The Mule Abides

A mere 10 months ago (hot off the presses by what James refers to as our shambolic standards), “The Problem with Appendix N” over at Grognardia lamented:

Yet, for all that, Appendix N suffers from a very clear problem, one that has limited its utility as a guide for understanding Dungeons & Dragons as Gary Gygax understood it: it’s just a list. Gygax, unfortunately, provides no commentary on any of the authors or works included in the list, stating only that those he included “were of particular inspiration” He later emphasizes that certain authors, like Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft, among others, played a stronger role in “help[ing] to shape the form of the game.” Beyond these brief remarks, Gygax says nothing else about what he found inspirational in these books and authors or why he selected them over others he chose not to include.

Great news! When Gygax was promoting a scrappy young game called Dungeons & Dragons to science fiction & fantasy faans in “SWORDS & SORCERY IS A GAME TOO!”, published in the SF & F Journal (#87, 22 February 1976), he included some brief annotations for context:

In no particular order, I mention some of the authors who most strongly influenced its creation: A. Merritt (fantasy and super­ science), Lovecraft (horrible alien gods), Howard (the super-hero), Leiber (the adventure on parallel earths), de Camp & Pratt (treating myths and mythos as ad­venture), Poul Anderson (the heroic quest), Tolkien (the complete epic), Vance (magic and imagination), Burroughs (the pit adventure), as well as Brackett, Farmer, St. Clair, Fox, Haggard, Petaja, and Saberhagen.

The astute reader will pick up on some genre drift in this list; Gygax will go on to clarify:

It is also worth noting that the very flexible guidelines of D&D allow it to be mixed with virtually any historical period or created history. Thus games can be moved backwards to the ancient, integrated with modern technology, placed upon a post-atomic war Earth peopled by mutants, or sprinkled with true science fic­tion. In this regard it is a true fantasy game rather than a strict swords & sorcery one.

I am tempted to go into why someone in ’76 would have a caveat regarding “strict swords & sorcery”, but I think that’s another post.

To refresh our memories, the hoary Appendix N says that the “most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt.” If we can assume that D&D and AD&D were influenced in similar ways, looking outside gaming to fiction fandom provides some interesting context for those authors (and a couple besides, hello again to Poul Anderson and to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien).