Appendix N is not Holy Writ

Sacrilege!

This is a post I’ve threatened to write a few times, so I might as well finally do it.

Appendix N is the recommended reading list Gygax published in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I looked it over once or twice back in the day. I was familiar with most of the authors, and had read half or so, but it never moved me to explore the ones I was unfamiliar with back then.

Fast forward to 2008, the rough birth of the OSR (Old School Renaissance or Revolution, depending on which blog was proclaiming the movement at that moment). Though most of the OSR was more focused on OD&D (Original) rather than AD&D (Advanced, which was more codified than the free-wheeling attitude more common in the OSR), that reading list from the AD&D DMG became holy scripture as most of the bloggers scrambled to recapture the early days of play. It was seen as a window on What Gygax Was Thinking as he put the game together.

It was kinda cool browsing blogs that featured readings from Appendix N, but most of the insights into how it affected certain aspects of the rules were kinda forced. People over-analyzed the books on that list in their quest for gaming essentialism. There were quite a few purity tests.

It was taken to another level by Goodman Games, with their clone of D&D called Dungeon Crawl Classics. Goodman claimed that all of the books from Appendix N were read and absorbed and the game was rewritten based on that analysis.

That game was actually influenced more from the early days of gaming than the books themselves. Specifically with the Character Funnel: you take a bunch of wine merchants and farmers and janitors and whatever and throw them into the dungeon, and whoever lives becomes an actual first level character.

There is nothing in Appendix N, or classic fantasy literature, that would lead to the creation of the Character Funnel. It is a conceit from the early days of gaming and fragile characters rolled randomly.

Appendix N became holy again a few years later when the Pulp Revolution became a thing. Books were written on that list as it was rediscovered and used as guidance about how all fantasy fiction should be. It was treated like the Talmud. Not sure that the PulpRev is still a thing – almost all of those guys descended into Alt-right idiocy (and giving ammunition to the “S&S Gaming and Fiction is Hatred!” idiots on the left).

There are at least two books devoted to Appendix N, examining each book on the list, and a bunch of podcasts trodding the same sacred ground.

But what all of these guys in those movements missed is this – it’s just a list, and an imperfect one at that. Many great authors were left off of it.

No Karl Edward Wagner and Kane (the greatest Sword & Sorcery character). Wagner’s books had been burning through the shelves of bookstores with Frazetta covers for nearly a decade when Gygax compiled his list in 1979, so they would have been difficult to miss. I know the claim is that the list is comprised of works that influenced Gygax, but it’s difficult to believe that Heiro’s Journey plays more like an early D&D adventure than Bloodstone does.

No Clark Ashton Smith, the greatest of fantasy’s wordsmiths. To ignore Averoigne and Zothique is unforgivable in any serious S&S list. Those stories do play like D&D sessions from the early days.

No Edmund Hamilton. No Henry Kuttner. No C. L. Moore.

And you know what? No problem! Because it is just a list, and an incomplete one at that. A starting point for some, a refresher for others.

To treat it as the Ten Commandments and advocate for it with religious fervor, as some have done the last decade plus, is silly.

That’s why I roll my eyes when publications like Tales from the Magician’s Skull use Appendix N so hard in their advertising. But then again, I guess it qualifies as being simply shorthand for works in an S&S vein – even if tangential works were included and critical works were left off of it.

Edit: Since I like to go on about misspellings and other errors when I review books, I thought it was fair to point out that I found two after proofreading this post and then pressing “Publish.” Now fixed. Sheesh!