Appendix N

in and of itself has always been designed around the notion of heroics.

It has, you know, you just have to look at Appendix N in the original sort of Dungeon Master's Guide to see that it is filled with very much the heroic side of fantasy where you have highly capable individuals, right? who make their name through the powers of swords and sorcery.

If you look at Elric or Conan or something like that, these are the heroes we're talking about.

And yet, you then have a situation where, as a game, that people have looked to make it work with other genres, which, for example, in the case of horror, you rarely find yourself in a situation where heroics are going to get you anywhere but killed.

heard him mentioned.

He's in Appendix N, I believe, in the Dungeons & Dragons.

It's somebody that Gary recommended we read as students of...

The mighty Dungeons and Dragons.

Before we start that, how are you today, Adam?

doing all right uh did some traveling this week and i was telling you before we got on i guess two and a half hours at this point got back into town so i'm still a little car lagged i think but i'm excited i've been excited to talk about this i really enjoyed when we got to talk with samuel about uh appendix n i don't know a couple months back and talking about like the influence on that on on gaming you know from that kind of literature and i've been uh yeah.

Looking forward to this conversation too.

So it's good.

Well, hey, let's jump into this influence.

This is our second, right? We talked about the influence of...

Appendix N.

Appendix N. I couldn't think of the word appendix.

But that's why we're not using history as our benchmark.

We are using Appendix N. Dragons aren't real, but stories about them are.

Elves aren't, or dwarves aren't, but stories about them are.

So we took elements of folklore, we took elements of stories, and then we incorporated those into a gaming framework.

This is more of a throwback to pulp literature than it is to true history.

And so it's a sword and sorcery interpretation of what medieval Europe could look like versus what it actually was.

To that end, Appendix N, everyone has heard of that.

That's the thing in the back of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as well as Basic Expert and other TSR editions that tells you stuff you can read to get what the game is going for.

When you look in literature, we look at Mark Twain, the Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court, Alice in Wonderland's Portal Fantasy, Burroughs, like John Carter on Mars.

In Appendix N, there's a ton of different Portal Fantasy things, like gore novels, which I realize gore novels are distasteful to a lot of people, but they definitely influence D&D and other fantasy role-playing games, right? We have movies out the yin-yang from...

Things like G.I. Samurai with Sonny Chiba, where Japanese self-defense force goes back to feudal Japan to the final countdown.

Famous movie where the aircraft carrier group gets sent back right before Pearl Harbor.

It might be just like time travel.

More often it's an alternate world or a different world, uh, where they're, you know, like a modern person goes to a fantasy place, you know, uh, three hearts, three lions, you know, very influential.

I mentioned appendix N, you know, that's portal fantasy.

Um, the, the idea of a lot of role-playing games, portal fantasy, um, It's a really, you know, Dark Tower, Stephen King, there's a fair amount of Portal Fantasy, right? It's a very popular genre.

one, yeah.

Yeah, which are the good ones? I would just put, not a source for all good ones, but a good place to start if you want to see loads and loads of really short, really flavourful OSR adventures is the Appendix N jam, which has now become an annual jam run on Itch.

If you go onto Itch and write Appendix N in, or there's probably a link in the show notes.

Maybe there is.

We'll see if we remember.

You...

Basically, it's a competition where people write a, I think it's got to be four sides of A5, like a pamphlet adventure where they are allocated a title for the adventure based on the old appendix N of source books and fiction that inspired D&D.

So it's in that sort of style and they then have to go and write it and submit it.

Um, Spoiler, everybody dies in the end.

But yeah, so Elric, Michael Moorcock, him and is it the Three Hearts, Three Lions? Or is it the other one in Appendix N that people credit him with being the influence for inspiration for the cosmic alignments in D&D that Gary used?

And yeah, I mean.

Certainly in Michael Moorcock, the chaotic alignment is.