, AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 224
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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Starting about a decade ago, I made an effort to read more classic fantasy literature; books and short stories that could have influenced the creation of D&D. I'm less interested in the exact list of authors and works that Gary Gygax saw fit to mention in the AD&D DMG.

My personal Appendix N:

The Well at the World's End
by William Morris
King Solomon's Mines and She by H. Rider Haggard
The House on the Borderland and The Night Land by W.H. Hodgson
Various short story collections by Lord Dunsany
The Moon Pool and The Ship of Ishtar by Abraham Merritt
The Conan and Solomon Kane stories by Robert E. Howard
Various short stories by H.P. Lovecraft (though I consider him more a horror and SF writer)
Various short stories by Clark Ashton Smith
The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Ruckert Eddison
The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
The Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber
The Dying Earth stories and various others by Jack Vance
The Elric stories by Michael Moorcock
Lord of Light and the original Amber series by Roger Zelazny
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
 
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MRY

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Appendix N is great. I first learned of it from the now-defunct blog Grognardia.

There was a similar (but much briefer) thing in the manual to Star Control:
Inspired by the Works of Fiction of: Orson Scott Card, Larry Niven, Andre Norton, David Brin, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Vance, Alan Dean Foster, Keith Laumer, A.E. Van Vogt, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Joe Halderman, Dan Simmons, Fred Saberhagen and 100 worthy others.

I really wish more people would do it, but even just those two exposures changed the way I viewed game creation.
 

nikolokolus

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It was because of Appendix N that I first stumbled on to Jack Vance. The Dying Earth stuff is pretty evocative (Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous are particular favorites) and after reading it you'll actually come to appreciate the spell-casting system in D&D, but his other books like The Demon Princes novels, Planet Adventure and Lyonesse are probably better stories. Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith are two others that have become personal favorites.

The coolest thing about the books from Appendix N (and related works) is that they predate genre fiction and are unencumbered by emulating or rebelling against Tolkienesque fantasy tropes.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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Appendix N is great. I first learned of it from the now-defunct blog Grognardia.
The Grognardia blog was great. It's a pity James Maliszewski abandoned it at the end of 2012.

Many of those books are on Appendix N.
Yes, I'm aware of that. :M Just thought I'd mention the fantasy fiction that I personally find inspiring for use in RPGs. +M

And GG wasn't very clear on what was and what wasnt to be read. Like he just says "lovecraft" and that's it.
If Comte hadn't already posted the contents of Appendix N, I would have included it in my own post. As you can see, Gygax does include specific suggestions for many authors, though for many he apparently finds all their works worthwhile, or at least too many to be listed.[/QUOTE]
 

MRY

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I didn't follow entirely but was Grognardia going bust because if family tragedy or a semi-fraudulent kickstarter?
 

Melan

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I have read most of it, and it is a great grounding in D&D's sources of inspiration - you get to see why this or that rule/class/magic item/monster got into the game, how you ought to interpret them, and where Gary Gygax & Co. were coming from when they were saying D&D is not a Tolkienesque game. Most of them are also a lot more suitable for inspiring a D&D campaign than the "hero's journey" stuff that became ubiquitous in the 1980s.

In particular, the list drew my attention to the amazing American pulp tradition of the first half of the 20th century - you can't go wrong with that stuff. Personally, I'd also add the following works to it:
  • Harold Lamb: Khlit the Cossack stories. Lamb was a writer of historical pulps in the late 1910s, and was one of Robert E. Howard's sources of inspiration. His stories are lean, steeped in an in-depth knowledge of history and local customs, and really clever with their plotting - his hero, an illiterate old Cossack gradually who is still great with the blade but gradually losing his fighting edge, survives more by his wits than his fighting prowess. These stories were reprinted in the early 2000s.
  • Talbot Mundy: King of the Khyber Rifles, Guns of the Gods, Tros of Samothrace (etc.). Another pulp author and REH inspiration, Mundy's stories draw from his personal experiences as an IRL adventurer in the British Empire. They are heavy on mysticism and exotic fantasy, combined with a good eye for depicting common people. King is great colonial adventure, and introduces Princess Yasmini as its main antagonist, whom REH used wholesale for his own stories as Princess Yasmina (People of the Black Circle, etc.) - although, if possible, the original is a much richer and more dangerous character. Tros is set in the times of Caesar, and it is a 1000-page swords&sandals epic written on a grand scale.
  • Clark Ashton Smith: A puzzling omission by Gygax, but definitely up there with Howard and Lovecraft.
  • Moore, Catherine L.: Jirel of Joiry stories. Jirel is one of the notable fighting women. The stories are heavy on dungeon-crawling into hellscapes that are kinda-sorta like the D&D underworld.
  • Alex Raymond: Flash Gordon. This comic book series - particularly its early stories - are pure D&D, with exotic landscapes, bizarre monsters, non-stop adventure and sociopathic alien cultures (the 1980 movie is a fairly accurate representation).
  • Jack Vance: Lyonesse. Vance is already on the list, but his Lyonesse books were only published in the 1980s. It is a relevant book because it is D&D's Western/Northern European fantasy through a vancian lens, full of odd detours and incidental plotting.
  • Dan Parsons: Navero of the Correct and Unalterable Way. This is sort of cheating, because Navero is a series of play reports from some guy's AD&D campaign posted on Usenet. On the other hand, it shows what is totally the right way to play AD&D. Never finished, but it is a lot of fun to read what is available.
 

Melan

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I didn't follow entirely but was Grognardia going bust because if family tragedy or a semi-fraudulent kickstarter?
I don't think it was intentional fraud; more like a combination of
  • over-ambitious plans
  • compounded by the tremendous success of the Kickstarter (the campaign hit so many stretch goals it vastly increased the workload),
  • bad luck with family illnesses and deaths, and
  • bad communication.
It is one of the early KS cautionary tales. Doesn't help that in the end, a lot of the final product was generic and deadly dull.
 

MRY

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Sigh. That's probably still the only guy who could get me to sign up for Patreon.
 

nikolokolus

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Dwimmermount still turned out OK. Alexander Macris (Adventurer, Conqueror, King) did yeoman's work salvaging the project. Rappan Athuk, Barrowmaze or Anamalous Subsurface Environment are better megadungeon-settings (if you like that sort of thing).

Back to appendix N. Aside from being good reads, I think it shows that the roots of the hobby weren't really in Tolkien at all, it was weird fiction. Gygax's Greyhawk game had a wizard with six shooters and Arneson's Blackmoor campaign work was full of lasers and sci-fi elements.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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Back to appendix N. Aside from being good reads, I think it shows that the roots of the hobby weren't really in Tolkien at all, it was weird fiction. Gygax's Greyhawk game had a wizard with six shooters and Arneson's Blackmoor campaign work was full of lasers and sci-fi elements.
If you refer back to Gary Gygax's forward in the original version of D&D (1974), he specifically mentions four sets of fantasy writing:
Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.
Aside from the unnamed works co-authored by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (who also influenced D&D through his wargames), these are two sets of Sword & Sorcery stories and one set of Sword & Planet novels. In the last part of Appendix N, he drops Burroughs from his short list but adds Vance, Merritt, and Lovecraft.

In general, I'd say D&D was greatly influenced by the Sword & Sorcery subgenre, adventure stories (e.g. H. Rider Haggard and Abraham Merritt, not exclusively fantasy), and mythology/legends (chiefly Greek, Norse, Arthurian, Carolingian, and modern works derived from them). SF, horror, and the nebulous category of "weird fiction" also had influences, but they're more scattershot. Tolkien was used for the demi-human races and various monsters (and eventually the ranger class).
 

MRY

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Wearing my cynical glasses, I have to wonder whether the exclusion (in 1974) and crowding out (in Appendix N) of Tolkien was based on a desire to minimize the strongest influence. IIRC, the 1974 version led to litigation over the use of Tolkien's ideas.

[EDIT: As I mentioned over in the library, the Moria sequence in LOTR has so many of the now cliche elements of RPGs, it's really striking.]
 

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