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A bit of lore in the Dungeons & Dragons community is Gary Gygax’s Appendix N. Gary, co-creator of D&D, along with Dave Arneson, used his authorial privilege to publish a series of appendices in the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Few remember the other 13 appendices. Appendix J for instance was Herbs, Spices and Medicinal Vegetables. Great if you’re trying to make a healing potion or KFC, but a bit of a so what compared to escaping from a dungeon flooding with blood with a magical sword while a goblin horde is firing flaming arrows at your party from the parapet above.

But Appendix N struck a chord. Turns out we love lists and Appendix N was the mother lode: several dozen authors and books that Gary attributed to influencing his creation. Most are still influential throughout pop culture and still influencing game creation today. They include the usual suspects like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Howard’s Conan, and Burroughs’ John Carter, as well as a slew of deeper cuts like de Camp’s Fafhrd and Moorcock’s Hawkmoon.

When the call came from Prismatic Wisdom to think about our own Appendix N, I jumped. Who doesn’t like a good mixtape? But I haven’t created any games, adventures or dungeons. Yet. So, I’ll begin at the end with my Appendix N, then use that to inform my own adventure design. This isn’t everything I’m thinking of, but it’s everything I’m thinking of today. Going a little deeper on the books listed, but I’ve also got ideas and fragments from other media listed below.

Books

Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy World – Richard Scarry

A worm. Wearing a Sound of Music hat. And a boot. Driving a car. Did I mention the car was an APPLE? A cat driving a pickle car. A PICKLE CAR. Anthropomorphic animals populating the world instead of people, living their best lives. The bright colors, the cheeky smiles, the lack of plot. These books captured my imagination long after I’d learned to read more sophisticated books. Like…

A Bear Called Paddington – Michael Bond

I was about 7 when I was given my first clothbound chapter book I can remember. And it wrecked me. The story of a talking bear whose family in darkest Peru had sent him to London, with only his little suitcase and a note saying “Please look after this bear” still chokes me up. I loved how his foster family, the Browns, took him in and found it totally normal to have a talking bear getting up to shenanigans and adventures and generally making things better for everyone around him.

Babar the Elephant – Jean de Brunhoff

Like Paddington, Babar was another orphaned talking animal, his parents killed by a hunter (before you declare this plot device plagiarism, it was published a decade before Bambi). He was taken in and educated by a rich old lady, which come to think of it is the basis for the 80s sitcom, Diff’rent Strokes. He returns to Africa, is made ruler by the other elephants because he’s been educated by men, and marries his cousin. Totally normal stuff. What makes this more interesting is how Babar, as ruler of the elephants, has more adventures and leads his kingdom in a war with the rhinos. Colonialism in children’s books was totally normal then. Adding in geopolitics elevated

Doc Savage – Kenneth Robeson (the house name for Lester Dent & other writers)

From the golden age of pulp fiction. Clark Savage Jr. was the ultimate self-made man – master detective, martial artist, scientist, inventor, you name it. He worked from an apartment near the top of the Empire State Building, had a pneumatic tube that took him to a garage full of souped up cars by 1930s standards, even an autogyro when he needed to fly somewhere. Funded all this with his family Mayan gold mine, but devoted his life to improving mankind and fighting evil. He did all this with his wisecracking team, the Fabulous Five.

Continental Op – Dashiell Hammett

Hammett is most well-known for the Maltese Falcon and the Thin Man, both must-haves for any library. His book Red Harvest has been translated to film by everyone from Kurosawa to the Coen Brothers. But beyond those, he wrote a series of stories featuring a pudgy, middle-aged cynic with a conscience – the first of the hardboiled detective archetype. His story, The Gutting of Couffignal, has one of the best final lines: “I had never shot a woman before. I felt queer about it. “You ought to have known I’d do it!” My voice sounded harsh and savage and like a stranger’s in my ears. “Didn’t I steal a crutch from a cripple?”

The Shadow – Walter Gibson

Where the Op and Doc Savage were human, the Shadow was superhuman. The power of invisibility, the ability to hypnotize people and read minds, a master of disguise. He also had a network of operatives, similar to Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars that helped him fight crime. But the villains!

• The Hand (eat your heart out, Elektra)
• The Prince of Evil
• Voodoo Master
• Shiwan Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan

James Bond – Ian Fleming

Growing up, we used to travel to Tulsa every summer to visit my great-grandfather and other family, including my dad. I had seen a couple of the Sean Connery Bond movies, and Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and now, at the flea market in a huge warehouse where I’d search for old Fantastic Four comics, I found a trove of used Bond paperbacks for 10 cents each. I spent the rest of the time that summer plowing through those adventures. A single man taking on global criminal organizations, spy craft, gadgets, sexy shenanigans, exotic locales. Checks all the boxes.

Salem’s Lot – Stephen King

I still thank my 7th grade english teacher, Mrs. Munson for introducing me to King’s writing. One day, a few weeks into the school year, she pulled me aside and gave me her dog-eared paperback copy of Salem’s Lot. Vampires. Ordinary people realizing what’s happening to their little town and coming up with a plot to stop them from spreading. Looking at it now, through the lens of game design, this is a 10/10 dungeon crawl.

Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury

I loved Bradbury’s short stories – The Illustrated Man, Martian Chronicles, October Country – but this coming of age novel is beautiful and wistful. The dark carnival brought in with a change in the weather, wishes coming true, realizing your parents have feet of clay and their own dreams and regrets. The power of friendship. And a father willing to face supernatural forces bigger than him to save his son. Great shit.

His Majesty’s Dragon – Naomi Novik

I picked this up when she was launching the series and Del Rey was giving out free copies at the first NY Comic Con in 2006 and loved it and the rest of the series that followed. The pitch: “Napoleonic war – with dragons for aerial warfare,” but it’s so much more than that. Excellent seafaring action sequences worthy of Patrick O’Brien, a heartfelt friendship between Temeraire, the dragon, and Captain William Laurence, his human bond, and a rich cast of supporting characters. Novik has other great books, but this is the one I still want to see on a screen one day.

A few other sources from other channels:

Comics & Graphic Novels

• Absolute Wonder Woman – Kelly Thompson
• Lazarus – Greg Rucka
• Criminal – Ed Brubaker
• Sandman – Neil Gaiman
• Swamp Thing – Alan Moore
• Manhunter – Archie Goodwin
• Thor – Walt Simonson
• The Question – Denny O’Neil

Movies & TV Shows

• Swiss Family Robinson
• Pippi Longstockings
• Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
• Dark Shadows
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker
• Twilight Zone/Night Gallery
• Wild Wild West
• The Question
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Clones
• Fright Night
• Rear Window
• Rockford Files
• Scooby Doo: Where Are You
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer

As I look at themes, I come back to how I might use these. Two thoughts that come to mind:

1. Animals as characters. I’ve found a few games like Wanderhome, Karst, Mausritter, Root and Humblewood that do this. While some fall into the cozy game realm, others have some greater risk, factions, challenges and rewards associated. What would the characters from Busytown do if confronted with an evil overlord threatening their families? What would a dungeon crawl look like in Babar’s kingdom?
2. Opportunities to mash up genres, similar to what Chaosium has done with Pulp Cthulhu, or Gauntlet has done with Brindlewood Bay (Murder She Wrote mashed up with H.P. Lovecraft).

Whatever the case, I’ve got an Appendix N starting point. Now I just need to tap into the wellspring to come up with the front of the book.