The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons
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thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
Not a single mention of Dave Arneson in it, which pains me. I can forgive the omission of fiction that was inspired by D&D (really, Quag Keep and its greatly lagged sequel are terrible by almost any standard of fiction), but leaving out Arneson verges on the Downright Peculiar.
I've heard it called "Vancian magic" for years, but never looked into where that name came from. Now I know!
However, do not let these criticisms dissuade you from reading. Vance was a very interesting writer, and the Dying Earth setting was highly influential on D&D (not that it originated with him). He would often develop trickster characters who used vocabulary (often slightly wrongly) to seem more intelligent than they were, so there's a certain density to the writing, but it is more than merely packing in the unlikely Scrabble words, there's a playfulness to it which is entertaining when you find it.
Stephen R. Donaldson objects to this comment and implied aspersion!
That sentence reads like you're saying Jack Vance was not the originator of the Dying Earth setting, when he alone kicked off the genre with a book of short stories called the Dying Earth. I'm sure that's not what you meant.
It wasn't a new idea but he more or less summed it up in a succinct manner with an obvious name, then placed multiple stories within a timeline with some overlapping features, a bit like Varley's "Eight Worlds." After Vance made it, I think it entered into the sci-fi consciousness, such as it is, a bit more than some of the earlier works out there which fit, but somehow managed to slide by everyone.
The wikipedia article on the subgenre is terrible, conflating fin de siecle with Dying Earth. Awful on many levels
Arguing the Vance did not actually create the Dying Earth genre because of fin de siecle is like arguing Lovecraft did not invent Lovecraftian horror because some previous authors wrote about terrifying gods.
Welcome to Wikipedia. If you've ever tried to edit something glaringly wrong, even with proof, only to be insta-banned, you get a cookie!
This has caused me to lose all trust in Wikipedia, I find I always have to check the sources/revision pages and even then it's just a clusterfuck.
If it's wrong about something I know, how much of it is wrong that I've no clue about?
Also do you or OP have a list of some of these books? They sound right up my alley.
My opinion is that the subgenre should by definition be self-consciously set in that world or something similar, and some of the novels that do that are from
Michael Shea: https://goodman-games.com/blog/2021/07/20/the-other-cugels-s...
GRRM: https://georgerrmartin.com/grrm_book/songs-of-the-dying-eart...
Mathew Hewes: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1743870.Majestrum
I know there are others, but I'd say start with Jack Vance. He's an underrated genius.
Instead of being an oddball power which you had to luck into, and which a lot of house rules just ignored, everyone had some psionic ability. There were specialized psionicists as well, but it was just a world where sentient beings (being D&D there were some racial exceptions) had psionic power.
To be fair, I have never looked at Dark Sun.
I think psionics could be workable, in a certain light, but that's the subject of a rather half-baked and long essay series I have been kicking about for a decade as to how to "fix" many of the issues in D&D in a way that does not result in the Endless Next Edition problem.
I was looking through my old books recently. The player rules for Planescape, another massively different campaign setting, was ~30 pages. Some of that was full page art, and they dedicated one page to each of the 16 factions (including non-factioned, IIRC). With all the jargon, lingo, and weirdness in Planescape, it was almost all lore changes. Under the hood, it was still the same old AD&D.
In the first Dark Sun Campaign Setting box set, you get two main books: one book of lore and one book of mechanical changes. Each book is ~120 pages. There are rules for new races, new classes, new weapons, new armor, new spells, new environmental hazards, etc. The setting was 50% new lore and 50% new and changed mechanics. And DSCS didn't even have rules for psionics in it! They had a couple pages detailing the new psionic character creation rules, but it literally tells you to use the Complete Psionics Handbook! (The second Dark Sun Campaign Setting included a ~90 page psionics book that includes most of that content.)
Regarding Arneson, you can find documentaries online and books. Here are some other sources:
Rules for Middle Earth by Leonard Patt (~late 1970): https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-precursor-t...
Tolkien was reportedly mentioned in versions of Chainmail (Gygax's precursor to D&D) and OD&D (the rare, staple-bound ~prototype/MVP version predating the breakthrough editions, Basic and Advanced D&D), but after an IP dispute the Tolkien references were removed and Gygax repeatedly disclaimed any interest in or influence by Tolkien, despite obvious similarities. There are also articles Gygax wrote for late-1960s fanzine, Thangorodrim, where he openly adopts Tolkien material: https://archive.org/search.php?query=thangorodrim
There are no doubt teenagers who think Thor, Loki, Snow White etc. were all thought up by Disney/Marvel. Disney has been laundering (and copyrighting) folk history for a century now, and Marvel mythology for a little less time.
Almost every fiction ever written does that. It makes better stories, arguably: 1) Those stories persisted across eons for a reason, and 2) it anchors the new story in something people already have an understanding of.
Credit used to be given, now it is stolen.
Definitely – Dave Arneson being the co-creator of D&D, via his legendary Blackmoor game/campaign. The original D&D rules, the Blackmoor supplement and setting, and the Temple of the Frog dungeon were all derived from Arneson's game.
Arneson was brilliant and his work is inspiring; I can only imagine how amazing it would have been to take a game design course from him when he taught at Full Sail in the 2000s.
[EDIT] Link (amazon, sorry):
https://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615...
It seems like this is very much this author’s spin on his version of Appendix N, rather than primarily an exploration of the actual Appendix N. More like what he’d like Appendix N to be rather than what it actually was.
AD&D particularly is at least 50% Middle Earth the roleplaying game, and the other 50% split among all the other influences. Halflings, elves (even specific types of elves ripped directly), dwarves, rangers, orcs, dragons, wights, wraiths, walking trees, goblins riding wolves, magic swords, magic rings, mithril, magic cloaks and boots, giant spiders, giant eagles, were-bears, it’s hard to think of anything in Tolkien at all that isn’t directly cut-and-pasted. Meanwhile yes specific elements were taken from other settings, such as the magic and a few other things from Vance, and the barbarian class from Howard, maybe thieves and thieves guilds from Lieber. The Cleric is an interesting one, it was added specifically for a vampire hunting adventure in the Blackmoor campaign. Middle Earth provides the base layer the whole thing is built on though.
Edit/answer: Yes. Changed due to legal threats from Saul Zaentz/Middle Earth Enterprises
see https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/116283/why-arent-hal...
I'm not familiar with most of these, but it seems to me AD&D is basically entirely Tolkien aside from the level and pervasive nature of magic. The monster manual seems the biggest giveaway.
The races (halflings instead of hobbits, the elves are 99% tolkien elves), overall tech level and setting, etc are straight Tolkien.
Can anyone comment as to how much the other authors used the same tropes for elves / orcs / dragons / etc?
Edit: As mentioned above, Vancian magic, and the Tolkien lawsuit/complaints would explain the de-emphasis.
Also, I second the "Stan Lee" component.
Also, what are the EL comics referenced in App.N?
While Tolkien is clearly an influence, there are many, many others too; to a degree AD&D seems to me to be a collection of all the myths Gygax knew or found. There is much in the Monster Manual that isn't in Tolkien (the medusa, demons and devils, etc.). Apparently some creatures in the Monster Manual came from a bag of plastic toys, which the authors used for inspiration and created backstories.
https://goodman-games.com/blog/2018/03/26/what-is-appendix-n...
https://www.amazon.com/Appendix-Literary-History-Dungeons-Dr...
I am looking forward to reading them to my daughter though, some time after she learns to understand words.
I think that Dragons of Autumn Twilight still holds up reasonably well as a Tolkienesque derivative. I somewhat enjoyed reading the other two in that set and don't regret having re-read them. I enjoyed a few scenes from the Twins books, but otherwise I should probably have left those to my fond memories instead.
I still also have fond memories of a few other of the Dragonlance books, though now I hesitate to attempt them again.
I don’t know of any d&d novels that I would recommend to adults that don’t play the game.
I've read a lot of forgotten realms books, and Dragonlance, but as I've grown I wanted something more adult I guess.
I've read the Malazan Book of The Fallen series and loved it but I felt it went off-rails, I prefer sagas that at least know where they will end up- as opposed to just figuring it out as you go (like Stephen King's 'Gunslinger').
As I've gotten older I can't do filler (why I hate most modern anime without a site that tells you which are filler episodes and so safe to skip).
I refuse to even watch any anime series on Netflix as they are all filler except the first and last 2 episodes (that new olympus series is exactly this).
Anyway does anyone have some more 'adult' sci/fantasy books or series to recommend?
If you want space opera, you can't go wrong with the culture books. Consider Phlebas, is a fine place to start. Later books build on the mythology and themes, but if you don't connect with book 1 you probably aren't going to like the rest.
A student of PKD who likes to play with scifantasy ideas is Johnathan Lethem. If he has written a book set somewhere that you have a connection to start there, otherwise start with The Fortress of Solitude. Follow with Chronic City and Motherless Brooklyn. Don't watch the Motherless Brooklyn movie.
Likewise the rest I really appreciate the recommendations, think I'm going to start with Phlebas!
Edit1 - I don't know how I've managed to never hear about the Culture series before!
Edit 2 - Dropping this on the infinitesimally small chance someone will know, I read a book forever ago about a girl being raised and trained by her father to sit court, as an assassin, and was trained to think about multiple completely separate things/strategies at a time. I remember it blowing my very young mind, but I was so young I remember no other details. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I think the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson is also based on an RPG campaign, which started out as D&D then switched to GURPS.
Both are worth reading.
The books are set 500 years before the campaign IIRC. Midkemia Press put out several RPG supplements including several describing places in the Kingdom:
> I think the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson is also based on an RPG campaign, which started out as D&D then switched to GURPS.
That's interesting, I couldn't imagine how you'd fit the breadth and depth of character abilities from the books into something like D&D.
I'll admit I didn't play until AD&D in about '84 - was the original edition really that different in focus?
The original edition or white box D&D was about as deep as Diablo 1. You rolled up a PC, the DM designed a dungeon -- not a campaign, they just built a dungeon -- and then the PCs tried to survive it. That's all it was about.
Again, based on what I've read, part of Dave Arneson's original innovation that became OD&D [1] was that your character continued from game to game, giving the player a personal interest in the character and also engagement in developing them. That would seem to disagree with the parent's description.
[1] Like all innovations, Arneson's was a product of earlier ones such as Braunstein by Dave Wesely.
It depends on exactly what you mean. OD&D ran from 1974 to 1977 or 1979, so there's actually a fair bit there. If by "original D&D" you mean the first boxed set which had three booklets: Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, then it really is as I described it. There were 3 character classes, stats didn't really do anything, and the guidance for the DM was "create a dungeon with a minimum of 7 levels for the players to explore" or something like that.
However, there were a lot of supplements, for OD&D too: Greyhawk (thief, paladin, non-Chainmail combat rules) and Blackmoor (assassin, monk, underwater rules) in 1975. Eldritch Wizardry (psionics, druids), Gods Demi-Gods & Heroes (real-world and literature-inspired pantheons), and Swords & Spells (large scale combat) in 1976.
There was also new content in The Strategic Review (precursor to Dragon magazine) like the Ranger class, the Bard class, and (I think) the first printings of the Thief class. I think other stuff appeared in White Dwarf.
By the time TSR decided to go with the Basic/Advanced approach in the late 70s, most of everything we find in AD&D had been printed in some way. Both Basic D&D and AD&D were collections of existing rules as much as revisions or refinements to it.
I don't know that OD&D, even at the end of its publication run, offered nearly as much as AD&D. For example, where is the DMG? The modules?
However, while I know that OD&D had sparse rules as you say, and that the DM was expected to fill in the gaps and dungeons, where does it say that the characters didn't continue from adventure to adventure, from game to game?
There were at least two more revisions of 'Basic', which was updated into the early 1990s. It was much more a separate game, not a lead-in into 'Advanced', and I think publishing it may have been a contractual obligation to D&D's co-creator, Dave Arneson, who was gone before AD&D.
ok. Please avoid downvoting me then?
makes no sense, as D&D still has formulas, and most wargames had die rolls.
>...gained popularity in the early 20th century...
I don't think the 70's count as early in the 20th century.
> The world's first recreational wargaming club was the University Kriegspiel [sic] Club, founded in 1873 at Oxford University in England.
That's the entirety of what you wrote. Correct the sentence, not the people reading it as written.
Kriegspiel, however, was very far from simple. It was just focused on battle simulation.
From my understanding, it was intended to be played by each side (either individual or team) being in their own room with their own map of the battle. Communication would go to the referee, who would run "reality". The referee would have a map and use charts, tables, dice, and pure fiat to sent information and update the state of the game to the players. Plus the game was played to a real clock. An ideal setup would have the opposing generals only communicating with the referee by means of runners, to simulate the telephone effect.
I really can't call a game that requires no less than three terrain maps and three rooms to be "simple". Especially when you see the dice the game uses.
Or for a more measurable metric, the von Reisswitz rules are 76 pages, which iirc was about the size of the player's handbook:
https://toofatlardies.co.uk/product/kriegsspiel-1824/
Edit- Oops, just reread what I originally wrote and I said 'much' simpler, which would be stretching things.
Unlike miniatures games, however, D&D as a whole usually shifts its primary focus to collaborative storytelling, exploration, and character progression, and its tactical miniatures combat is 1) small-scale with a 1:1 relationship between players and protagonists (though large-scale battles can be added as appropriate) and 2) optional (though it can be a large part of the game if players desire.) D&D is also usually played over multiple sessions with a contiguous game world, further enhancing the storytelling and character progression possibilities, and usually has no fixed objective or victory condition.
There are D&D-derived board games and tactical miniatures games (such as the 4E board games or the D&D miniatures games) that adopt D&D's tactical miniatures combat rules, but they largely remove the collaborative storytelling, acting/role-playing, multi-session character progression, and open-ended nature that are core to tabletop RPGs.
On the computer gaing side, a game like StarCraft is interesting because the single-player campaign includes wargame-like levels (with many units as well as resource gathering, building, and unit production) and RPG-like/dungeon-crawling levels (where you primarily control one or more hero units that gain experience and treasure and level up as they explore the level.) Even though they use the same game engine and combat system, these are fairly different game experiences.
> replacing formulas with dice rolls
Wargames had lots of dice rolls, afaik ? D&D has lots of forumlas.
> simplified
D&D combat, especially in some editions, can be notoriously complex.
Maybe you and I are talking about different war games.