D&D General Is Appendix N Still Relevant to D&D?

[Parmandur]

ERBurroughs At the Earths Core

OK, this one really is a Gygax Ian dungeon crawl, fair point.

 

[Umbran]

Abraham Merritt's The Moon Pool, REHoward Conan in Red Nails (also Tower of the Elephant and God in the Bowl), ERBurroughs At the Earths Core, HRHaggards 'She', even Lovecrafts At the Mountains of Madness. All involve Dungeoncrawling.

In modern analysis, I don't know that'd I'd take Lovecraft as "pulp", despite where it was first published. But that's a side argument.

In the huge body of work that comprises the pulps, what you mention here is a tiny smattering of examples. The pulps covered romance, crime, detective, and Westerns alongside the fantasy and sci-fi. Dungeons... not terribly characteristic.

And, to be brutally honest, early D&D dungeon crawling is risk averse. That is the probably the last phrase you could apply to pulp fiction. Pulps are action packed and brazen, not fiddling long with a ten-foot pole to avoid traps.

 

[Umbran]

There are a couple examples in Conan that qualify, and Moria of course,

Tolkien's work is many things - pulp it ain't.

 

[Tonguez]

Are Wonderland and Oz not dungeons?

Oz is a road trip

but Wonderland absolutely is - it starts by Alice going underground via a rabbit hole then has her on an obstacle-filled journey through confined, dangerous spaces

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oz is a road trip

There are Oz stories that take place underground (especially the ones where they take the fight to the Nome King), but nearly all of them are wilderness point crawls, in D&D terms.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It doesn't. But in "Jewels of Gwahlur," there's a scene where Conan enters a room searching for the treasure that reads like an old school D&D game with him searching for secret doors and alcoves. I only just read it about 8 years ago and it completely cracked me up. But I'm guessing the wargame DNA in D&D might be why dungeon crawlers were so popular.

There are a couple of occasions in the original stories that read as exploring a dungeon, but with one key exception: there is only one monster. This is one reason I have issues with trying to shoehorn attrition into adventures. If one big monster fight is good enough for Conan it's good enough for me.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Oz is a road trip

but Wonderland absolutely is - it starts by Alice going underground via a rabbit hole then has her on an obstacle-filled journey through confined, dangerous spaces

Wonderland is more like Ravenloft than a dungeon. The varies scenes are connected by dream transitions, not tunnels.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

Wonderland is more like Ravenloft than a dungeon. The varies scenes are connected by dream transitions, not tunnels.

Of course that starts to beg the question of what is a dungeon. Does a dungeon have to take place underground? Is a city scenario where you have keyed locations (maybe some sort of haunted city or whatever) that are dangerous count as a dungeon? In "Beyond the Magic Mirror", the old TSR module, the whole thing takes place sort of outdoors but, it's most definitely, IMO, a dungeon crawl.

Or, to put it another way, is the above ground level of the Moat House in Village of Hommlet not a dungeon but the underground part is? I'd call the whole thing a dungeon honestly.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

While I think that Appendix N still has an influence on current D&D, in general I think D&D has increasingly become its own genre. Its references are itself, a recursive loop.

 

[zerofor]

Controversial opinion: I'm not sure if Appendix N was ever relevant, as it mostly features solo (or maybe duo) protagonists, & 99% of D&D experiences involve a balanced group of archetypes.