Blue Orange
Gone to Texas
There's a pretty common discussion about what parts of 1e come from where, and a lot of people know by now thieves come from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, fireballs are catapults and lightning bolts are cannon, intelligent manipulative swords come from Moorcock's Elric, law and chaos come from Moorcock and Poul Anderson, the displacer beast is Van Vogt's coeurl, the mind-frying tomes are from Lovecraft and the mind flayer from the cover of one of Brian Lumley's works in his tradition, the ranger is Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, monks are from Remo Williams' The Destroyer book series, forgettable spells are from Jack Vance's Dying Earth, and the fighter is a lot of people but mostly Conan the Barbarian (soon to get his own character class).
But...what have they added? D&D has done things since 1979. They've added sorcerers, tieflings, dragonborn, warlocks, twig blights, chuuls, flameskulls, half-dragons, helmed horrors, nothics, oni, shield guardians, fulminating treatises, immovable rods, and countless other things we think are normal. And the people making it have read their own share of fantasy novels, not to mention movies and now anime, many of which were themselves heavily inspired by D&D. So where does the last 40 years of D&D come from?
Here's a link to Appendix E, from 5th edition (and this really ought to be fair use):
https://stepintorpgs.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/appendix-e.jpg
As far as I can tell, 5th is the first edition since 1st to include an inspirational reading list.
From what I can tell, the books they've added (i.e., this is Appendix E-N, or Appendix -I if you're doing ASCII math):
Saladin Ahmed, Throne of the Crescent Moon
Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain (The Book of Three is mentioned specifically)
Piers Anthony, Split Infinity series (Apprentice Adept mentioned specifically)
Lady Augusta Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men
Elizabeth Bear, Eternal Sky trilogy (spec. Range of Ghosts)
Terry Brooks, The Sword of Shannara.
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology.
Glen Cook, The Black Company.
Brian and Alan Lee Froud, Faeries.
Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, Chronicles series [Dragonlance]
William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land
N.K. Jemisin, Inheritance Trilogy (esp Hundred Thousand Kingdoms), Killing Moon, Shadowed Sun
Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time series (esp Eye of the World)
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
Stephen King, The Eyes of the Dragon
Ursula LeGuin, Wizard of Earthsea series
Scott Lynch, Gentleman Bastard series (esp Lies of Locke Lamora)
George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones series
China Mieville, Bas-Lag series (esp Perdido Street Station)
Andre Norton, Quag Keep and Witch World series
Patrick Rothfuss, Kingkiller series (esp Name of the Wind)
R.A. Salvatore, The Crystal Shard and the rest of the Drizzt stories
Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast series (esp Titus Groan)
Terry Pratchett, Discworld series (Colour of Magic)
Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn series
Clark Ashton Smith, Return of the Sorcerer
Nikolai Tolstoy, Coming of the King
Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun series
Now a lot of this is a greatest hits of the last four decades (Wolfe's New Sun series is a masterpiece of speculative fiction but doesn't really seem connected to D&D), but they say these are their inspirations. (And, you know, Salvatore and Weis & Hickman are definitely a huge part of what people think of...I'm sure you all remember the Raistlin and Drizzt fanboys, and some of you were them.) So...what can you find here? The dragonborn seem to be inspired by Dragonlance draconians, but I can't think of any other examples, and many new things probably come from other sources. (Oni come from Japanese myth, for instance.) But I bet many of you can!
But...what have they added? D&D has done things since 1979. They've added sorcerers, tieflings, dragonborn, warlocks, twig blights, chuuls, flameskulls, half-dragons, helmed horrors, nothics, oni, shield guardians, fulminating treatises, immovable rods, and countless other things we think are normal. And the people making it have read their own share of fantasy novels, not to mention movies and now anime, many of which were themselves heavily inspired by D&D. So where does the last 40 years of D&D come from?
Here's a link to Appendix E, from 5th edition (and this really ought to be fair use):
https://stepintorpgs.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/appendix-e.jpg
As far as I can tell, 5th is the first edition since 1st to include an inspirational reading list.
From what I can tell, the books they've added (i.e., this is Appendix E-N, or Appendix -I if you're doing ASCII math):
Saladin Ahmed, Throne of the Crescent Moon
Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain (The Book of Three is mentioned specifically)
Piers Anthony, Split Infinity series (Apprentice Adept mentioned specifically)
Lady Augusta Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men
Elizabeth Bear, Eternal Sky trilogy (spec. Range of Ghosts)
Terry Brooks, The Sword of Shannara.
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology.
Glen Cook, The Black Company.
Brian and Alan Lee Froud, Faeries.
Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, Chronicles series [Dragonlance]
William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land
N.K. Jemisin, Inheritance Trilogy (esp Hundred Thousand Kingdoms), Killing Moon, Shadowed Sun
Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time series (esp Eye of the World)
Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana
Stephen King, The Eyes of the Dragon
Ursula LeGuin, Wizard of Earthsea series
Scott Lynch, Gentleman Bastard series (esp Lies of Locke Lamora)
George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones series
China Mieville, Bas-Lag series (esp Perdido Street Station)
Andre Norton, Quag Keep and Witch World series
Patrick Rothfuss, Kingkiller series (esp Name of the Wind)
R.A. Salvatore, The Crystal Shard and the rest of the Drizzt stories
Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast series (esp Titus Groan)
Terry Pratchett, Discworld series (Colour of Magic)
Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn series
Clark Ashton Smith, Return of the Sorcerer
Nikolai Tolstoy, Coming of the King
Gene Wolfe, Book of the New Sun series
Now a lot of this is a greatest hits of the last four decades (Wolfe's New Sun series is a masterpiece of speculative fiction but doesn't really seem connected to D&D), but they say these are their inspirations. (And, you know, Salvatore and Weis & Hickman are definitely a huge part of what people think of...I'm sure you all remember the Raistlin and Drizzt fanboys, and some of you were them.) So...what can you find here? The dragonborn seem to be inspired by Dragonlance draconians, but I can't think of any other examples, and many new things probably come from other sources. (Oni come from Japanese myth, for instance.) But I bet many of you can!
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