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

[Thomas Shey]

At my table, your reality is irrelevant. That doesn't mean every conversation about D&D must come down to that but, if someone asks "what is relevant to D&D", it is absolutely my position that we each get to decide that for ourselves. So, in this specific conversation, my argument doesn't decay to that -- my argument is that.

D&D is not the game at your table. They are (probably) overlapping sets (presuming you play something you consider D&D) but not identical sets. Something can apply to the external set and not the internal one and vice versa.

I don't see why there has to be agreement. I mean, I agree it's something. But I most certainly don't have to agree that it's what someone else says it is.

Nor do I think that everybody treating D&D as whatever they want to treat it as prevents discussion. I mean, it looks like we disagree, but we're still discussing it and, even if we can't hammer out some precise, technical definition of what D&D is that we both agree on, I'm pretty confident that we have more in common than not, and we can both look at 100 examples of things that might be D&D, and we'd put most stuff in the same "is D&D" and "isn't D&D" buckets.

You aren't discussing it. You're discussing with the conversation at hand can meaningfully occur. Its a metadiscussion of the topic.

 

[CharlesWallace]

now that title makes more sense…

It's also a fantastic book with great art. I love it. I didn't see the movie because the trailer felt so different than the book.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

now that title makes more sense…

There are a lot of houses without clocks on the walls in your typical pseudo-medieval setting!

Of course, in the Shire, they have barometers instead.

 

[mamba]

There are a lot of houses without clocks on the walls in your typical pseudo-medieval setting!

agreed, which made the house nothing special…

 

[Barner Cobblewood]

Yes, in my initial post I worked a little harder to make it clear the group at the table decides, not any one individual. As a group activity, all the participants in a given game get a say.

I disagree that a wider community gets to decide what happens at a specific table just because it exists inside that community. The opinions and ideas of others might influence what occurs, but it's still the people engaged in the actual game that make the ultimate decisions.

I wonder if this as true as it once was. I have limited experience playing online, and I didn't like it much, because at the moment the platforms don't really support what I think of as the "tabletop" experience. The computer makes the rolls, the map can't be altered on the fly, people can't all talk at once, etc. I thought the experience was shaped much more by what the platform was capable of than the players at the table.

Want to note that I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just noting that it's different: It's driven far more by "global" standards than "local" custom, and I think it will remain so.

Anyway, end result is that as players we can now belong to many more communities than we could before, and as a result things like rule sets and appendix ns have different functions and influence than they used to.

 

[Voadam]

So there was Appendix N in the 1979 1e DMG:

The 1981 Moldvay B/X Basic Inspirational Source Material list:

And the 2014 5e PH Appendix E Inspirational Reading list

These are the ones I am aware of in D&D, were there any others?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have limited experience playing online, and I didn't like it much, because at the moment the platforms don't really support what I think of as the "tabletop" experience. The computer makes the rolls, the map can't be altered on the fly, people can't all talk at once, etc. I thought the experience was shaped much more by what the platform was capable of than the players at the table.

I think the most popular way of playing online nowadays isn't with a VTT, but just voice over internet, usually via Discord, with the GM typically posting illustrations and maps to the chat channel on the Discord server.

Still not exactly like playing around the table, but it means a lot less worrying about how FantasyGrounds or Roll20 want you to do things. I agree that those platforms definitely make you think about the platform first, rather than the RPG in question, which is also a problem for me.

 

[Mannahnin]

I wonder if this as true as it once was. I have limited experience playing online, and I didn't like it much, because at the moment the platforms don't really support what I think of as the "tabletop" experience. The computer makes the rolls, the map can't be altered on the fly, people can't all talk at once, etc. I thought the experience was shaped much more by what the platform was capable of than the players at the table.

The talk all at once thing remains the biggest difference, IME.

I've played with groups which still used physical dice on the honor system. In a group video call the DM can even have a separate account and webcam pointing at his dice tray to keep the excitement of everyone seeing his combat rolls in the open.

I've also played with groups which still did paper mapping from DM description while playing online. Every VTT I've used allows you to draw on maps and change them a bit on the fly. If you want to do major revisions on the fly a shared online whiteboard app might be a better tool. And as WD pointed out, the DM can also do the trick of showing the players illustrations and maps over a chat tool.

 

[Lanefan]

Something has been gnawing at me every time I see this thread title. I've finally worked out what it is.

The question seems to assume that there is some higher authority (even if in this case the authority might just be, "the general consensus at EnWorld") that has any say over what is relevant to D&D. Maybe that's true, with respect to D&D as a lifestyle brand. But, as far as the game happening around your table, it's not.

What's relevant to D&D is what you and the players you're gaming with decide it is. No one controls that, but the group doing the gaming. That has always, and will always, be the case.

On a micro scale, i.e. at each individual table, this is completely correct.

However, the remaining degree of influence of Appendix N at the macro scale, i.e. at the game-design level that in theory affects everyone who plays current-version D&D, would seem a valid topic for discussion.

 

[Mannahnin]

So there was Appendix N in the 1979 1e DMG:

The 1981 Moldvay B/X Basic Inspirational Source Material list:

And the 2014 5e PH Appendix E Inspirational Reading list

These are the ones I am aware of in D&D, were there any others?

I am not aware of any others in any official edition of D&D. Gary did post some expanded recommendations and additions in Q&A threads here and on Dragonsfoot in the years prior to his death.

DCC quotes Gary's Appendix N in its entirety, and has a two page introduction to it and page and a half post script to it digging into it, mentioning two authors widely considered to be oversights on it (Clark Ashton Smith and William Hope Hodgson) and multiple movies which were not included (The Raven (1963), Horror of Dracula), and expanding on it with others like Karl Edward Wagner, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, and Harold Lamb.

Algernon Blackwood, incidentally, was on Gary's first draft of Appendix N, published in Dragon issue #4, Dec 1976.

Dolmenwood has its own list of inspirational media, which I believe is in the books, and is available in the free Welcome to Dolmenwood PDF.