> Skip to content
  • Published: 17 August 2021
  • ISBN: 9781907222740
  • Imprint: MIT Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 340
  • RRP: $29.99

Appendix N

The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons



An investigation of the literary influences behind the most popular role-playing games.

An anthology investigating the influences behind Dungeons & Dragons, the most popular modern role-playing game.

 

Drawing upon the original list of “inspirational reading” provided by Gary Gygax in the first Dungeon Master's Guide, published in 1979, as well as hobbyist magazines and related periodicals that helped to define the modern role-playing game, Appendix N offers a colletion of short fiction and resonant fragments that reveal the literary influences that shaped Dungeons & Dragons, the world's most popular RPG. The stories in Appendix N contextualize the ambitious lyrical excursions that helped set the adventurous tone and dank, dungeon-crawling atmospheres of fantasy roleplay as we know it today.

Featuring tales by Poul Anderson, Frank Brunner, Ramsey Campbell, Lin Carter, Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, Tanith Lee, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, David Madison, Michael Moorcock, C. L. Moore, Fred Saberhagen, Clark Ashton Smith, Margaret St. Clair, Jack Vance, and Manly Wade Wellman. 

  • Published: 17 August 2021
  • ISBN: 9781907222740
  • Imprint: MIT Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 340
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Peter Bebergal

Peter Bebergal is a writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His writing on speculative and fringe cultures have been published by the Believer, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Yorker, Boing Boing, and the Paris Review. He is the author Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, and Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood.

Also by Peter Bebergal

See all

Praise for Appendix N

"Bebergal, a Dungeons & Dragons playing rock fanboy and graduate of Harvard Divinity School has exactly the right pedigree for this line of work, infusing what could be a dry litany of rumors, hearsay, and matter-of-facts with a genuine love for the source material." --Cooper Berkmoyer, Flavorpill