I don't know that Gygax was specifically doing that with the appendix, but he definitely had opinions about how the game was meant to be run throughout the book in general, and it did help turn the appendix into a sledgehammer for gatekeepers to use. Gygax is the authority, if you don't run the game the way he tells you to run, if your games don't look like the stories listed in appendix N, etc. etc. you're doing it wrong.
Which absolutely happened and still happens, though not to nearly same extent (what once was gatekeeping has been reduced to old men yelling at clouds).
I don't think the original appendix N was bad or that a new appendix N would be bad either, just that there was historical gatekeeping and it did rely, on part, on what was in appendix N
Gygax was schizophrenic with the DMG. For every "You are doing it the wrong way if you don't do it my way," he has a "It's your game and you can change whatever you want." The former because he was trying to get you to buy D&D books, and the latter because that's what he believed personally and he couldn't help himself, so it escaped into his writing.
Well, Chris Perkins talked about being inspired by The Thing in interviews before RotFM launched, so yeah, I'm pretty sure! But you don't need to be doing a genre to borrow (plagiarise/steel) from it. RotFM isn't particularly horrific, any more than 1970s Doctor Who was horrific (if your age has more than 1 digit) whilst ripping off Frankenstein (hello Morbius, Mary Shelley wants her plot back). There are horror elements you can play up or tone down as you wish. Horror is all just aesthetics.
As for specific details, the secrets that PCs are supposed to have at the start are intended to produce paranoia amongst the players, like the characters in the isolated Antarctic base.
One of them is being infected by a Slaad tadpole. There is a room in the adventure that features a large dining table. The text suggests that this would be a good place for the tadpole to burst out of the PCs chest if it hasn't been dealt with. There is art for the chest-bursting tadpole. On art, the crashed flying city frozen in the glacier looks very like the crashed flying saucer from Thing from Another World. The art for the Coldlight Walker looks more like the movie poster from The Thing more than anything that was actually in the movie did. And lots of other odds and bods, like a sidequest involving a crashed nautaloid. There is also a monster called Tekeli-li, in a reference to At the Mountains of Madness.
Gygax was schizophrenic with the DMG. For every "You are doing it the wrong way if you don't do it my way," he has a "It's your game and you can change whatever you want." The former because he was trying to get you to buy D&D books, and the latter because that's what he believed personally and he couldn't help himself, so it escaped into his writing.
My players commented on how the first five or so adventures are pretty much straight up horror. To the point they asked if I was doing a Ravenloft bait and switch.
"...In some cases I cite specific works, in others, I simply recommend all their fantasy writing to you. From such sources, as well as well as just about any other imaginative writing or screenplay you will be able to pluck kernels from which grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!"
He literally tells you that just about any imaginative writing or screenplay out there will have stuff for DM inspiration. That's the exact opposite of, "THIS IS WHAT D&D IS."
I had a subject in college called 'legal methodology'.
One of its educational goals was 'the student can reconstruct the content of the sources consulted and can synthesize and demonstrate insight into the information extracted from the texts.'
If social media discussions are anything to go by (this one included), then it would be better if methodology was a compulsory subject in elementary school.
I had a subject in college called 'legal methodology'.
One of its educational goals was 'the student can reconstruct the content of the sources consulted and can synthesize and demonstrate insight into the information extracted from the texts.'
If social media discussions are anything to go by (this one included), then it would be better if methodology was a compulsory subject in elementary school.
Late to the party (though I did read the whole thread) and I have to say, like many others, I get why they didn't do it, but it's still kind of sad.
It was fun to compare Appendix E (the 2014 one) and the original Appendix N and see what they added. Even used it as a resource to 'catch up' on fantasy after I quit in the late 90s due to college getting in the way.
Similar to the original Appendix N, just say 'these were our inspirations'. If nothing else, D&D is famous for people doing their own stuff with it, so just because they didn't have Outlaws of the Water Margin, Neuromancer, or Uprooted on their list doesn't mean you can't use them to inspire your own setting.
