In the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, Gary Gygax included Appendix N as a list of authors who influenced the creation of AD&D. We have a lot of people who DM, or write, or hell - even think up character names in RPGs. What are the things that most influence you?
The things I list below are what primarily influence my imagination, not necessarily just what I like (so Gene Wolfe or Chesterton who I love aren't below). At the same time, obviously a lot of things that I hate (Moorcock, Martin) aren't there either.
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Poul Anderson: I've read nearly all of his fantasy, but not all of his sci-fi. He wrote a lot. The High Crusade, Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Man Who Came Early, Operation Chaos/Operation Luna, A Midsummer Tempest. Many of his stories are about a man out of place and encountering a more or less primitive society (the less primitive society usually wins). Many of the things he wrote were codified in D&D, like troll vulnerability to fire, or law vs chaos. It's fun to be reading something of his and suddenly realize (for instance) that elemental summoning works exactly like D&D rules.
Arthur Conan Doyle: Besides Holmes, he also wrote historical fiction - which he actually liked writing more than the Holmes stories. The White Company and Sir Nigel are probably the most well known.
Randall Garrett: The Lord Darcy stories are an alternative history where the timeline diverged during the Plantagenet rule and magic is real.
Henry Gilbert: Robin Hood. His version reads like a modern TV mini-series. Everything is set up extremely well, there's a bit of darkness and maybe supernatural around the edges.
William Hope Hodgson: Probably best known for The Night Land, and for good reason. It's written in a purposefully archaic style, and can be hard to get through, but it has some truly amazing concepts. My favorite of his is The House on The Borderland. It's a supernatural horror novel and can be credited for where the concept of orcs as pig-faced humanoids comes from.
C.S. Lewis: I think his Space Trilogy is his best work of fiction (much better than Narnia). He has a set of lectures on medieval thinking called The Discarded Image that has some really good things in it too (like the longevai, which was a term they had for elves and other creatures that were considered to be in between angels and demons)
Tim Powers: I think he's the greatest living fantasy writer. A lot of his books are "secret histories" - he researches where any real people in his stories (like Kim Philby in Declare) would have been and what they were doing on particular dates, and he doesn't allow those known facts to be altered. So, really weird stuff emerges. Declare and The Anubis Gates are probably his most well-known and liked books, but just about everything he's written is fantastic.
Clark Ashton Smith: I've mostly his Averoigne stories, and they are filled with great content for building out a campaign world.
Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped, Catriona, The Black Arrow, The Master of Ballantrae, Markheim (a supernatural Christmas story). He also wrote the scariest short story I've ever read, Thrawn Janet.
Tolkien: Almost too obvious to mention. The Two Watchers Sam passes in Cirith Ungol have always stuck with me since I first read about them. That to me is a quintessentially D&D moment.
Manly Wade Wellman: His Silver John stories are probably his most well-known, about a demon-fighting bard who travels around Appalachia. He was another prolific writer in the silver age of sci-fi who's kind of unknown now. He also had a really interesting life.
John Whitbourn: A Dangerous Energy . Another story where magic is real, this time the timeline diverges when Elizabeth I dies and Mary rules instead, and he reformation never happens. This book is really a morality play that shows the depths one person can sink to over their lifetime.
Charles Williams: All Hallow's Eve, War In Heaven, Descent Into Hell. He might be an acquired taste. The books I mention here are all sort of psychological fantasy horror novels. He's one of the lesser known Inklings, but he had a rather large influence on Lewis especially - That Hideous Strength is very reminiscent of C. Williams stories.
We have a Steam curator now. You should be following it. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44994899-RPGHQ/
What is your personal "Appendix N"?
I have not responded to this thread because it's not clear what the difference is between a "personal appendix N" and a list of books I like.
It's about what fuels your imagination, especially if you create campaign worlds or writing - or even just naming characters if you don't do those other things.
There are a lot of books I like that aren't on this list because they aren't something I use when creating the world for my tabletop group. But the things I listed above directly impact the creation, whether it's through the feel of a particular dungeon or the game's background setting. Or character names. Things like that.
There are a lot of books I like that aren't on this list because they aren't something I use when creating the world for my tabletop group. But the things I listed above directly impact the creation, whether it's through the feel of a particular dungeon or the game's background setting. Or character names. Things like that.
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MadPreacher
I've read well over 10,000 books in my life. I've forgotten more books than most people have read in a lifetime. Any attempt by me to make an Appendix N will be futile.
The only non-drawing creative work I've done lately is help my wife write her fantasy novel. I relied on fantasy elements pulled from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Kings of Britain, The Odyssey and The Aeneid. Wife says that my writing style is similar to Jack Vance, which makes sense because I've read almost everything he's written by now except for Demon Princes and Lyonesse.
I am also a fan of Klarkash-Ton but not of his Averoigne stories, which are mostly boring. His Egypt and Zothique stuff is a lot better (and his straight sci-fi is dull as hell).
Tim Powers... I read a lot, but I have some kind of disability that prevents me from coming up with story ideas. The last time I had an idea for a story was ten years ago. It was going to be set during the 1529 siege of Vienna, and the protag had to battle supernatural creatures while trapped inside the city by the Turks. Then I found out that fucker Tim Powers had already written that exact story!
I am also a fan of Klarkash-Ton but not of his Averoigne stories, which are mostly boring. His Egypt and Zothique stuff is a lot better (and his straight sci-fi is dull as hell).
Tim Powers... I read a lot, but I have some kind of disability that prevents me from coming up with story ideas. The last time I had an idea for a story was ten years ago. It was going to be set during the 1529 siege of Vienna, and the protag had to battle supernatural creatures while trapped inside the city by the Turks. Then I found out that fucker Tim Powers had already written that exact story!
For a DM I suggest Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities". It is a book of short prose-poetic descriptions of a few dozen fantasy cities.
Yeah, same, especially with a literature focus in college. But there's only a really small subset that I'd even care about remembering let alone say it's had a long-term impact on my thinking.
Interesting, because I don't really like much of CAS except for Averoigne.Emphyrio wrote: ↑ July 13th, 2023, 16:55I am also a fan of Klarkash-Ton but not of his Averoigne stories
That was the first Powers book I ever read.
Robert E. Howard
William Shakespeare
Frank Herbert
Harlan Ellison
Philip K. Dick
Garth Ennis
William Gibson
William Shakespeare
Frank Herbert
Harlan Ellison
Philip K. Dick
Garth Ennis
William Gibson
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WhiteShark
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The more I think about this, the harder I find it to name works that I am certain have influenced my imagination in a concrete way. I have decided to mainly focus on influences from my youth, especially works from which I knowingly borrowed ideas. I am excluding any work to which I was exposed later than the last time I seriously ran a tabletop game, which was 5+ years ago, since there is no way to verify that anything I've absorbed since then has had a real effect on my creativity.
Dungeons & Dragons: 3.X is what I grew up playing, my dad the DM, and is some of my earliest fantasy experience. The planes, alignment, the classes (archetypes), the monsters, the magic, and the taxonomy of all of those formed the foundation for my understanding of fantasy. Later on 4E came around and improved the cosmology and mythos of the generic setting to the extent that I am content to use it as is or to borrow from it when building something else.
Roger Zelazny: While I don't much like the idea normally, The Chronicles of Amber has my favorite version of an infinite multiverse setting: there are innumerable worlds but only two that ultimately matter, serving as the poles of reality: Amber and Chaos. The Pattern, magic ("hanging of spells"), the superhuman abilities of the Amberites, the mythology-esque history, and the walking of shadow (the in-between worlds) to find technology and other advantages all made an impression on me.
William Gibson: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, aka The Sprawl Trilogy. This is what the cool cyberpunk future was supposed to look like and I'll never let go of it.
Film: The Matrix. I assume the "we're all trapped inside a simulation" idea was done before this, but The Matrix was my first exposure. Also, the combination of modern firearms and superhuman ability was quite striking. Also, Black Hawk Down... maybe. I hardly remember what happens in the movie but I can't think of any earlier exposure to what modern warfare looks like.
Star Wars: movies, books (especially the Thrawn trilogy) and games (KotOR, Kyle Katarn series). It's my first space opera, making it my reference point for all others, and on another front, I can't think of much similar to Jedi/the Force in other fiction.
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash. The setting is intentionally ridiculous and I don't think it influences me much but the concept of brain-hacking people sticks with me. I haven't read any of his other works except Reamde, which was just alright.
Japanese Video Games: Grandia II was one of my earliest JRPGs and perhaps my first exposure to the idea of magitech: ancient divine spacecraft, magical androids, etc. It also acquainted me with concepts of dead and sealed deities, and spiritual possession both beneficial and malign. Chrono Trigger left me with ideas about time travel, once and future apocalypses, and amoral planet-destroying aliens. The Legend of Zelda, as a series, introduced me to the idea of repeating cycles and, while a universal idea, it seemed to me to place especial emphasis on the theme of a seemingly weaker good defeating a seemingly far stronger evil through skill and virtue. Mega Man X made me like sentient robots and non-replicable hardware-bound AIs. Whenever I include AI in my settings it tends to be of this sort.
Greek Myth: I spent a lot of time in my youth at my grandparents' home and my grandfather loved to regale me with these. Ideas about fate, hubris, cleverness stick with me, but perhaps more importantly, so does the whole look and feel of mythology. These myths have been rattling around in my head for so long that I sometimes find myself surprised when other people don't know them.
Tolkien: Yup. Simply unavoidable. When one hears 'fantasy' in this day and age, one generally imagines Tolkien or some flavor of D&D. As a GM and worldbuilder I tend to think more about the mythology in The Silmarillion than the concrete adventures of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Source Uncertain: I can't name a specific work for this, though it is a common trope in Japanese media: I have come to appreciate when there is some internal energy source that allows warriors to reach explicitly superhuman capability rivalling that of mages. D&D and its derivatives have always been ridiculous to me in the way they try to act as though fighters were purely mundane warriors even when that clearly cannot be the case after just a few levels.
OP mentioned names; I tend to shamelessly rip off existing cultures or use donjon. I've never attempted to conlang, so when I do use purely invented names, it's usually a spur-of-the-moment affair.
Dungeons & Dragons: 3.X is what I grew up playing, my dad the DM, and is some of my earliest fantasy experience. The planes, alignment, the classes (archetypes), the monsters, the magic, and the taxonomy of all of those formed the foundation for my understanding of fantasy. Later on 4E came around and improved the cosmology and mythos of the generic setting to the extent that I am content to use it as is or to borrow from it when building something else.
Roger Zelazny: While I don't much like the idea normally, The Chronicles of Amber has my favorite version of an infinite multiverse setting: there are innumerable worlds but only two that ultimately matter, serving as the poles of reality: Amber and Chaos. The Pattern, magic ("hanging of spells"), the superhuman abilities of the Amberites, the mythology-esque history, and the walking of shadow (the in-between worlds) to find technology and other advantages all made an impression on me.
William Gibson: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, aka The Sprawl Trilogy. This is what the cool cyberpunk future was supposed to look like and I'll never let go of it.
Film: The Matrix. I assume the "we're all trapped inside a simulation" idea was done before this, but The Matrix was my first exposure. Also, the combination of modern firearms and superhuman ability was quite striking. Also, Black Hawk Down... maybe. I hardly remember what happens in the movie but I can't think of any earlier exposure to what modern warfare looks like.
Star Wars: movies, books (especially the Thrawn trilogy) and games (KotOR, Kyle Katarn series). It's my first space opera, making it my reference point for all others, and on another front, I can't think of much similar to Jedi/the Force in other fiction.
Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash. The setting is intentionally ridiculous and I don't think it influences me much but the concept of brain-hacking people sticks with me. I haven't read any of his other works except Reamde, which was just alright.
Japanese Video Games: Grandia II was one of my earliest JRPGs and perhaps my first exposure to the idea of magitech: ancient divine spacecraft, magical androids, etc. It also acquainted me with concepts of dead and sealed deities, and spiritual possession both beneficial and malign. Chrono Trigger left me with ideas about time travel, once and future apocalypses, and amoral planet-destroying aliens. The Legend of Zelda, as a series, introduced me to the idea of repeating cycles and, while a universal idea, it seemed to me to place especial emphasis on the theme of a seemingly weaker good defeating a seemingly far stronger evil through skill and virtue. Mega Man X made me like sentient robots and non-replicable hardware-bound AIs. Whenever I include AI in my settings it tends to be of this sort.
Greek Myth: I spent a lot of time in my youth at my grandparents' home and my grandfather loved to regale me with these. Ideas about fate, hubris, cleverness stick with me, but perhaps more importantly, so does the whole look and feel of mythology. These myths have been rattling around in my head for so long that I sometimes find myself surprised when other people don't know them.
Tolkien: Yup. Simply unavoidable. When one hears 'fantasy' in this day and age, one generally imagines Tolkien or some flavor of D&D. As a GM and worldbuilder I tend to think more about the mythology in The Silmarillion than the concrete adventures of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Source Uncertain: I can't name a specific work for this, though it is a common trope in Japanese media: I have come to appreciate when there is some internal energy source that allows warriors to reach explicitly superhuman capability rivalling that of mages. D&D and its derivatives have always been ridiculous to me in the way they try to act as though fighters were purely mundane warriors even when that clearly cannot be the case after just a few levels.
OP mentioned names; I tend to shamelessly rip off existing cultures or use donjon. I've never attempted to conlang, so when I do use purely invented names, it's usually a spur-of-the-moment affair.