Quote from: Dumarest;968095Using the words "inferior to" before "The Da Vinci Code" and "Fifty Shades of Grey" must be some sort of oxymoron. And comparing those to "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" and "Treasure Island" is the literary equivalent of a hate crime or at least tantamount to treason.

Extreme examples to make my point.

And let's not forget all the other fantasy and sf classics written for children. Many of them appear on Gygax's Appendix N for...gasp...AD&D!

Not only Norton, Tolkien and Williamson but also one of the finest books on the list, Bellairs' masterful Face in the Frost. And of course many of the readers of Zelazny, Moorcock, Brackett and Howard were kids.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968092Exactly.

The weirdass thing is that people assume Gygax's old rules don't work, rather than they are perfectly functional but for a different style of play.  Which baffles the fuck out of me.  Nobody writes rules that don't work, and especially nobody writes rules that don't work and then go from a standing start to a million dollar company in less than five years.

Assume that Gygax wasn't a complete moron, and assume that the rules work as intended.  You don't have to like that play style, but don't be an utter fuckwit.

It's interesting that you put it this way, because you grew up on the same literature that Gygax did.  Someone who entered the hobby in the 90s, most likely did not.  That Johnson guy people are talking about specifically says one of the reasons he went back to Appendix N was that the AD&D rules didn't work for the playstyles he knew and the fantasy he had read, and he didn't assume Gary was a complete moron, he assumed there might be something he was missing.  So where to look?  Gary's literary inspirations he drew upon when creating that playstyle.  He started reading Appendix N, and shit started making sense to him.  So that of course makes him a Talmudic Terrorist. :rolleyes:

I have no idea how Jack Williamson, who wrote time-travelling space operas, kid-friendly sf and one excellent adult werewolf novel, has anything to do with D&D. His inclusion on the list backs up the idea that this was a 'off the top of my head' list from Gygax.

Quote from: Voros;968116I have no idea how Jack Williamson, who wrote time-travelling space operas, kid-friendly sf and one excellent adult werewolf novel, has anything to do with D&D. His inclusion on the list bscks up the idea that his was a 'off the top of my head' list from Gygax.

So therefore the rest have nothing to do with it either, huh?  Poul Anderson doesn't count either I guess. :rolleyes:

"Why does the idea that Gygax got specific ideas for D&D from specific sources, and that these can be identified, seem to offend some people?” - Some guy I just read

That's a dodge that avoids my question.

In fact you'd be hard pressed to turn Three Hearts and Three Lions or The Broken Sword into a D&D campaign.

Look at what Gygax himself said:

"The following authors were of particular inspiration to me. In some cases I cite specific works, in others, I simply recommend all of their fantasy writing to you. From such sources, as well as any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!
...
 The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. For this reason, and for the hours of reading enjoyment, I heartily recommend the works of these fine authors to you."

'Pluck kernels from which the fruits...' Gygax's talent was for magpie invention not Zolaist Naturalism.

PS. Please explain how Williamson's pulp sf is reflected in D&D.

Realize what the money quote is..."pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns".  That's what Leiber and Howard, Sword & Sorcery, pulp sci-fi and fantasy had...a myriad of adventures, not just Save the World over and over and over and over again.  There's a dynamism to that earlier fiction - of genres not yet set, and defined, and marketed.  A free-wheeling set of adventures from across the globe or the cosmos, ie. Sandbox Not Plot Arc.  It's worldbuilding every bit as vital as Tolkien's but from a micro level, from the individual up, not from the macro, from the Myth down.

Estar's pretty much right when he says all "Naturalism" really is about is making a believable world to have adventures in and let the characters drive what happens.  That's not what you get if your diet of fantasy literature starts in 1988.

How many people have to read Howard, Lieber and Vance for the first time and say "Oh, that's what the hell Gary was talking about." for people to get it?

Quote from: Voros;968119PS. Please explain how Williamson's pulp sf is reflected in D&D.

There's 50 some books there, have you read every single one?

"all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game." - Gary Gygax
I choose to simply take the man at his word.
You choose to make him out to be a liar because...that's the part I haven't figured out yet.

You obviously care about this, to spend more time on KKA and DF than the mods do, so why don't you ask his kids, they're still alive.

A cursory glance of Williamson tells me the Cosmeteers could have been part of the inspiration for all the Psionic creatures that attack from the Ethereal and Astral Planes, oh and Wall of Force.

I've actually read some Jack Williamson and would count myself a fan of his but I think further discussion of Appendix N is probably best done on the already existing thread. The Legion of Space/Time books are much more clearly an influence on Star Wars and modernist space opera than D&D.

Quote from: CRKrueger;968120Realize what the money quote is..."pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns".  That's what Leiber and Howard, Sword & Sorcery, pulp sci-fi and fantasy had...a myriad of adventures, not just Save the World over and over and over and over again.  There's a dynamism to that earlier fiction - of genres not yet set, and defined, and marketed.  A free-wheeling set of adventures from across the globe or the cosmos, ie. Sandbox Not Plot Arc.  It's worldbuilding every bit as vital as Tolkien's but from a micro level, from the individual up, not from the macro, from the Myth down.

Estar's pretty much right when he says all "Naturalism" really is about is making a believable world to have adventures in and let the characters drive what happens.  That's not what you get if your diet of fantasy literature starts in 1988.

How many people have to read Howard, Lieber and Vance for the first time and say "Oh, that's what the hell Gary was talking about." for people to get it?

Sorry but in Lieber the world-building is not a sand-box. The vast majority of his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories are rooted in character, not setting. Vance is a masterful world builder but his extreme use of distancing language and his love of satire and irony produce something completely unlike D&D. Vance is as far from Naturalism as it is possible for a writer to be, his baroque style is reminscent of the French decadents who inspired Clark Ashton Smith or even the French New Novelists of the 60s.

To read these authors via D&D is to reduce them significantly.

Quote from: Voros;968128Sorry but in Lieber the world-building is not a sand-box. The vast majority of his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories are rooted in character, not setting. Vance is a masterful world builder but his extreme use of distancing language and his love of satire and irony produce something completely unlike D&D. Vance is as far from Naturalism as it is possible for a writer to be, his baroque style is reminscent of the French decadents who inspired Clark Ashton Smith or even the French New Novelists of the 60s.

To read these authors via D&D is to reduce them significantly.

It would if you look past the surface.  But if you simply look at the top layer of all the stories, the shallowest cut of them, D&D steals effectively.  There's no level of academic searching required here.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;968131It would if you look past the surface.  But if you simply look at the top layer of all the stories, the shallowest cut of them, D&D steals effectively.  There's no level of academic searching required here.

Says the guy who's never played any of the versions of D&D we're talking about. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Christopher Brady;968131It would if you look past the surface.  But if you simply look at the top layer of all the stories, the shallowest cut of them, D&D steals effectively.  There's no level of academic searching required here.

I know what you're saying but there's no D&D adventure I know that has even the surface of Ill Met in Lankhmar or Lean Times in Lankhmar. To even attempt that kind of adventure would be considered some kind of storygamer heresy by some.

Quote from: CRKrueger;968133Says the guy who's never played any of the versions of D&D we're talking about. :rolleyes:

Oh come on.

Taking a look at Conan's adventures, if you ignore the fact that the locations are just vehicles for the adventures, and that it's all about Conan, you see things like a Romanesque empire, situated beside a country that's like a romanticized version of the 15th century knight-kingdoms, where across the river is a Renaissance Italy wannabe and far south is an ancient evil Egyptian empire.  Pretty much what Greyhawk and most other settings turn out to be, originally.

But if you actually look deeper, you realize that the locations in the short stories mean very little, other than to have Conan prove that the 'Barbarian' way of life is the right way, that all the trappings of what we call civilization is corrupt or foolish, and will be washed away by the brutal, murderous honesty of the Cimmerian path, or some such bullocks.  And Conan proves it by surviving every adventure, even to the point of saving the girl (should there be one, and she's not 'evil', like the Frost Giant's Daughter, or Salome.)

Fritz Leiber's Lanhkmar is a cosmopolitan city where humans, demons and monsters live together in a somewhat cohesive whole, again, sole purpose is to prove a backdrop for Fafrd and the Grey Mouser to have adventures, not to make too much sense, and no D&D city does, because it works on a similar theme.

Hell, even the elves and dwarves of fantasy, that Gygax hated to the point of wanting to punish players for choosing them, by capping their levels and limit their class choices for really arbitrary reasons, because he didn't like Lord of The Rings were just thrown in hodge podge with no real indepth look as to how Tolkien justified it in LoTR.

There's nothing deep here.  Just a shallow scoop of flavours that Gygax and Arneson thought was cool and tossed into the bucket that turns out to be the most famous RPG in all of history.

And let me be clear here, there's nothing wrong with any of this.  It's how it's pretty much is.