#appendix n

Faint Cause

In May...

Jorphdan and I were talking about doing a project. We had, sometime in the distant past, mentioned that it would be fun to do an itch jam. So we decided to do that.

An itch jam is a competition (usually) held on the itch.io website. Its hosts get to make it about whatever and the site handles sign up and submission tracking.

We came up with a theme. It was The Appendix N. Where others had made contests around writing rpg supplements for specific systems or based on specific works, we chose to go in a bit more general direction.

The Appendix N is a collection of recommended reading Gary Gygax put in the 1st Edition AD&D DMs Guide.

The Appendix would serve only as a guide...or a vibe. But the content would be constrained.

Only 4 pages. Only modules. And only using a title prompt we provided. I wouldn't give participants a real book title, that would invite copyright infringement, instead I created a list of fake titles and randomly distributed them.

I also came up with a number of graphics for fake book covers. If you've followed this blog you've already seen them. They appear in my previous two posts.

We assembled judges. People we knew from the indie rpg sphere who had different specialties:

Diogo Nogueira (writer)

Tony Vasinda (publisher)

Nova aka Idle Cartulary (reviewer)

Sam Mameli aka Skullboy (artist)

We made a fun little promo video and launched just before July 1st.

Suffering From Success

Okay, I had done a lot of research going into this. I compared participant numbers of similar jams vs the popularity of their creators and a few other factors like time of year and prize pools.

Everything I saw pointed toward us getting around 100-150 sign ups and maybe 75 actual submissions.

We had over 150 sign ups on the first day.

As of writing this at the halfway point of the month-long jam we have over 600. In fact, I believe it's in the top 10 most participated jams happening on itch right now.

Luckily this has slowed down considerably but it did leave me in a complete panic the first week of the jam. I had to give out fake titles to each participant. I had prepped 100...so for a few days there I just spent every waking minute trying to pump out more titles.

An Amazing Community

We had set up a Discord Channel for participants to use for bouncing around ideas. I've been poking my head in there a lot to answer questions and I have been totally floored by not only the amount of creativity on display, but also the kindness, support, and encouragement demonstrated by these creators.

When we did a stream to introduce judges to the contestants and answer questions we were also given permission to show off some works in progress and it was great fun.

A Whole Lot Of Reading

Soon will come the next challenge. After the submission period ends at the end of the month all the judges will be setting to work reading and reviewing.

As you saw above we've already got over 25 and while I don't particularly trust my preliminary research, I would still assume we're not getting an over 50% submissions rate. So it's going to be a lot but our judge team has a plan.

Hopefully after a month or two we can have our awards ceremony (probably another livestream).

Closing Thoughts

I'm so grateful to the help I received on this project and completely blown away by the creativity of this community.

“There the Gibbelins Lived and Discreditably Fed” by Sidney H Sime, from Lord Dunsany’s story “The Hoard of the Gibbelins” in The Book of Wonder, 1912. This is the tale of a knight who becomes obsessed with seeking the treasures of some man-eating creatures who live at the edge of the world. “Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at dead of night by a valorous man, that its motive was sheer avarice!”

The next story in the this collection is “How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles” in which two thieves go into the gnoles’ forest to steal their emeralds.

The classic Fantasy Tabletop RPG setting is similar to medieval fantasy, sure, but much Weirder. With the capital W intentional. D&D owes as much to the Weird Fiction of the early 20th century as it does to Tolkien, if not more. You won't find a crashed spaceship, multiple species of mind controlling alien horrors or a general vibe of adventuring as a thing to do to make a quick buck or die trying in Middle-Earth, Narnia or Westeros, but you will in the Hyborian Age, Newhon, or Zothique.

This is a remake of an earlier post of mine, that I decided to update (some additional books were suggested to me, others I found out about later).

This is a reading-list of various literary works that heavily inspired or were heavily used in the creation of the first editons of Dungeons and Dragons - and thus, reading them will allow you to plunge back into what the original D&D was meant to look what/what it tried to emulate.

J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit". No surprise here, Tolkien's works were the start of modern fantasy and thus the main source of old-school D&D. In fact, D&D was originally created to be just a Lord of the Rings role-playing game - or to be precise a LotR wargame. This was the original intention. Which is why, quite famously, the very first version of D&D included elements such as the hobbits, the mithril and the balrogs. And when the Tolkien Estate pointed out the consequences of what was plagiarism, D&D changed these concepts to... "halflings", "mithral" and "balors". The only Tolkien-element D&D could preserve vaguely unchanged were the orcs, because the Tolkien Estate could not prove Tolkien had invented the term "orc". But even beyond that, D&D's dwarfs and elves and ents (sorry, treants) and wights and rangers all were heavily inspired by Tolkien - the gods of the orcs even use symbols such as an "eye of fire" and a "white hand"...

Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions". Poul Anderson was quite influential on early 20th century fantasy, and this specific book influenced D&D in three ways. On one side, it was one of the two sources for the "Order versus Chaos" conflict of D&D (the other being Moorcock). On the other the D&D trolls were inspired by the Three Hearts and Three Lion trolls. And finally the Paladin class was inspired by Anderson's Holger Carlsen character (the same way the Ranger was Tolkien's Aragorn). [This book also seems to have had some influence over the Fey of D&D?]

Michael Moorcock's "The Elric Saga". With Anderson's work, it was the other main source of the Order vs Chaos, Lawful vs Chaotic division of the D&D game. It also served as the main inspiration behind the D&D Drows, due to the Elric Saga shaping the original image of "Dark Elves" in fantasy, through its Melnibonéan Empire. D&D also originally collected references to the Elric world - creating many variation of Elric's evil magical sword Stormbringer through a variety of cursed soul-drinking weapons.

Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian". The source of heroic-fantasy the same way Lord of the Rings influenced epic fantasy, the world of Conan was also a huge source of inspiration for D&D - the most obvious reference being the Barbarian class, shaped for those who wanted to play Conan.

Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser". Originally intended as a parody of the Conan-style heroic fantasy, but promptly becoming a serious and admired work that created its own sub-genre of fantasy (the "sword and sorcery" genre), they also were inspirational for the first editions of D&D. Sometimes it is indirect - the "Thief" or "Rogue" classes were inspired by Leiber's Gray Mouser character - other times it is MUCH more direct. For example, among the numerous pantheons you could choose to use in early D&D, one was the various gods of Newhon and the city of Lankhmar, the universe of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. And the fantasy trope of "Thieves' Guild" made famous partially by D&D was originally an invention of Leiber.

Jack Vance's The Dying Earth. This emblematic series of the "science-fantasy" genre offered to D&D its magic system, which is generally known as "vancian magic". It was Jack Vance who had the idea that a wizard had to learn/store spells in their mind, with a limited number of spells they could carry in their brain, and that once cast the spell had to be re-learned or restored. Several spells and items of early D&D were also directly taken from the Dying Earth books - the "prismatic spray" or the "ioun stones".

H.P. Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos". No need to explain how Lovecraft's brand of eldritch horror and alien-fantasy shaped the creatures and deities of early D&D, to the point that early on the deities and monsters of the Cthulhu Mythos were part of the pantheons you could chose to use - listed alongside the Newhon gods of Leiber, or the gods of the Conan universe.

While not fantasy works, the most famous creations of Edgard Rice Burroughs - Tarzan on one hand, and John Carter of Mars on the other, were claImed by Gygax to have been very influential to his creation of D&D.

Another author Gygax mentionned as being a huge influence for D&D was Fletcher Pratt - through his Harold Shea fantasy series, about a main character being carried away in various magical and fantastical worlds very different from each other, in which he has to adapt himself to new settings and learn new rules to avoid dangers and threats... Sounds familiar? The idea of world-travelling might also have been inspired by the science-fiction series by P.J. Farmers' World of Tiers: the rules of travel in D&D between the various planes of reality seem to have been inspired by Farmers' own rules for dimension-travel.

One of the lesser known influences of D&D is the fantasy series "Kothar" by Gardner Fox: Gygax explicitely said that the idea of the "Lich" as a D&D monster came from Fox's Kothar series.

Not a book, but movies: the Sinbad movies of the mid 20th century were influential on early D&D. Various monsters and creatures referenced pictures such as "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" or "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad".

"The House on the Borderlands" by William Hope Hodgson was explicitely referenced by Gygax's 1979 module "The Keep on the Borderlands", and it might have heavily influenced the original depiction of the D&D orcs as pig-men...

The Shannara series by Terry Brooks has also been pointed out as an influence on D&D - while not on the very first edition, elements of the Shannara world seem to have influenced later ones...

Mind you, this is but a fragment of a much longer list known as the "Appendix N" composed by Gygax, and that lists all the books and pieces of work he took inspiration from when designing D&D. Beyond the most famous works evoked above he also listed:

Poul Anderson's "The High Crusade" and "The Broken Sword"

John Bellairs' "The Face in the Frost"

Leigh Brackett's works

Fredric Browns' works

I evoked before Burrough's Mars series, but Gygax also listed his "Venus series" and his "Pellucidar series".

Lin Carter's "World End" series

L. Sprague de Camp's "Lest Darkness Fall" and "The Fallible Fiend" and "The Carnelian Cube"

August Derleth's continuation of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Lord Dunsany's writings, of course.

Gardner Fox's "Kyrik" series

Sterling Lanier's "Hiero's Journey"

A. Merritt's "Creep, Shadow, Creep", "Moon Pool" and "Dwellers in the Mirage"

Michael Moorcock's "Hawkmoon" series (which is technically part of the wider universe of which the Elric Saga is the central piece)

Andre Norton's works

Fletcher Pratt's "Blue Star"

Fred Saberhagen's "Changeling Earth"

Margaret St. Clair "The Shadow People" and "Sign of the Labrys"

Stanley Weinbaum's works

Manley Wade Wellman's works

Jack Williamson's works

Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series, and "Jack of Shadows".

In 2007, Gygax even updated his Appendix N with a handful of new titles reflecting elements added to later editions of D&D:

Sterling Lanier's "The Unforsaken hiero"

Piers Anthony's "Split Infinity" series

And of course, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series

And since this post is all about updates, I will also include a list of works that were used as inspiration for current day/modern D&D - especially the fifth edition. Like that, you'll have the evolution of "old school D&D versus new school D&D". This list is taken from fragments here and there of interviews given by Mike Mearls, the Appendix E "Inspirational Reads" of the fifth edition, and Rodney Thompson's interviews.

Appendix E replaces several elements Gygax talked about in interviews or in his Appendix N: Leiber's work, Burroughs's Mars series, Howard's Conan, etc...

Appendix E adds among other things China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station", and Elizabeth Bear's "Range of Ghosts".

Mike Mearls said that what inspired him in his design work of modern D&D was Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea" series, Patrick Rothfuss "The Name of the Wind", Saladin Ahmed "Throne of the Crescent Moon" and Octavia E. Butler's "The Parable of the Sower".

But Mearls also repeated several of the picks already used by Gygax. He invoked again The Elric Saga, and Roger Zelazny's Amber series, and Tolkien's Legendarium of course...

“Heart of Darkness” — novel by Joseph Conrad

“Apocalypse Now” — film directed by  Francis Ford Coppola

“Annihilation” — novel by Jeff VanderMeer (as well as the sequels “Authority” and “Acceptance”)

“Roadside Picnic” — novel by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky

“Stalker” — film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

“After a City is Buried” — video essay by Jacob Geller*

“The Shape of Infinity” — video essay by Jacob Geller*

“Carceri d'invenzione” (“Imaginary Prisons”) — series of etching illustrations by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

“The Silt Verses” — podcast created by Jon Ware and Muna Hussen

“Control” — game by Remedy Entertainment

“Fallen London” — game by Failbetter Games

“Hellboy II: The Golden Army” — film directed by Guillermo del Toro

“Crumbling Castle” — song by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard (album “Polygondwanaland”, 2017)

“The Terror” — AMC miniseries, season 1

“WTF 101”, episode “History’s Most Doomed Expeditions” — webseries by Dropout.TV

(* really just about every video essay by Jacob Geller could be on here, but I’ll limit it to just these few)

Is the last item on the list a little too foreboding? Too on-the nose?

The book does have its own appendix of suggested media, and a few items from that made it on here, but I wanted something more personalized and specific to me and my group.

Sword and sorcery, planetary romance, and Dying Earth books

A list of classic pulp fantasy books in the vein of Conan, John Carter of Mars, and Cugel the Clever, as well as later novels and stories that expand on or subvert their tropes. For more information and useful links, check out the full version of this list. Come for book recommendations, stay for vintage cover art!