Goodman Games

so, original appendix N stops with the 1978. are there any latter books and authors that are up to the task of joining that esteemed company? or even bigger heresy are there books that fit the mold and have been published in XXI century? i am not asking about novels that influence our individual campaigns but those that you feel could have been part of the appendix N if you could slip them back a few decades in the past. and i am not really speaking about the quality but more about the feel.

for example recently i liked these and thought that they were good sword and sorcery

Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe has an appendix n vibe in my opinion. I think it came out in 1980.

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

Glen Cook. No doubt.

Steven Erikson and Tim Lebbon.

Abacus Ape wrote:Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe has an appendix n vibe in my opinion. I think it came out in 1980.

yes, you are right. early 80s.

and i would add this one to wolfe's name

I've tried reading King's Dark Tower series and some of Cook's works and disliked both. Never heard of the other guys.

Is it the intent for the thread to come up with a list of cool authors, or a list of authors who write much like the Appendix N authors, or both? G.R.R. Martin probably fits both of those criteria, and I don't like reading his stuff that much, either.

Also, you might want to look for smaller images. Hard to see the giganto ones.

finarvyn wrote:I've tried reading King's Dark Tower series and some of Cook's works and disliked both. Never heard of the other guys.

Is it the intent for the thread to come up with a list of cool authors, or a list of authors who write much like the Appendix N authors, or both? G.R.R. Martin probably fits both of those criteria, and I don't like reading his stuff that much, either.

Also, you might want to look for smaller images. Hard to see the giganto ones.

hm...good question. well my intention was clear at the moment of the initial post. it probably drifted away little bit latter.

what i wanted is basically for us to think about pulp sword and sorcery as genre that is alive and not only historical. for example, richard morgan has written two books (cold commands & steel remains) that conform almost to all genre rules: protagonists (outcast wandering swordsman, barbarian hero, mad emperor, mysterious lady of the court...), setting (alien technology that seems like magic, diminishing alien races that have all but left the world, strange otherworldly entities...) and plot (alien menace, slavers, strange drugs...). it is obviously influenced by vance (dying earth), moorcock (elric) and probably most of all karl edward wagner's kane.

to me it seems that these books could fit appendix n. i would not feel the same about martin. i mean it could fit if it was about adventures of tyrion, hound and jamie during the war. maybe the best definition that i can offer is that novels that i would include would feature characters that are not heroes but instead adventurers, reavers, cutpurses, heathen-slayers and tight-lipped warlocks guarding long-dead secrets

oh, and sorry 'bout images. i get carried away.

I've read all of The Dark Tower novels & believe it is worthy for inclusion. Amongst other things it has quests for strange artifacts, cthulhiod darkness, an odd party of individuals working together, otherwordly antics, weird & wonderful protagonists & a clever mix of fantasy/scifi.

Not every book has to be gonzo fantasy. Lord of the Rings is not pulp Sword & Sorcery but Gary Gygax still added it to the Appendix N.

Crimsontree wrote:
Not every book has to be gonzo fantasy. Lord of the Rings is not pulp Sword & Sorcery but Gary Gygax still added it to the Appendix N.

this is also true.

Abacus Ape wrote:Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe has an appendix n vibe in my opinion. I think it came out in 1980.

Totally! I'm reading Shadow of the Torturer right now. The world definitely has a Dying Earth vibe. I love Gene Wolfe's writing (Wizard Knight was my intro to him), but he pushes my vocabulary to the limit. Thank goodness for instant definitions with the Kindle software

catseye yellow wrote:

finarvyn wrote:Is it the intent for the thread to come up with a list of cool authors, or a list of authors who write much like the Appendix N authors, or both?

hm...good question. well my intention was clear at the moment of the initial post. it probably drifted away little bit latter.

what i wanted is basically for us to think about pulp sword and sorcery as genre that is alive and not only historical.

That's what I thought, but then the thread seemed to wander a little. (The pictures were perhaps more distracting than anticipated. If I find time later I'll try to fix them for you.) A nice idea for a thread, by the way.

I'll have to give the Dark Tower series another try, and Gene Wolf has gotten rave reviews but I've never read his stuff.

Karl Edward Wagner's Kane should be in Appendix N, too, but it doesn't really fit the theme of this thread since it's older fiction.

finarvyn wrote:That's what I thought, but then the thread seemed to wander a little. (The pictures were perhaps more distracting than anticipated. If I find time later I'll try to fix them for you.) A nice idea for a thread, by the way.

I'll have to give the Dark Tower series another try, and Gene Wolf has gotten rave reviews but I've never read his stuff.

Karl Edward Wagner's Kane should be in Appendix N, too, but it doesn't really fit the theme of this thread since it's older fiction.

thanks! kane is N all the way.

i recommend reading enge's crooked way as a nice introduction to the character of morlock ambrosius. other books are quite good too but this one with it meandering, picaresque narrative of tight-lipped warlock and swordsman is really a rare and marvelous beast in the fantasy this day: series of adventures only precariously connected together. evil gnomes (maggots from the flash of dragons), greedy basilisks, bunch of small fire elementals that are part gremlins and part smurfs, duels with dragons, strange city divided into two ideologically opposite parts... it is a thing of beauty. enge flounders a little bit in longer narratives but his short stories are beautiful.

also another one (one that i owe my screen name to):

Fixed the earlier posts, by the way. All I did was to search for similar, yet smaller, images and replace the url in the post.

finarvyn wrote:Fixed the earlier posts, by the way. All I did was to search for similar, yet smaller, images and replace the url in the post.

thanx!

david gemmel? i read only first two books of drenai series. is he appendix N?

finarvyn wrote:I've tried reading King's Dark Tower series and some of Cook's works and disliked both. Never heard of the other guys.

I've yet read anything that has come close to Glen Cook's Black Company when it comes to gritty, personal stories of swords & sorcery, especially the first 3 books. Cook, Lebbon and Erikson, along with Moorcock, can be found in the anthology, Swords and Dark Magic: http://www.amazon.com/Swords-Dark-Magic ... B0057DCOH2 . It's a really good collection of new short stories by some classic and new authors that are undoubtedly App N. This book turned me on to Lebbon & Erikson, and it's really cheap on Amazon, but you might be able to find it as a remainder. I also picked up The Swords & Sorcery Anthology, which has some old stuff, but some new stuff too: http://www.amazon.com/Sword-Sorcery-Ant ... 616960698/

http://www.blackgate.com/

They do subscriptions in print and pdf (for the life of me I can't figure why the pdf isn't free if you get the print though). Most of the stories have a great Appendix N feel to them. I subscribed because they reminded me of the short stories they used to publish in the old-school Dragon Magazine.

I can't believe I didn't connect BG and DCC until this thread.

The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, starting with The Blade Itself.

Dark, brutal fantasy. Has some great villains. The fight scenes are well done. I highly recommend the whole series.

I have to go with the Lords of Dus series by Lawrence Watt-Evans. I can so see the Yellow Wizard (the Forgotten King!) as a patron!

You could probably add the Thieves World books and short stories to the list. I haven't read them since high school twenty years ago, but they very much put me in mind of Lieber, Vance and Howard's episodic style of writing.

Crimsontree wrote:I've read all of The Dark Tower novels & believe it is worthy for inclusion. Amongst other things it has quests for strange artifacts, cthulhiod darkness, an odd party of individuals working together, otherwordly antics, weird & wonderful protagonists & a clever mix of fantasy/scifi.

Not every book has to be gonzo fantasy. Lord of the Rings is not pulp Sword & Sorcery but Gary Gygax still added it to the Appendix N.

Don't think Finarvyn was saying that, but I concur (I'm sure he does too).

That said, I think Dark Tower fits. It's pretty low magic, magic is very dangerous, etc.

That said, it's good but not great. You know what's pretty great? BLOOD MERIDIAN.

have neglected this thread but would love to recommend some stuff i have recently read:









they all treat gods as monsters (albeit with more HD and some cool powers) and that, i suppose, makes them really suitable for DCC.

this one fun. i am currently searching for other novels in the series.

again after prolonged pause



leiberish science fiction on postutopian earth. part flashman, part mouser and fafhrd and all fun.

THE FIRST LAW TRILOGY BY JOE ABERCROMBIE

The horse stopped and snorted, shied and took a hesitant step back. Logen sniffed the air and frowned. There were men nearby, and badly washed ones. He should have noticed it sooner but his attention had been on his feet. Quai looked down at him. ‘What is it?’

As if in answer a man stepped out from behind a tree perhaps ten strides ahead, another a little further down the road. They were scum, without a doubt. Dirty, bearded, dressed in ragged bits of mismatched fur and leather. Not, on the whole, unlike Logen. The skinny one on the left had a spear with a barbed head. The big one on the right had a heavy sword speckled with rust, and an old dented helmet with a spike on top. They moved forward, grinning. There was a sound behind and Logen looked over his shoulder, his heart sinking. A third man, with a big boil on his face, was making his way cautiously down the road toward them, a heavy wood axe in his hands.

Quai leaned down from his saddle, eyes wide with fear. ‘Are they bandits?’

‘You’re the fucking seer,’ hissed Logen through gritted teeth.

Extract: http://www.joeabercrombie.com/books/the ... de-itself/