a repost... but its worth it.
Gary sent us:” How Dungeons and Dragons and Appendix N helped inspire a generation of readers
Thursday, March 12, 2009
posted by Brian Murphy
From such sources, as well as just about any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which to grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!
-Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide, Appendix N
A little more than a year has passed since we lost Gary Gygax, creator of the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy roleplaying game and an imaginative giant, “one of the seminal influences in fantasy in the twentieth century,” according to Leo Grin, publisher of The Cimmerian.
Gygax’s death was and is still keenly felt for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he created a game of unbridled imagination that is still going strong more than three decades after its inception, surviving the rise of computer “roleplaying” games, misguided attacks by the media, and even misplaced religious fervor. D&D continues to be played by youths as well as adults who never lost their love for the game nor suffered the unfortunate calcification of their imagination.
But Gygax’s other legacy is his role as a champion of fantasy fiction. He helped to introduce a generation of gamers to the pleasures of fantasy fiction (I count myself in this group ). Even those who have since moved on from D&D paused to honor and remember Lake Geneva’s most famous resident for fostering in them a lifelong love of reading following his death on March 4, 2008.
Within the pages of the AD&D first edition Dungeon Masters Guide resides the now-famous Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading. This section of the book contains Gygax’s reading recommendations for aspiring DMs, provided as a means to enrich and inform their imaginary D&D campaigns. Appendix N lies buried at the back of the DMs guide, known in gaming circles as an atmospheric and eternally useful but disorganized tome of DMing advice and rules. In keeping with the shotgun layout of the book it lies inexplicably between Appendix M (Summoned Monsters) and Appendix O (Encumbrance of Standard Items).
I have to think that many gamers stumbled upon it by accident, perhaps while referencing the more (in) famous Appendix C, which contained a table for generating random harlot encounters. But once found, the lost treasure of Appendix N bore riches, valuable artifacts and relics of a golden age of fantasy fiction. There’s plenty of evidence floating around the Web to support the claim that D&D fostered-and in some cases created-fantasy readers. Much of this evidence is admittedly in the form of reminisces and farewells to Gygax, which are anecdotal but nevertheless compelling. Noted game designer Monte Cook, for example, said, “I am indebted to Gary for my love of words, particularly old words. I owe him for my sense of wonder and love of all things imaginative. With his help, I have traveled to unknown lands. I have created unknown lands.” Erik Mona, Planet Stories editor and publisher, likewise singled out Gygax and Appendix N “for introducing me to the greatest fantasists who ever lived and a lifetime of excellent reading.”
I don’t know how many fantasy readers Appendix N brought into the fold, but I suspect it had a large impact. The explosion in the popularity of fantasy fiction was primarily fueled by the success of The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s. But hordes of D&D players hungry to continue the adventure in works of fantasy fiction undoubtedly helped to push the genre into the mainstream. Appendix N certainly influenced my reading choices. My line of thinking was simple: If Gary recommended a book, it was worth checking out.
Appendix N is heavily weighted with swords-and-sorcery authors and writers who worked in the pulps. This should come as no surprise, given that D&D in its oldest, purest form was swords and sorcery through-and-through. As James Maliszewski points out on his excellent Grognardia blog, D&D in its early editions had a built-in assumption that player-characters were not motivated to complete great quests or save the earth, but to explore dungeons in order to accumulate wealth (and thereby power, since gold pieces equated to experience points).
The influence of writers like Robert E. Howard and his most famous creation, the treasure-seeking Conan of Cimmeria, is immediately apparent in early D&D’s sensibilities. In “The Other REH Days: Robert E. Howard at the Gen Con 2007 gaming convention,” published in the Volume 4, No. 5 edition of The Cimmerian, author Bill Cavalier describes a conversation he had with Gygax regarding the influence of Robert E. Howard on D&D. Not surprisingly, REH’s blood-pumping action-oriented yarns had a huge impact on Gygax. Writes Cavalier:
“He bragged about reading everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote (I knew, of course, that he meant everything published), and he was quite animated when recalling Howard’s works, readily admitting the influence of REH on the creation of D&D. In his introduction to the original three-book boxed set, published in November 1973, Gygax wrote:
These rules are strictly fantasy. 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 and 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.”
In addition to REH, Appendix N also lists Gygax’s other fantasy favorites, the wellsprings from which many of D&D’s classic tropes flow. These include H.P. Lovecraft, L. Sprague de Camp, Jack Vance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many others. As I tracked down and read Gygax’s Appendix N recommendations over the years, I can recall numerous instances of smiling inwardly upon stumbling across the well-known D&D-isms in their pages. These include regenerating trolls and lawful-good paladins (Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions), spell memorization and oddball, evocative spell titles (Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories), and chaos and law alignments (Anderson, and Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories). In a recent re-read of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories, I was struck by how much of the mercenary attitude of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser colors the sensibilities of early D&D, as do their episodic, free-wheeling adventures.
J.R.R. Tolkien was also an influence on D&D, though Gygax always claimed that he was not a particular fan of works like The Lord of the Rings. Yet the concept of the adventuring party, a staple of D&D, is arguably from Tolkien, as are many of the game’s surface trappings-creatures like the Type VI demon (balrogs), treants (ents), halflings (hobbits), elven cloaks, and the ranger class.
Later editions of D&D unfortunately dumped the inspirational reading list; it should come as no surprise that these games lack the atmosphere and flavor of AD&D first edition and its predecessors. They also lack Gygax’s one-of-a-kind writing style and the literary influences that inform the rulebooks of his peerless version of D&D. We may never see its-nor Gygax’s-like again.
Note: You can find Appendix N in its entirety here: http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm. Alternatively, you can crack open the Dungeon Masters Guide that you still have sitting proudly on your shelf, or perhaps stored safely away in that cardboard box in the garage.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
posted by Brian Murphy
From such sources, as well as just about any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which to grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!
-Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide, Appendix N
A little more than a year has passed since we lost Gary Gygax, creator of the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy roleplaying game and an imaginative giant, “one of the seminal influences in fantasy in the twentieth century,” according to Leo Grin, publisher of The Cimmerian.
Gygax’s death was and is still keenly felt for a number of reasons. First and foremost, he created a game of unbridled imagination that is still going strong more than three decades after its inception, surviving the rise of computer “roleplaying” games, misguided attacks by the media, and even misplaced religious fervor. D&D continues to be played by youths as well as adults who never lost their love for the game nor suffered the unfortunate calcification of their imagination.
But Gygax’s other legacy is his role as a champion of fantasy fiction. He helped to introduce a generation of gamers to the pleasures of fantasy fiction (I count myself in this group ). Even those who have since moved on from D&D paused to honor and remember Lake Geneva’s most famous resident for fostering in them a lifelong love of reading following his death on March 4, 2008.
Within the pages of the AD&D first edition Dungeon Masters Guide resides the now-famous Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading. This section of the book contains Gygax’s reading recommendations for aspiring DMs, provided as a means to enrich and inform their imaginary D&D campaigns. Appendix N lies buried at the back of the DMs guide, known in gaming circles as an atmospheric and eternally useful but disorganized tome of DMing advice and rules. In keeping with the shotgun layout of the book it lies inexplicably between Appendix M (Summoned Monsters) and Appendix O (Encumbrance of Standard Items).
I have to think that many gamers stumbled upon it by accident, perhaps while referencing the more (in) famous Appendix C, which contained a table for generating random harlot encounters. But once found, the lost treasure of Appendix N bore riches, valuable artifacts and relics of a golden age of fantasy fiction. There’s plenty of evidence floating around the Web to support the claim that D&D fostered-and in some cases created-fantasy readers. Much of this evidence is admittedly in the form of reminisces and farewells to Gygax, which are anecdotal but nevertheless compelling. Noted game designer Monte Cook, for example, said, “I am indebted to Gary for my love of words, particularly old words. I owe him for my sense of wonder and love of all things imaginative. With his help, I have traveled to unknown lands. I have created unknown lands.” Erik Mona, Planet Stories editor and publisher, likewise singled out Gygax and Appendix N “for introducing me to the greatest fantasists who ever lived and a lifetime of excellent reading.”
I don’t know how many fantasy readers Appendix N brought into the fold, but I suspect it had a large impact. The explosion in the popularity of fantasy fiction was primarily fueled by the success of The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s. But hordes of D&D players hungry to continue the adventure in works of fantasy fiction undoubtedly helped to push the genre into the mainstream. Appendix N certainly influenced my reading choices. My line of thinking was simple: If Gary recommended a book, it was worth checking out.
Appendix N is heavily weighted with swords-and-sorcery authors and writers who worked in the pulps. This should come as no surprise, given that D&D in its oldest, purest form was swords and sorcery through-and-through. As James Maliszewski points out on his excellent Grognardia blog, D&D in its early editions had a built-in assumption that player-characters were not motivated to complete great quests or save the earth, but to explore dungeons in order to accumulate wealth (and thereby power, since gold pieces equated to experience points).
The influence of writers like Robert E. Howard and his most famous creation, the treasure-seeking Conan of Cimmeria, is immediately apparent in early D&D’s sensibilities. In “The Other REH Days: Robert E. Howard at the Gen Con 2007 gaming convention,” published in the Volume 4, No. 5 edition of The Cimmerian, author Bill Cavalier describes a conversation he had with Gygax regarding the influence of Robert E. Howard on D&D. Not surprisingly, REH’s blood-pumping action-oriented yarns had a huge impact on Gygax. Writes Cavalier:
“He bragged about reading everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote (I knew, of course, that he meant everything published), and he was quite animated when recalling Howard’s works, readily admitting the influence of REH on the creation of D&D. In his introduction to the original three-book boxed set, published in November 1973, Gygax wrote:
These rules are strictly fantasy. 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 and 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.”
In addition to REH, Appendix N also lists Gygax’s other fantasy favorites, the wellsprings from which many of D&D’s classic tropes flow. These include H.P. Lovecraft, L. Sprague de Camp, Jack Vance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and many others. As I tracked down and read Gygax’s Appendix N recommendations over the years, I can recall numerous instances of smiling inwardly upon stumbling across the well-known D&D-isms in their pages. These include regenerating trolls and lawful-good paladins (Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions), spell memorization and oddball, evocative spell titles (Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories), and chaos and law alignments (Anderson, and Michael Moorcock’s Elric stories). In a recent re-read of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories, I was struck by how much of the mercenary attitude of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser colors the sensibilities of early D&D, as do their episodic, free-wheeling adventures.
J.R.R. Tolkien was also an influence on D&D, though Gygax always claimed that he was not a particular fan of works like The Lord of the Rings. Yet the concept of the adventuring party, a staple of D&D, is arguably from Tolkien, as are many of the game’s surface trappings-creatures like the Type VI demon (balrogs), treants (ents), halflings (hobbits), elven cloaks, and the ranger class.
Later editions of D&D unfortunately dumped the inspirational reading list; it should come as no surprise that these games lack the atmosphere and flavor of AD&D first edition and its predecessors. They also lack Gygax’s one-of-a-kind writing style and the literary influences that inform the rulebooks of his peerless version of D&D. We may never see its-nor Gygax’s-like again.
Note: You can find Appendix N in its entirety here: http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm. Alternatively, you can crack open the Dungeon Masters Guide that you still have sitting proudly on your shelf, or perhaps stored safely away in that cardboard box in the garage.