Monday, 11 May 2009

Appendix N

This week has been ridiculously busy and I've been drinking all day, so in lieu of purposeful content, a meme - namely Zach's "What's Your Appendix N?" idea.
  • Yer Man Tolkien - Everything.
  • Gene Wolfe - Mostly The Wizard Knight, and of course The Book of the New Sun.
  • M. John Harrison - The Viriconium series.
  • China Mieville - The Scar and Iron Council.
  • Steve Jackson (UK) and Ian Livingstone - All of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, especially The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, The Citadel of Chaos and The Crypt of the Sorcerer.
  • Steve Jackson (UK) - The Sorcery! series.
  • Tony Diterlizzi - His art.
  • John Howe - His art too. (Not literary influences, you say? Shut up.)
  • Brother's Grimm - Grimms' Fairy Tales.
  • Egil's Saga.
  • Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows.
  • Rudyard Kipling - The Man Who Would Be King (and the film).
  • Kim Stanley Robinson - The Years of Rice and Salt.
  • Bernard Cornwell - Everything.
  • John Grant (and Joe Dever) - The Legends of Lone Wolf novels.
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7 comments:

  1. Timeshadows11 May 2009 at 12:10

    :)

    Nice stuff.

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  2. Coopdevil11 May 2009 at 15:19

    I had a think about my own Appendix N. but decided that very few of my scenarios and campaigns were directly influenced by novels and short stories. I could list lots of books that I'd enjoyed but decided I wasn't influenced enough to do my own blog post about it.

    I did have the FF and Lone Wolf books on there like you though, in fact all the influences in print that I decided were influences were all in gamebooks or RPG sourcebooks.

    WV - melonsup. Ohhh, matron!

    ReplyDelete
  3. thekelvingreen11 May 2009 at 15:20

    That's pretty close to how my own list would turn out. The only ones that wouldn't appear on mine I haven't read, so there's a good chance they would otherwise!

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  4. Chris11 May 2009 at 16:54

    Oooh, we can have art on our lists?

    And Mr Toad *is* one of the great comic anti-heroes.

    wv: redit - fitting, n'est-ce pas?

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  5. Mothman's Dog11 May 2009 at 18:29

    Mine is somewhat further ranging, and can be found here:

    http://users.tpg.com.au/wylie665/land.html

    wv: undan - goblin hero who led a slave revolt out of Tereth Areth and into the goblin realm of Gundan, named in his honour

    (Funny how these spur-of-the-moment inventions fit seamlessly into a campaign world over 20 years old...)

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  6. noisms11 May 2009 at 23:14

    Timeshadows: Thanks.

    Coopdevil: FF and Lone Wolf were a huge influence on British fantasy I think. Much bigger than people realise.

    Kelvin: Get reading then! ;)

    Chris: Of course we can have art - I say so.

    Mothman's: That's a list and a half. What's Wormy?

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  7. Mothman's Dog12 May 2009 at 18:15

    Wormy is a comic strip in the back of early Dragon Magazines. The title character is a cigar-chomping dragon who plays wargames on a gaming table with live goblins/trolls/etc as playing pieces, in a world full of game-playing monsters where humans are a myth. 'Monsters are people too' with a twist or two. Some of the most notorious and well-loved NPCs of my early campaigns were inspired by Wormy. Like Mephisto Scarlet, the pseudodragon accountant/tavern-keeper.

    ReplyDelete