D&D General What were the true influences of "Appendix N"?

[KoolMoDaddy-O]

It is difficult to parse the 1e barbarian, and hence its 5e descendants, from Howard's Conan.

 

[VashVet]

I think @SothFan is actually asking about how the influences made it into the game, and in what form (which is why I started with the easy one of Vancian casting).

I am actually curious about how the thief came to be and what material directly influenced its various abilities. By the time I discovered D&D in the early 80s, the thief was a staple. But it was not in the first iteration of the game so something must have inspired it.

I guess that depends on whether or not Gygax wanted the vibe of his game to match what happened in a standard Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story. For instance, I see a lot more of them in D&D from just an actual game play standpoint than I do Conan, I.E. little humor, exceptionally competent warrior who could handle everything thrown at him. Fafhrd and GM were much more lovable screwups. The style of the adventures he published just seemed to me more appropriate to them than other books that inspired him.

Regardless, when we joke that every D&D city feels like Lankhmar, and every city worth anything has some sort of thieves guild - clearly there were direct elements taken from Leiber’s stories.

 

[el-remmen]

And also just a really good book. A lot of the Appendix N stuff is so-so at best, but 3H3L is genuinely quality fantasy.

The audio version by Bronson Pinchot is also pretty great. It turns out he has more voices than just Cousin Balki.

 

[Richards]

The osquip is a renamed ulsio from the "John Carter of Mars" series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. (It took until 3E, but the girallon is a renamed great white ape from the same series.)

Johnathan

 

[Voadam]

I am actually curious about how the thief came to be and what material directly influenced its various abilities. By the time I discovered D&D in the early 80s, the thief was a staple. But it was not in the first iteration of the game so something must have inspired it.

Gygax did not come up with the Thief as a class. If memory serves someone did, their friend put a different version out in a zine and Gygax saw that and came up with his own mechanical spin in OD&D Supplement I Greyhawk.

Gygax was a huge Lieber fan and the Gray Mouser seems to match up to a ton of thief mechanical specifics and is always my first thought for an archetype of the original D&D thief's mechanics. Lightly armored but a swordsman who uses his sword and dagger a lot. In the story where GM and Fafhrd meet the two's first actions are to coincidentally strike down opponents with one shots hits from behind launched from their successful hiding in shadows. GM is a former wizard's apprentice who gave up on it and is overconfident in his magical skills, he can read a magical spell off a scroll, but gets it wrong and it misfires, just like an Oe/AD&D thief can do.

Conan is a bit of a thief as well, explicitly called so in the Tower of the Elephant story, where he is not heavily armored but does climb the sheer surface of the Tower to get inside to try and steal its jewels.

Lankhmar is a fantasy version of New York, Greyhawk City is a D&D version of Lankhmar with a bit of a Midwest Chicago Great Lakes slant. Down to the politically powerful thief and assassin guilds.

 

[Voadam]

Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions was very influential. The main influence for the Paladin archetype, regenerating trolls, Hugi the dwarf was an inspiration for D&D gnomes, and (along with Moorcock) Law and Chaos as cosmic teams.

I'd say Hugi was a big inspiration for D&D dwarves. The full sweep of 1e dwarf underground powers of detecting sloping passages and depth underground and such was straight out of Three Hearts and Three Lions. That has continued in modified form throughout editions for dwarves while gnomes lost it long ago.

Tolkien dwarves are big for D&D dwarves, but I don't remember them showing those specific underground things.

 

[Voadam]

Lord of the Rings: Playable dwarves, elves, and wizards. The existence of halflings and orcs, half-orcs, and half-elves. Cursed magic items. Rangers. The quintessential idea of the adventuring party. Wights and Wraiths (undead). Exploring dungeons (Moria). At least 1 type of demon (the “balor” who descends from the balrog)

Also similar to the D&D Balrog which was later renamed the Balor, treants were originally straight ents until they did the renaming.

Spectres were the Nazgul and until 5e were more powerful than wraiths.

 

[Autumnal]

I guess that depends on whether or not Gygax wanted the vibe of his game to match what happened in a standard Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story.

This proves to have a more complicated question than you might think. Over the decades, I’ve had several surreal exchanges with Old Geezer and others from the ur-D&D scene about what it means to have something as an inspiration. They have all assured me, clearly, that it does not mean characters being able to do things protagonists in inspirational stories do, nor events like those in the inspirational stories happen. This seems so weird to me that I’ve asked for clarification in follow-ups, to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. Because when I say that Game X has story Y as an inspiration, I mean get it has made an effort to provide support for characters and events like Y. For them, so nearly as I can tell, it means that you think about it while playing, but don’t and generally shouldn’t try to make the game more like it.

I don’t get that. But I’m confident that I’m not just failing to understand that they actually mean something like I do, just in different words.

 

[Deset Gled]

The Lovecraft stuff is more low hanging fruit, with the infamous appearance of Cthulhu & Friends in Dieties and Demigods before they were removed for legal reasons. Other direct references were made to Lovecraft monsters as well. Dagon gets name dropped in the Monster Manual II, and Google says there were more mythos appearances in magazines, too.

Outside of the specific Lovecraft monsters, many abberations are clearly influenced to his work. Mind flayers, koa toa, gibbering mouthers, just off the top of my head. I'm sure there's a lot more.

 

[TheHand]

Spectres were the Nazgul and until 5e were more powerful than wraiths.

Oh yes, a bit before my time but I remember reading about that!

I’ve been so used to specters being much scarier than wraiths that 5e really threw me off by reversing their power level.