Goodman Games

I never knew there was a fan base of Gor. I liked the books for what they were and if someone gets a chub reading them, then who cares. As if Game of Thrones is rated G!

I just read a CAS story titled Necromancers in Naat. It had the strangest combat at the end. It occurred to me that it would almost definitely be unworkable in a lot of game systems. You could do it, but it would just seem forced.

A necromancer gets his head chopped. It is hanging by a bit of skin and sinew. He keeps fighting, but his swings are just going wild as his new angle of vision is so crazy (kind of upside down). He still manages to almost fight off his attackers by summoning his familiar (a blood sucking weasel).

Could you imagine that game session- You would talk about it forever. "Then the blood sucking weasel came running in..."

This is the kind of think Appendix N was supposed to do, inspire you. I am not going to force this into something I run, but it will certainly make me think about the possibilities, and how things change as combat moves sometimes.

Awesome post. And yeah, the above scene'd be AMAZING to see in a DCC RPG game.

I agree with you, but many folks get really offended by them. Basically, I read the action parts and skip over the sex parts as well as the longwinded "here is four pages that describe a certain kind of tree" parts. Norman talks a lot sometimes.

Norman rambles on a lot. So true. And I'll say again, Clark Ashton Smith Rules!

Even though it is more modern, The Game of Thrones series definately seems "Appendix N" worthy. Its got the undefined magic system of "only death can pay for life". Its got the great unknown, (White Walkers and Wildings from beyond the wall.) Minus any demihumans save the dwarf, Tyrion. It has all the typical classes. I don't see why you would not include it onto Appendix N.

(As a side note, seeing Game of Thrones come to life on the HBO series, is simply friggin' AMAZING!)

It should be noted that George R R Martin is also a gamer.

Tyrion is often dismissively referred to as 'Dwarf", "Imp", or "Half-man" but he's very much human.

Gor is proof that Rule 34 existed before the Internet.

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (1920)
Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis (1938)
Perelandra by C. S. Lewis (1943)

I purposely exclude C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength (1945), which many consider the third of Lewis's Space Trilogy. Bah. The above is the real Space Trilogy. Lewis read A Voyage to Arcturus, was blown away by it, and then wrote Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra under Lindsay's inspiration. That Hideous Strength fell under Charles Williams's influence, and it has a decidedly different (and non-Appendix N) vibe.

My current D&D games (using only about 10% of the 1974 Men & Magic D&D book--the rest made-up by yours truly) are heavily influenced by Perelandra and A Voyage to Arcturus. Crazy, crazy stuff.

When I first saw this, I thought two things:
(1) What? Doesn't Geoffrey know that Lewis' Space Trilogy is a trilogy?
(2) Is it possible that I know something that Geoffrey doesn't?

Then I read the rest of the post. Curses, sir, you've outdone me again.

Interesting. I've not read the Space "Trilogy" for a long time. I remember not liking parts, but I'll be darned if I can recall which parts. I suspect it's That Hideous Strength that I disliked. I'll need to go back and look again.

Also, I'm not familar with Voyage to Arcturus and will need to track it down. I (potentially) like the way you're re-written history to redefine the trilogy. I'll have to give it a shot your way!

Your campaigns are always rich and fertile in imagination. Nice to see where you get your inspiration!

In both Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, the hero goes to alien worlds and has adventures therein. In That Hideous Strength, the hero stays on earth and everybody stands around talking a lot.

It doesn't help that That Hideous Strength is as long as the other two books put together. Out of the Silent Planet is 160 pages long, Perelandra is 222 pages long, and That Hideous Strength is 384 pages long.

One more thing: The world of Perelandra is the most gorgeously-described fantasy world I've ever encountered. I'd rather live there than in any other imaginary world.

Personally, I think that That Hideous Strength is compelling.

Do you think it fits in well with Appendix N? I personally think not, while Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra feel Appendix N to me. I'm being hopelessly subjective here.

I agree with you both. I found That Hideous Strength hard to put down and found the depiction of depraved evil far more creepy than Lovecraft. On the other hand, this book does not belong in Appendix N related lists. It does have a talking, severed head, but Lewis does not evoke the weirdness needed, in my opinion.

I disagree. More weirdness than The Hobbit, for example, and Lewis does a good job of conveying the very creepy idea that the sorts of events in the first two books are occurring on our world, all of the time, but that we are generally not aware of them. The Evil Head would make a great Patron, especially as it seems so....reasonable.

Of course, there is also a partial draft of a different version of That Hideous Strength, which positively drips with Appendix N goodness (though, sadly, it is not a very long piece).


RC

That sounds VERY interesting!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(1977_novel)

There is apparently some back-and-forth about whether Lewis actually wrote the piece, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.....much meat for the DCC RPG Judge!

Picked up some Lin Carter Thongor books. They look like good cheap S+S. I hate it when people dis Lin Carter and L Sprague de Camp for the Conan series. Without them there would be no novels with the Frazetta covers and IMHO Conan would have blended into obscurity.

I've read two Thongor books. They were fun. Nothing like an old S&S novel at the camp ground!

For my own "personal Appendix N" a big inspiration for me was Stephen King's The Gunslinger. Although clearly far too late (not widely available until the later 80s) to be an inspiration for D&D it helped inform my own gaming, especially as someone who had familiarity with only a small set of the books in Appendix N. Here's what it brought for me:

• A good portrayal of a setting which features travel between worlds and physical and cultural artifacts from one world entering another
• Well-written depiction of ruins (i.e. the way station) giving me guidance on how to portray such things
• A really creepy dungeon crawl with the gunslinger going into tunnels under a mountain with no light source. I think modern gaming with its nice 5' grids really misses out on just how difficult it would be traversing a dungeon with only torchlight or, at best, light from swords and spells

I wrote up a bit more of this in my blog yesterday. I've been slowly working my way through Appendix N - just finished Witch World and I found it interesting how Norton's book had similar suggestions of cross-pollination between worlds. Her and King did very different things with the concept of course, but that's the joy of exploring different fictional worlds.

I thought of another one -- The Gonji Series -- A samurai in a darkly magical Renaissance Europe (south and eastern Europe). Lots of dark demonic creatures and those that are attempting to gain power from them, travel to strange dimensions and a really solid hero. I think I've read 1, 2, and 4... I do remember that in one of the books, a single battle in the main city lasted for 3/4 of the book -- but it was great!

http://www.goodreads.com/series/65547-gonji

Oh oh oh .. what about those Horseclans books by Robert Adams?
I always liked those more than those Gor books.

T

....and for urban adventuring .. you can't beat Robert Asprin's Thieves' World books.
Im not sure if the are DCC / Appendix N material, but I do think required reading for getting the most out of your thief.

There has been some speculation on the Blackmoor boards that Dave Arneson was influenced somewhat by Horseclans. There is a small timeline issue (e.g. it's not clear when he read them as they came out after 1974) but I agree that they have a very "Appendix N" flavor, although a technological post-apocolyptic one rather than straight S&S fantasy.

On the other hand, Moorcock's Hawkmoon books are somewhat tech and PA in flavor as well and I think they're also on the list.