2010 Oct 29 8:55 AM

Classics Appendix N

In the original Appendix N, and in personal appendixes N from various OSR blogs, contemporary and modern fantastic literature dominates the reading list. Given the selection you’ll find in a bookstore’s fantasy section, that’s not surprising, but I wonder what an Appendix N would include if limited to pre-1900 literature?

• Arabian Nights
• Beowulf
• Voltaire’s Candide
• Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
• Cervantes’ Don Quixote
• Stoker’s Dracula
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales
• Spenser’s Faerie Queen
• Goethe’s Faust
• Gilgamesh
• Machen’s The Great God Pan
• Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
• Homer’s Iliad
• Dante’s Inferno
• Ovid’s Metamorphoses
• Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
• Homer’s Odyssey
• Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories
• Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen
• The Song of Roland
• Stevenson’s Treasure Island

A D&D campaign drawn from this Appendix N would have a distinctive flavor, although you could find a basis for many of the traditional D&D tropes in those pages.

6 comments:

Geoffrey October 29, 2010 at 12:05 PM

Also include the pre-1900 fantasy works of:

George MacDonald
William Morris
Robert Chambers
Ambrose Bierce

migellito October 29, 2010 at 1:14 PM

I like this take on the old idea Paul! I hadn’t thought of something like this. It very definitely would give a singular (and quite nice) flavour to a campaign.

Paul October 29, 2010 at 1:22 PM

Yes, agreed, Geoffrey. Can’t believe I forgot MacDonald, as I have a particular fondness for The Princess and the Goblin.

Jeff Rients October 29, 2010 at 3:39 PM

Lucian of Samosata’s True History

David January 8, 2011 at 7:25 PM

You reminded me of a few books I need to add to my Kindle, thank you!

And it would be interesting to see an alternate reality version of D&D from 1900… hmmm…

Paul January 8, 2011 at 7:42 PM

@David, much might be the same, although you wouldn’t have the inspirations of Vance for the magic system and Three Hearts for alignment.

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