Appendix N: Inspirational Reading

In the 1979 publication of the AD&D DMG, the last entry before the glossary is Appendix N, in which Gary Gygax lists the fantasy and sci-fi novels that inspired his work on the game. This oft-ignored bibliography has received renewed attention in recent years. It is in fact one of the foundations on which fantasy role playing was built. Reading the books referenced by Gygax, one understands three important facts.
First, that D&D was not spawned from the imagination wholly formed, but was in fact an incremental iteration of literary mechanism, one more step in a march begun by Burroughs, Lovecraft, Vance, and Howard many decades prior—a very important step, true, but nonetheless an evolution. Second, that many (many!) of the conventions of D&D are not in fact unique but share a clear and cogent ancestry with the books named in Appendix N, and the resulting game of D&D can be easily seen not as a brilliant creation but as a brilliant integration of the best fantasy conventions from a wide variety of sources. Read the books in Appendix N to feel the mental “click” as you understand why some part of D&D is the way it is: spells, classes, races, combat mechanics, and so on.
Third and finally, that the type of fantastical adventure espoused by D&D—the “spirit of the game” which many modern, nostalgic gamers strive to invoke—is not achieved via specific game rules, but rather by any rules and any style of play that allows one to simulate the adventures of classic fantasy heroes. If your game can accurately accommodate the adventures of doomed Elric, grim Conan, clever Cugel, spontaneous Harold Shea, merry Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, daring Hawkmoon—if your game can do that, regardless of rules, you have achieved what Gygax and Arneson set out to do.
This author highly recommends returning to these primary sources for inspiration. When writing the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, I did not set out to create a retroclone (in the OSR sense) nor did I intend to create a d20 clone (in the OGL sense). My goal was to create a game that resembled, and enabled, the adventures I read in Appendix N. As a precursor and subsequent companion to the writing of this manuscript, I set out to read the entirety of Appendix N. This is several years’ work, and because many Appendix N authors wrote dozens of books, a project that never truly ends, but I did succeed in reading a prodigious supply of classic fantasy literature while authoring this work. I believe the resulting RPG successfully captures the spirit of the original game, using a wholly different rules set. You may question why rules for intelligent swords and planar travel are included in a low-level rules set, but referencing the primary sources reveals the answer.
Below you will find Gygax’s original bibliography intact. While concepting and writing this manuscript, I read most of the list: all the books named by title, most if not all of the books from the various specified series (e.g., Burroughs’ Mars series), and the generally acknowledged “best” works of authors who are listed with no corresponding title or series (for example, the Silver John series by Manly Wade Wellman).
You will find that the DCC RPG rules easily accommodate any adventure from Appendix N. Having completed a self directed literary survey of the authors on this list, I highly recommend reading the work of Howard, Lovecraft, Vance, Burroughs, Merritt, and Moorcock. They are extraordinarily inspirational for the adventure author and give direct insight to the origins of fantasy role playing. However, do not limit yourself; start with them, then continue through all of Appendix N. Doing so will strengthen your understanding of the game. Vance is critical to understanding the D&D magic system (you’ll read descriptions of classic D&D spells in a work written 20 years before D&D was published!), as are De Camp & Pratt, whose adventures of Harold Shea describe many D&D magic conventions. The original D&D thief class is an amalgam of characters presented by Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and Jack Vance; the original D&D paladin class comes from Poul Anderson; the D&D alignment system is derived from Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock; the rules for magic swords and much of the inspiration for planar travel comes from Michael Moorcock, with additional planar travel concepts clearly visible in Roger Zelazny and P.J. Farmer, and at a conceptual level in Edgar Rice Burroughs as well; many monsters and elements of spellcasting are visible in Lovecraft; the concepts of drow and underdark adventures derive from Merritt and St. Clair; and so on.

The most powerful trait of Appendix N, insofar as influencing fantasy adventuring, is what I call “pre-genre storytelling.” In the current era, all gamers, and many laymen, have preconceptions of fantasy archetypes: one knows what an elf is like, and what a dwarf is like, and what powers a dragon or vampire should have. Most of the authors in Appendix N, however, were writing before “fantasy” was an acknowledged literary category. The conception of an “elf” as expressed in Tolkien is now “common knowledge,” but the elves described by Lord Dunsany and Poul Anderson were completely different creatures. The same is true of dozens of other fantasy conceits. When you read Appendix N, fantasy once again becomes fantasy; the concepts escape modern classifications.
In a sense, the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game is not an attempt to model an experience related to D&D but rather an attempt to model the experience that predated D&D. This game is pre-D&D swords and sorcery. You are holding the rules that let you experience the same sense of adventure that Gygax and Arneson experienced while they were first developing the game. Where they had to dedicate their energies to creating rules never before devised by man, I have the luxury of drawing on 30 years of game design. And thus I dedicate my energies not to creating rules, but to conveying tone. Hear, then, the tone of Appendix N! My journey down the road of pre-genre fiction brought me to two other fantasy authors I highly recommended. Clark Ashton Smith was a contemporary of Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft, and an amazing author of horror-shadowed fantasy. His work is inspirational for anyone playing a wizard character, and there are some D&D historians who believe his omission from Appendix N was an accidental oversight on Gygax’s part. William Hope Hodgson was one of Lovecraft’s inspirations. His work deals primarily with seafaring stories and is sometimes considered supernatural horror rather than fantasy, but it is filled with the kind of adventures that make great D&D games.
Additionally, there are certain films which simply must be viewed to properly understand the history of D&D. The first is The Raven—the original 1963 version starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff. Watch this film to understand the origins of many D&D spells; the spell duel sequence near the end is clearly an input to the D&D spell system (and certain players in the original Lake Geneva campaigns recall Gygax’s fondness for this movie).
Another indispensible film for the D&D historian is Horror of Dracula, starring Peter Cushing. Part of the Hammer Horror series from the 1950’s and 1960’s, this film is clearly an inspiration for the cleric’s iconic ability to turn un-dead (and the series is known to be a favorite of Arneson’s). One final note; I am a sesquipedalian, and I suspect I am not alone among fans of Gygax’s syntax and word choice. Inculcation of Appendix N and ratiocination in regard to vocabulary is concomitant to mellifluous and salubrious logophilia and a prerequisite to possession of a fantasy pandect.
And now, to quote Appendix N:

Inspirational Reading

• Anderson, Poul: Three Hearts and Three Lions; The High Crusade; The Broken Sword
• Bellairs, John: The Face in the Frost Brackett, 
• Leigh Brown, 
• Fredric Burroughs 
• Edward Rice: “Pellucidar” series; “Mars” series; “Venus” series
• Carter, Lin: “World’s End” series 
• de Camp, L. Sprague: Lest Darkness Fall; Fallible Fiend; et al 
• de Camp & Pratt: “Harold Shea” series; 
• Carnelian Cube 
• Derleth, August 
• Dunsany, Lord 
• Farmer, P. J.: “The World of the Tiers” series; et al 
• Fox, Gardner: “Kothar” series; “Kyric” series; et al
• Howard, Robert 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 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, Manly Wade
• Williamson, Jack
• Zelazny, Roger: Jack of Shadows; “Amber” series; et al