Thursday 5 September 2019

Did any Appendix N authors know about D&D?

Many of the authors who wrote books listed in the famous 'Appendix N' were dead by the time D&D came out. But some weren't. Off the top of my head, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and Roger Zelazny would have been alive, and I presume a systematic check would show lots of others. It is reasonable to assume some of them, maybe all of them, knew about D&D - that some indeed would have played it, even.

Did Jack Vance know that D&D magic was "Vancian"? Did Michael Moorcock know about the "multiverse" and the alignment system? Did Zelazny know that Shadowjack was an inspiration for the Thief class?

If so, we face the curious possibility that some of these writers may, later in their careers, have been writing in awareness of and even in some sense in response to their supposed influence on D&D. I'm curious to know if anybody has any thoughts about that or has read anything about it.

(I will return to "heavier" blogging tomorrow.)


32 comments:

  1. Fritz Lieber went to Gencon IX and his wiki page talks about the royality checks from TSR where enough to keep living comfortable until the end of his life in 92. http://www.genconwisconsin.com/history.html
    Book wise The Knight and Knave of Swords would be the only one that would could have been written with the knowledge since it came out in 88 and is the only one I hadn't read.

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    1. Didn't Leiber also create (or co-create) a fantasy wargame?

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    2. Yes, but decades before D&D existed. From the DCC Lankhmar kickstarter:

      "He and Harry Otto Fischer, the co-creator of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, had created a wargame set in the world of Nehwon (then called “Lahkmar”) in 1937. Yes, way back in 1937. This game was played on a huge 5’-by-2.5’ board made of corrugated paper and could require an entire weekend to complete! Leiber would work with TSR Hobbies in 1976 to produce a smaller game based on his and Fischer’s creation."

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    3. Leiber also had design input on the 1976 Lankhmar boardgame from TSR.

      Allan.

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    4. I would love to see a copy of that.

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  2. That's a very interesting idea - shades of Ian Fleming retrofitting Bond to have Scottish ancestry after Sean Connery's film performances.

    Moorcock was certainly aware of RPGs in the 80s; he discusses them in Wizardry and Wild Romance, and he supplied a blurb quote for Stormbringer ("the game is delightful").

    In general, I'd hope that those authors steered clear of RPG influences. Where later authors have been influenced by RPGs, I think that influence has been baleful. China Mieville makes some good in-jokes in Perdido Street Station, but his Monster Manual-ish description of the Garuda as "using whips and spears" struck me as a weak point (a whole species can be defined by the weapons they use?).

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    1. At DragonCon #1 in 1987 (where I first met both Moorcock and Rob Kuntz), I asked MM about whether he had ever played RPGs, and he said that he was aware of them and thinks he would probably have enjoyed them if he hadn't been spending all of his time writing ;)

      Allan.

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    2. Yeah, generally in-jokes and in-group references make me cringe. One of the many reasons I hated The Force Awakens.

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    3. grodog --
      Makes one wonder if RPGs have created more successful authors by inspiring them, or prevented more from developing by distracting them ;)

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    4. JC, I wonder what you make of series like the Malazan Book of the Fallen or the Expanse or Crosser's Maze? They were all inspired by RPGs and are all pretty good...

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  3. Vance was aware of D&D at some point and even named a character Lord Gygax in honor of Gary in one of his books.

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    1. It's in Alastor: Trullion (the best of the Alastor books for my money). Which, interestingly, came out in 1973. So quite a while before Gygax hit it big with D&D--possibly before "Vancian" magic was a thing?

      Also, interestingly, I think Vance is the only Appendix N author who is also specifically included in the DMG's "acknowledgements" section under the following typically Gygaxian intro:

      "The following is an alphabetical list of all those persons who in some way contributed to the formation of this work. Naturally, each did not make an identical contribution, and those with whom I normally play AD&D, as well as those kind enough to review the initial manuscript, had more influence and engendered more ideas than did those others with whom I do not have the privilege of continued close association or contact. Nonetheless, all are herewith credited and thanked, trusting that each will know what his or her own contribution was!"

      I guess they must have known one another personally on some level?

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    2. Ah! I knew I remembered that Gygax had written something specific about Vance. http://www.dyingearth.com/files/GARY%20GYGAX%20JACK%20VANCE.pdf

      Worth a read. Doesn't sound like they were close or anything. More of an author/superfan type relationship. Gygax apparently wrote fan mail to Vance long before developing D&D, and Vance responded. Gygax later asked permission to use some of Vance's ideas in AD&D (specifically the IOUN stones from Rhialto the Marvellous).

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    3. I will write a post about that.

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  4. Roger Zelazny met with Erick Wucjik while he was developing the Amber Diceless RPG, and GM'd at least one RPG session with him. There's an article about it in an issue of Amberzine, IIRC. I don't remember if it said anything about D&D though.

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    1. Also Zelazny and Martin played in an RPG campaign. Champions IIRC. Martin was a min-maxing munchkin (took all possible disads to get more build points, dumped all points into telekinisis and floated around in a metal shell as the Mighty Turtle).

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    2. I believe that game was where Wildcards came from.

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    3. Not Champions, but rather Chaosium's now-obscure Superworld (1983). Martin wrote a fascinating essay about his obsessive relationship with that game and the resulting campaign in the back of the very first Wildcards book. It's great stuff.

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    4. I heard him speak about that in an interview. Apparently they would play 3 sessions a week at one stage, and Martin would spend more or less every waking moment planning for the game rather than writing.

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  5. Moorcock gave permission for Elric-related material to appear in Deities & Demigods in 1980, so either he or someone associated with him knew about the game. As JC says above, Moorcock was well aware of Chaosium's rpgs based on his work.

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    1. Not only that, but on the (old) version of his Multiverse blog, he had a pic of the Elric entry in Deities & Demigods long after it was officially yanked.

      (I don't think the Multiverse website is under his control anymore... but about 15 years ago, Moorcock seemed to be actively blogging there.)

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  6. Vance specifically became aware of D&D when Gygax asked permission to use the IOUN stones, as I recall.

    Andre Norton wrote Quag Keep, the first D&D novel (set in the world of Greyhawk.)

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    1. Would love to know if he played it.

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    2. As prep for Quag keep, EGG sent a letter to Norton with one of RJK's level maps, a copy of Robilar (or another character/NPC). I've got the details somewhere, will dig them up.

      Allan.

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    3. Thanks - although I meant Vance!

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  7. Fletcher Pratt wrote a naval wargaming rules set in the 1940s that were quite popular, but he died in 1956.

    Lin Carter was involved with wargaming in the 1950s, so he may have also been aware of D&D in the 1970s; his Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was very Appendix N friendly.

    Allan.

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  8. I had thought original alignment had more to do with Anderson than Moorcock? Another name to add to the list of possible Gygax contacts anyway.

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    1. Not sure. It certainly feels more like Moorcock with the whole law-chaos thing.

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    2. Certainly that's an Elric thing. I'm thinking about Three Lions and Three Hearts (1961), which explicitly divides the world between Law and Chaos. I note the first Elric story came out in 1961; right to the post between them.

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    3. I have read somewhere in the blogosphere that Moorcock acknowledged Anderson was the source of Law/Chaos, but I don't remember if a source was cited.

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  9. Hello, long time reader, first time commenter.
    This might be late but I do remember seeing a interview with Moorcock where he mentions warhammer rather glibly. Here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yHay62Pss

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