Appendix N. - The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons & Dragons

[Voros]

So I spotted this on the MIT Press site under Game Design books (they now distro Strange Attractor Press) even though it is really a collection of classic S&S and fantasy and thought it looked cool enough to order even though I'm already familiar with a lot of the content.

It arrived super fast.





There is an intro by the editor, who has mostly written seriously on psychedelic, occult and rock n' roll subjects from what I can see and an afterword by Ann VanderMeer.

So it is a selection of short stories and excerpts with one short Frank Brunner comic, drawing on but hardly attempting to be a comprehensive representation of that list.

The stories include:

Key to the Upper Level

How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm by Lin Carter

Tale of Hauk by Poul Anderson

Jewels in the Forest by Fritz Leiber

Empire of the Necromancers by CAS

Turjan of Miir by Jack Vance

A Hero at the Gates by Tanith Lee

Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard

Secret Chamber

Songs of Swords by Fred Saberhagen

Key to Lower Level

Dreaming City by M. Moorcock

The Doom that Came to Sarnath by Lovecraft

Tower of Darkness by David Madison

Straggler from Atlantis by Manly Wade Wellman

The Man Who Sold Rope to Gnoles by Margaret St. Clair

Pit of Wings by Ramsey Campbell

Black God's Kiss by C.L. Moore

The Fortess Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth by Dunsany

Key to Secret Passage

Sword of Dragonus by Frank Brunner

Helpful notes on where the stories were originally published and the original appendix n from the 79' DMG are included.

So the editor wasn't fannishly sticking to ONLY appendix n authors and included very fine writers like Ramsey Campbell and Tanith Lee, which is all to the good to me.

I think it is a pretty impeccable selection of D&D-like stories and a good introduction for those who haven't wasted their lives in musty old bookstores hunting down these in paperback.

Particularly glad to see some of the lesser known by very good writers like St. Clair, who I love, and Wellman included.

Honestly prefer the list of books in B/X but this is a nice book I thought others here may be interested in.

 

[T. Foster]

It seems like a weird curatorial choice in a book literally called “Appendix N” that a full third of the stories (6 out of 17) are from authors who weren’t included in the Appendix N list while a bunch of Appendix N authors like Merritt, deCamp & Pratt, Zelazny, Farmer, Fox, Norton, and Brackett weren’t included, but whatever. There are some good classic stories here and it’s cool to see Margaret St. Clair get some more attention.

 

[Voros]

So in the intro the editor provides his rationale for his selection, noting he was looking for stories that captured the weird, dark but humourous feel of a dungeoncrawl and didn't want to excerpt from novels and sometimes there were copyright issues for certain stories.

He also notes being influenced by Moldvay's 'Inspirational Source Material' in 81' Basic and discusses drawing particularly on the Swords Against Darkness S&S series that Gygax lists.

Apparently a second volume of stories, based more on his personal Appendix N, growing up in late 70s Florida, is planned for the future. He discusses how all of us have our own personal Appendix N which I think is a good subject for another thread I just created here.

 

[zanshin]

Looks cool. Thank you for this highlight and for the other thread.