I took stock of all of my Appendix N reading to date, which entailed a mix of staring off into space, combing my shelves, and blowing the dust off my long-dormant Goodreads account. Of the 29 authors in Appendix N (well, 28 plus an editor), I have: I made it further than I thought back […]
Cataloging my Appendix N reading Read More »
Back in 2012, as my interest in old-school D&D was returning and flourishing, I started a project to read all of Gary Gygax’s famous Appendix N. I came up with a detailed plan, researched and assembled a 100-book Appendix N reading list that included recommendations for those authors whose works Gary didn’t note by title
Returning to Appendix N (vewy vewy quietly) Read More »
Martin Brown from Grognard Games produced a great short video introduction to Appendix N, the influence the works therein in had on D&D — from thieves and paladins to plane-hopping and alignment — and the inspiration those works can provide today. It’s a bit surreal for me, though: He’s called Martin as well, and is
Grognard Games’ introduction to Appendix N Read More »
I finished Fritz Leiber’s The Swords of Lankhmar this morning — my 20th Appendix N book. I’m not a fast reader, or perhaps more accurately I’m not a hurried reader, so tackling all 100 books of Appendix N is going to take me a while. “Swords” took longer than the other Lankhmar books to date
Appendix N: 20 down, 80 to go Read More »
Since I first posted about Reading Appendix N, I’ve been pointed to several similar reading lists that are either contemporary with Appendix N or related to it in some other way. None of them are additions to Appendix N — to date, Gary’s 2007 additions are the only ones I’ve found — but they’re all
Other Appendices N Read More »
I’ve been curious whether Gary ever added anything to Appendix N post-1979, be it books he forgot to include or post-1979 works he would have included if he’d written the DMG later on. So I did some digging and found this post Gary Gygax wrote on EN World in 2007, a bit more than a
Gary Gygax’s 2007 additions to Appendix N Read More »
My copy of Creep, Shadow, Creep (paid link) — which I believe was originally titled Creep, Shadow! — arrived today, and it’s by far the oldest physical book in my expanding Appendix N library. It promptly fell out of its cover, but should still be quite readable. There’s no date to be found inside it,
Creep, Shadow, Creep and Burn, Witch, Burn Read More »
I posted a thread over on RPGGeek about this project, and Steven Robert shared a link with me: Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading: Jack Vance. This is the latest in a series of thoughtful and informative essays about Appendix N authors and works by Eric Dodd, and it includes links to previous entries in
Eric Dodd’s excellent essays on Appendix N authors and works Read More »
Hunting down copies of old books for this project has been a lot of fun so far, but I needed a tool to make actual hunting easier — and if you’re looking for Appendix N books to read, you probably do, too. I’ve never seen Appendix N broken out book-by-book, so I decided
The 100-Book Appendix N Reading List Read More »
Part of my inspiration for this project came from my copy of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. The DCC RPG is based on Appendix N, and itself has an Appendix N. In that appendix is this picture of all of the Appendix N titles the author, Joseph Goodman, read before and during the time he
The DCC RPG and a reading list Read More »
