Like many exposed to D&D at a formative age, I too used Appendix N as kind of a jumping off point for exploration and was startled to see what came from where, and how undisguised it was. Go through Vance's Dying Earth and you will find an Excellent Prismatic Spray, ioun stones, having to memorize spells (whose memory vanishes on use), and even that ever-uncomfortable addition: psionics.
Not a single mention of Dave Arneson in it, which pains me. I can forgive the omission of fiction that was inspired by D&D (really, Quag Keep and its greatly lagged sequel are terrible by almost any standard of fiction), but leaving out Arneson verges on the Downright Peculiar.
Tolkien was reportedly mentioned in versions of Chainmail (Gygax's precursor to D&D) and OD&D (the rare, staple-bound ~prototype/MVP version predating the breakthrough editions, Basic and Advanced D&D), but after an IP dispute the Tolkien references were removed and Gygax repeatedly disclaimed any interest in or influence by Tolkien, despite obvious similarities. There are also articles Gygax wrote for late-1960s fanzine, Thangorodrim, where he openly adopts Tolkien material:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=thangorodrim
It's a common trend among such creators. It's like Marvel. Stan Lee (and these days, Disney/Marvel) would like to have you believe that everything sprang from the mind of Lee, purposely ignoring people like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. And speaking of Disney, Walt Disney himself downplayed the importance of people like Ub Iwerks, who were instrumental to the creation of Mickey Mouse.
There are no doubt teenagers who think Thor, Loki, Snow White etc. were all thought up by Disney/Marvel. Disney has been laundering (and copyrighting) folk history for a century now, and Marvel mythology for a little less time.
> Disney has been laundering (and copyrighting) folk history for a century now, and Marvel mythology for a little less time.
Almost every fiction ever written does that. It makes better stories, arguably: 1) Those stories persisted across eons for a reason, and 2) it anchors the new story in something people already have an understanding of.
I think not. It's one thing to adapt/re-boot something and quite another to try and re-write history via shitty contracts to try and make yourself the sole creator (Disney, Marvel/Stan Lee).
Gygax/TSR went so far as to claim that Advanced D&D was a different game from D&D to not have to pay Dave Arneson royalties on any of the releases. Arneson sued TSR multiple times and they settled out of court, granting him royalties on AD&D: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Arneson#After_TSR
> Not a single mention of Dave Arneson in it, which pains me. I can forgive the omission of fiction that was inspired by D&D (really, Quag Keep and its greatly lagged sequel are terrible by almost any standard of fiction), but leaving out Arneson verges on the Downright Peculiar
Definitely – Dave Arneson being the co-creator of D&D, via his legendary Blackmoor game/campaign. The original D&D rules, the Blackmoor supplement and setting, and the Temple of the Frog dungeon were all derived from Arneson's game.
Arneson was brilliant and his work is inspiring; I can only imagine how amazing it would have been to take a game design course from him when he taught at Full Sail in the 2000s.
Psionics really came into its own as a mechanism with the Dark Sun world.
Instead of being an oddball power which you had to luck into, and which a lot of house rules just ignored, everyone had some psionic ability. There were specialized psionicists as well, but it was just a world where sentient beings (being D&D there were some racial exceptions) had psionic power.
I agree that psionics really only felt like they belonged in Dark Sun. The whole setting is more of a total conversion than any other setting.
I was looking through my old books recently. The player rules for Planescape, another massively different campaign setting, was ~30 pages. Some of that was full page art, and they dedicated one page to each of the 16 factions (including non-factioned, IIRC). With all the jargon, lingo, and weirdness in Planescape, it was almost all lore changes. Under the hood, it was still the same old AD&D.
In the first Dark Sun Campaign Setting box set, you get two main books: one book of lore and one book of mechanical changes. Each book is ~120 pages. There are rules for new races, new classes, new weapons, new armor, new spells, new environmental hazards, etc. The setting was 50% new lore and 50% new and changed mechanics. And DSCS didn't even have rules for psionics in it! They had a couple pages detailing the new psionic character creation rules, but it literally tells you to use the Complete Psionics Handbook! (The second Dark Sun Campaign Setting included a ~90 page psionics book that includes most of that content.)
I have ... feelings ... about psionics, both as not quite fitting the setting (let's face it, late seventies was a lot of Zener cards mixed in with the occult business) and the mechanics.
To be fair, I have never looked at Dark Sun.
I think psionics could be workable, in a certain light, but that's the subject of a rather half-baked and long essay series I have been kicking about for a decade as to how to "fix" many of the issues in D&D in a way that does not result in the Endless Next Edition problem.
Vancian Magic is one of my least favorite mechanics. It worked in its original setting, and certainly I understand the desire to have a similar mechanic in the game itself, but it is one of those things which just does not hold up under scrutiny. And then the oddball psionics ...
However, do not let these criticisms dissuade you from reading. Vance was a very interesting writer, and the Dying Earth setting was highly influential on D&D (not that it originated with him). He would often develop trickster characters who used vocabulary (often slightly wrongly) to seem more intelligent than they were, so there's a certain density to the writing, but it is more than merely packing in the unlikely Scrabble words, there's a playfulness to it which is entertaining when you find it.
I think Vancian Magic can hold up well in a RPG. I am not a fan of the last 30-35 years of treating manic like a mutant power from X-men. The limitations are what crafted interesting tactical situations from my perspective. I do think there is room for other types of magic in a game however. The Vancian memorization or the 3rd Edition preparation seem to Tré force the idea that spells require ritual and effort. I certainly see a use case for small effort easily used cantrips or incantations that function more like video games or 5th Ed, though. I tend to favor that type of mix when doing game design.
> Vance was a very interesting writer, and the Dying Earth setting was highly influential on D&D (not that it originated with him)
That sentence reads like you're saying Jack Vance was not the originator of the Dying Earth setting, when he alone kicked off the genre with a book of short stories called the Dying Earth. I'm sure that's not what you meant.
Uh, you parsed it right. He named it, but the microgenre known as "Dying Earth" would most recognizably start some decades before with The Time Machine and the somewhat lesser-known The House on the Borderland.
It wasn't a new idea but he more or less summed it up in a succinct manner with an obvious name, then placed multiple stories within a timeline with some overlapping features, a bit like Varley's "Eight Worlds." After Vance made it, I think it entered into the sci-fi consciousness, such as it is, a bit more than some of the earlier works out there which fit, but somehow managed to slide by everyone.
We'll have to agree to disagree. There is fin de siecle, a different literary genre, of which The Time Machine is part, that has similarities to the Dying Earth genre. Each is marked by apathy in the face of existential doom. The Dying Earth is a specific genre with its own tropes: wizards living in manses, dangerous creatures wander at night, many of which can talk, the earth has lived through several Ages, much knowledge has been lost. These are as much tropes of the subgenre as cyclopean ruins and ichor are tropes of Lovecraftian horror.
The wikipedia article on the subgenre is terrible, conflating fin de siecle with Dying Earth. Awful on many levels
Arguing the Vance did not actually create the Dying Earth genre because of fin de siecle is like arguing Lovecraft did not invent Lovecraftian horror because some previous authors wrote about terrifying gods.
It is the magic; spells and systems, which make Vance new.
The questing junior magician with limited spells - but powerful spells (suck as the expansible egg in which he sleeps) - finds a powerful older vat-wizard who is growing creatures in tubs, and the junior falls for one of the creations.
The other major magic system of Vance is that of the elementals or demons (Sandestines and Daihaks) - taken from mythologies.
Couldn't be more different than "The Time Machine".
Vance is amazing, read him if you at all like the magic of D&D.
The classic is Dying Earth by Jack Vance, but my favorite of the series is Eyes of the Overworld, and you'd be fine to read that first since the novels of the series are self-contained.
My opinion is that the subgenre should by definition be self-consciously set in that world or something similar, and some of the novels that do that are from
Actually I think we can argue about lovecraft not inventing the lovecraft genre because of the “Lovecraft Circle” which consisted of several contemporary authors all borrowing ideas from each other. Generally we talk of pioneers in a genre specifically because how commonplace such exchanges of ideas are.
This podcast seems pretty focused on Appendix N (from AD&D, after Arneson's direct involvement ended) instead of the origins of D&D as a whole. Google 'Secrets of Blackmoor' to get a better view of Arneson's influences.
They don't link to it among the links to Peterson's books (as far as I can tell) and they don't mention it in the interview, but Peterson's doorstop volume Playing at the World treats extensively of the roots of D&D. Looks like this Appendix N would make a great sourcebook (in the academic, not roleplaying, sense) companion to that book, since it mentions and describes lots of D&D's sources in (especially) fantasy fiction, but doesn't include substantial excerpts of those works.
Yeah, Peterson's books are required reading for anyone who wants to understand where D&D came from. I think understanding the history of D&D is pretty crucial to understanding why and how to play D&D even today, half a century later. Peterson's "The Elusive Shift" gos into some theory of role-playing games from the 80's which is still as true today as it was then.
> What does D&D feel like for me? For me, it feels more like Conan than Tolkien, for example.
It seems like this is very much this author’s spin on his version of Appendix N, rather than primarily an exploration of the actual Appendix N. More like what he’d like Appendix N to be rather than what it actually was.
AD&D particularly is at least 50% Middle Earth the roleplaying game, and the other 50% split among all the other influences. Halflings, elves (even specific types of elves ripped directly), dwarves, rangers, orcs, dragons, wights, wraiths, walking trees, goblins riding wolves, magic swords, magic rings, mithril, magic cloaks and boots, giant spiders, giant eagles, were-bears, it’s hard to think of anything in Tolkien at all that isn’t directly cut-and-pasted. Meanwhile yes specific elements were taken from other settings, such as the magic and a few other things from Vance, and the barbarian class from Howard, maybe thieves and thieves guilds from Lieber. The Cleric is an interesting one, it was added specifically for a vampire hunting adventure in the Blackmoor campaign. Middle Earth provides the base layer the whole thing is built on though.
Many of those elements Tolkien took from older sources, which he studied professionally and know every well (including magic rings). Arguably, AD&D also used the same old sources.
"The most immediate influences upon ADBD were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt;"
I'm not familiar with most of these, but it seems to me AD&D is basically entirely Tolkien aside from the level and pervasive nature of magic. The monster manual seems the biggest giveaway.
The races (halflings instead of hobbits, the elves are 99% tolkien elves), overall tech level and setting, etc are straight Tolkien.
Can anyone comment as to how much the other authors used the same tropes for elves / orcs / dragons / etc?
Edit: As mentioned above, Vancian magic, and the Tolkien lawsuit/complaints would explain the de-emphasis.
Remember that Tolkien was a scholar in Medieval languages and also studied more modern folklore to some degree, and drew much material from those sources. Some elements in D&D might come from the same sources or from more recent writers who drew from the same myths. That is, similarities between D&D and Tolkien are not all due to Tolkien's influence.
While Tolkien is clearly an influence, there are many, many others too; to a degree AD&D seems to me to be a collection of all the myths Gygax knew or found. There is much in the Monster Manual that isn't in Tolkien (the medusa, demons and devils, etc.). Apparently some creatures in the Monster Manual came from a bag of plastic toys, which the authors used for inspiration and created backstories.
For anyone curious, they mention “appendix n.” In one of the very old books (adnd 1e dmg I think), there was a section with that name that had a list of inspirations. In the old school dnd community, this list has a slight mythic status and some people like to come up with their own appendix n. I can’t find my copy… but this might list its contents
I remember buying an reading a lot of the books from the list in that appendix. L. Sprague de Camp, Lovecraft, Moorcock (the entire Stormbringer series), and Fritz Leiber especially.
The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon), while not an officially licensed D&D tie-in, is based on a D&D campaign the author played in at UCSD in the 1970s.
I think the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson is also based on an RPG campaign, which started out as D&D then switched to GURPS.
> The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon), while not an officially licensed D&D tie-in, is based on a D&D campaign the author played in at UCSD in the 1970s.
The books are set 500 years before the campaign IIRC. Midkemia Press put out several RPG supplements including several describing places in the Kingdom:
If you want a book “set in d&d” the Dragonlance books are a good place to start. The early Drizzt books aren’t terrible either. In both cases these are firmly YA books and on rereading them as an adult they don’t hold up that well.
I don’t know of any d&d novels that I would recommend to adults that don’t play the game.
After the first sentence I was like 'yea but litte better than Piers Anthony' but then you nailed it with the YA tag.
I've read a lot of forgotten realms books, and Dragonlance, but as I've grown I wanted something more adult I guess.
I've read the Malazan Book of The Fallen series and loved it but I felt it went off-rails, I prefer sagas that at least know where they will end up- as opposed to just figuring it out as you go (like Stephen King's 'Gunslinger').
As I've gotten older I can't do filler (why I hate most modern anime without a site that tells you which are filler episodes and so safe to skip).
I refuse to even watch any anime series on Netflix as they are all filler except the first and last 2 episodes (that new olympus series is exactly this).
Anyway does anyone have some more 'adult' sci/fantasy books or series to recommend?
For grown up Sci-fi Phillip K Dick is where its at. Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly are the foundation of what PKD is about. Once you grasp the level of mindfuck you are dealing with you can move on to valise and the other post-OD stories if you want. Skip the man in the high castle. I know that there will be other signals telling you to not skip it, but skip it. If you can't help yourself just say "this is what happens when a great author writes a book with a D20" and look back to why all "DnD" books suck.
If you want space opera, you can't go wrong with the culture books. Consider Phlebas, is a fine place to start. Later books build on the mythology and themes, but if you don't connect with book 1 you probably aren't going to like the rest.
A student of PKD who likes to play with scifantasy ideas is Johnathan Lethem. If he has written a book set somewhere that you have a connection to start there, otherwise start with The Fortress of Solitude. Follow with Chronic City and Motherless Brooklyn. Don't watch the Motherless Brooklyn movie.
I know I'm late but just wanted to say thanks, I've seen some of the film adaptations of PKD but hardly read any of them, will check them all out.
Likewise the rest I really appreciate the recommendations, think I'm going to start with Phlebas!
Edit1 - I don't know how I've managed to never hear about the Culture series before!
Edit 2 - Dropping this on the infinitesimally small chance someone will know, I read a book forever ago about a girl being raised and trained by her father to sit court, as an assassin, and was trained to think about multiple completely separate things/strategies at a time. I remember it blowing my very young mind, but I was so young I remember no other details. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I re-read the first two trilogies for the first time in a couple of decades or so, and started a few of the other books (couldn't finish any others).
I think that Dragons of Autumn Twilight still holds up reasonably well as a Tolkienesque derivative. I somewhat enjoyed reading the other two in that set and don't regret having re-read them. I enjoyed a few scenes from the Twins books, but otherwise I should probably have left those to my fond memories instead.
I still also have fond memories of a few other of the Dragonlance books, though now I hesitate to attempt them again.
Yeah, I couldn't even get through Autumn Twilight, the lack of nuance and the straight up good vs evil schtick really annoyed me. I guess Steven Erikson has spoiled me ;)
I disagree. Obvs D&D evolved out of a literal wargame (chainmail). And there are a lot of influences from wargaming, but 90% of the focus (from the beginning) was on:
- Characters who grew and changed each time you played
- Exploring party dynamics having more to do with narrative than mechanical intricacies
- Unreal places that were presented as living breathing spaces to explore
- Module design was a mixed bag. Most of the places didn't make literal sense. I could see someone making the argument they were just a loose collection of wargame-like scenarios linked by hallways. But if memory serves there was a balanced mix of fighting, tricks, traps, and puzzles, as well as other non-combat encounters
I'll admit I didn't play until AD&D in about '84 - was the original edition really that different in focus?
> I'll admit I didn't play until AD&D in about '84 - was the original edition really that different in focus?
The original edition or white box D&D was about as deep as Diablo 1. You rolled up a PC, the DM designed a dungeon -- not a campaign, they just built a dungeon -- and then the PCs tried to survive it. That's all it was about.
As I understand it from people who played it and from interviews with Gygax, the primary difference is that OD&D was far more free-form than than later editions - so free-form that it placed a tremendous burden on the dungeon master to fill in the gaps and limited its audience to hardcore gamers.
Again, based on what I've read, part of Dave Arneson's original innovation that became OD&D [1] was that your character continued from game to game, giving the player a personal interest in the character and also engagement in developing them. That would seem to disagree with the parent's description.
[1] Like all innovations, Arneson's was a product of earlier ones such as Braunstein by Dave Wesely.
> As I understand it from people who played it and from interviews with Gygax, the primary difference is that OD&D was far more free-form than than later editions - so free-form that it placed a tremendous burden on the dungeon master to fill in the gaps and limited its audience to hardcore gamers.
It depends on exactly what you mean. OD&D ran from 1974 to 1977 or 1979, so there's actually a fair bit there. If by "original D&D" you mean the first boxed set which had three booklets: Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, then it really is as I described it. There were 3 character classes, stats didn't really do anything, and the guidance for the DM was "create a dungeon with a minimum of 7 levels for the players to explore" or something like that.
However, there were a lot of supplements, for OD&D too:
Greyhawk (thief, paladin, non-Chainmail combat rules) and Blackmoor (assassin, monk, underwater rules) in 1975.
Eldritch Wizardry (psionics, druids), Gods Demi-Gods & Heroes (real-world and literature-inspired pantheons), and Swords & Spells (large scale combat) in 1976.
There was also new content in The Strategic Review (precursor to Dragon magazine) like the Ranger class, the Bard class, and (I think) the first printings of the Thief class. I think other stuff appeared in White Dwarf.
By the time TSR decided to go with the Basic/Advanced approach in the late 70s, most of everything we find in AD&D had been printed in some way. Both Basic D&D and AD&D were collections of existing rules as much as revisions or refinements to it.
That matches the history I know, generally. The original Basic, the 'Holmes Blue Book' by J. Eric Holmes, was indeed a much simplified restatement of OD&D, intended as an introduction. AD&D had many changes and much more material, though obviously it drew a lot on its predecessor.
I don't know that OD&D, even at the end of its publication run, offered nearly as much as AD&D. For example, where is the DMG? The modules?
However, while I know that OD&D had sparse rules as you say, and that the DM was expected to fill in the gaps and dungeons, where does it say that the characters didn't continue from adventure to adventure, from game to game?
Good post—just wanted to say that on HN, you need to put a line between each of your bullet points or else they will collapse into one paragraph as yours did.
The original Basic (the 'Holmes Blue Book' by J. Eric Holmes) was actually a reorganization and simplification of OD&D, not Advanced D&D (despite Holmes being published around the same time as AD&D). Holmes was intended as an introduction to OD&D; AD&D was extensively revised from OD&D, and the OD&D/Holmes rules were very different from AD&D in many ways.
There were at least two more revisions of 'Basic', which was updated into the early 1990s. It was much more a separate game, not a lead-in into 'Advanced', and I think publishing it may have been a contractual obligation to D&D's co-creator, Dave Arneson, who was gone before AD&D.
> The English writer H. G. Wells developed his own codified rules for playing with toy soldiers, which he published in a book titled Little Wars (1913). This is widely remembered as the first rulebook for miniature wargaming. Little Wars had very simple rules to make it fun and accessible to anyone.
> The world's first recreational wargaming club was the University Kriegspiel [sic] Club, founded in 1873 at Oxford University in England.
I'll buy that Little Wars is simple (from my understanding).
Kriegspiel, however, was very far from simple. It was just focused on battle simulation.
From my understanding, it was intended to be played by each side (either individual or team) being in their own room with their own map of the battle. Communication would go to the referee, who would run "reality". The referee would have a map and use charts, tables, dice, and pure fiat to sent information and update the state of the game to the players. Plus the game was played to a real clock. An ideal setup would have the opposing generals only communicating with the referee by means of runners, to simulate the telephone effect.
I really can't call a game that requires no less than three terrain maps and three rooms to be "simple". Especially when you see the dice the game uses.
Simpler than AD&D, not implying that they're simple. What you described is a big kriegsspiel- the equivalent of Gygax and Kuntz running multiple parties through the Greyhawk dungeon at the same time. They would have used similar methods to limit information being shared between parties.
Or for a more measurable metric, the von Reisswitz rules are 76 pages, which iirc was about the size of the player's handbook:
Honestly, I'm not sure what you expected, given the intersection of the venue, the topic at hand, and the inescapable stereotypical nature of the adherents of both. You're lucky your karma is still a positive value with no imaginary component...
What you seem to be referring to is D&D's tactical miniatures combat, which is indeed a form of miniatures gaming (and famously derived from Chainmail and its fantasy supplement.)
Unlike miniatures games, however, D&D as a whole usually shifts its primary focus to collaborative storytelling, exploration, and character progression, and its tactical miniatures combat is 1) small-scale with a 1:1 relationship between players and protagonists (though large-scale battles can be added as appropriate) and 2) optional (though it can be a large part of the game if players desire.) D&D is also usually played over multiple sessions with a contiguous game world, further enhancing the storytelling and character progression possibilities, and usually has no fixed objective or victory condition.
There are D&D-derived board games and tactical miniatures games (such as the 4E board games or the D&D miniatures games) that adopt D&D's tactical miniatures combat rules, but they largely remove the collaborative storytelling, acting/role-playing, multi-session character progression, and open-ended nature that are core to tabletop RPGs.
On the computer gaing side, a game like StarCraft is interesting because the single-player campaign includes wargame-like levels (with many units as well as resource gathering, building, and unit production) and RPG-like/dungeon-crawling levels (where you primarily control one or more hero units that gain experience and treasure and level up as they explore the level.) Even though they use the same game engine and combat system, these are fairly different game experiences.
The fundamental difference between wargaming and D&D (and tabletop RPGs in general) is the role-playing. D&D is a role-playing game; it happens to use some elements of wargaming but the whole point is the role-playing. There are other RPGs with no wargaming elements.
> replacing formulas with dice rolls
Wargames had lots of dice rolls, afaik ? D&D has lots of forumlas.
> simplified
D&D combat, especially in some editions, can be notoriously complex.
Maybe you and I are talking about different war games.
Are you trying to say that D&D is just wargaming but with dice? Or are you trying to say that D&D is just wargaming full stop, and Kriegspiel got simpler after they added dice? Either way, you can't have played much of either D&D or wargames.
Not a single mention of Dave Arneson in it, which pains me. I can forgive the omission of fiction that was inspired by D&D (really, Quag Keep and its greatly lagged sequel are terrible by almost any standard of fiction), but leaving out Arneson verges on the Downright Peculiar.