[4e] 21st century Appendix N

[Baz King]

So, back in the original AD&D DMG, Gary Gygax included a list of inspirations in Appendix N.

From such sources, as well as just about any other imaginative writing or screenplay, you will be able to pluck kernels from which to grow the fruits of exciting campaigns. Good reading!

–Gary Gygax, Dungeon Masters Guide, Appendix N

You can see the full list right here.

The question is, what would a 4e version include? I suspect there would be less books and more movies and video games. We have 30 years of new material to draw on so who makes the cut? and what gets dropped?

Anything based on D&D itself doesn’t count. Hit me.

[The Butcher]

Subscribed.

[dread_sigil]

World of Warcraft.

And no, I'm not trolling ... I think you could pull some really good questlines out of WoW and turn them into D&D stories, and I don't think it would be too hard to get it to work. Either way there's a hell of a lot of damn good fluff to use from WoW.

Otherwise... add every high magic medieval fantasy series or film that's come out since the late 1970s to the list.

[iconoplast]

I'd like to propose we group the list thematically (and this is by no means meant to be exhaustive, just categories & authors as I think of them)

High Fantasy:

"Classic" D&D Fantasy:
Tolkein. Weis & Hickman. Terry Goodkind (? - never read - he wrote that seeker stuff, right?), Joel Rosenberg's Players-In-a-D&D-World series.

Swords & Sorcery
Lieber, Howard, Moorcock

Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind.


"Low Fantasy":
Urban
China Mieville, The guy who wrote The Lies of Locke Lamorra

Military
The Black Company (Glen Cook), Richard Morgan's new book, George R R Martin, Joel Rosenberg's Paladins (I don't think it actually inspired 4E, but I think that the parts of Adventurer's Vault IV that are adapted from this series will be jawdropping).

[jacobkosh]

I think China Mieville is a huge influence on 4E. He clearly was on Eberron, and reading up on Eberron makes me feel like 4E was almost tailor-made to run it. In a larger sense, I think books like Perdido Street Station - books that explicitly try to break the Tolkien mold rather than just tweaking it - opened up a lot of conceptual space for a game like 4E to make races like Tieflings and Dragonborn core instead of weird fringe options.

[Mikeythorn]

What a great idea for a thread! Unfortunately I can't think of too much to put on the list. Just Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.

I know you said not to include stuff which came from D&D, but I think you probably should. A lot of 4e fluff appears to have grown pretty organically. Drow rangers who fight with two swords, beholders etc etc.

And can we list other games? I am sure if we look at the mechanics we can see elements picked up from all over the place.

I am trying to wrack my brain to try and figure out where the inspiration behind points-of-light came from - but I can't quite pin it to any particular modern source.

[iconoplast]

Anything based on D&D itself doesn’t count. Hit me.

I know it's your thread and all, but I think you're wrong to say this - I think that D&D Fantasy is a genre unto itself, and deserves its own section. Yes, its section is the nouveau-riche exo-burb of flashy and cheaply built mcmansions, but it still earns its spot on the fantasy map.


[Edit: unless you meant that Videogames like Baldur's Gate don't count. In which case, yeah.]

[Canageek]

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (use of implements, heroic style, pulling himself together and fighting on)

Diehard staring Bruce Willis (Its what I always think of when I think healing surges and short rests)

Hero (and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but I've not seen it)

Fafard and the Grey Mouser by Freitz Leiber

Corum by Micheal Moorcock (Also Elric but I've only read the first one) (Hand and Eye of Vecna are stole straight from it as is the original alignment system)

I'd say even though its a D&D based series the Drizzt books by R.A. Salvador have a huge impact on D&D (Racial alignments becoming less important, martial manoeuvres, opponents being more then a statblock)

I'd say series like The Wheel of Time and The Sword of Truth have inflenced the power level, with epic tier and all that, compare the powers used by the heroes of those books to Gandalf, Elric or the Grey Mouser.

I'd say warforged owe soemthing to Bolo by Freiz Lebir, or possibly to Bladerunner.

[Booberry]

Truthfully I find most of the original Appendix N (minus a few exceptions) to be just as great an influence on my games as ever, perhaps even more so. 4e doesn't seem to skew as heavily toward pulp S&S influence as older editions, but the concept is hardly anathema and the very idea of 'Points of Light' is a major trope of S&S.

4e by it's very nature could name all the fantasy written in the past 100 years as an influence, if only because the stuff that was in the writers minds was almost certainly derived from stuff seen on Gary's list. This is a very big time for fantasy, an embarrassment of riches really, and things are getting to the point where D&D is now influenced by the stuff for which D&D was an influence.

Mieville is a good example, and he has related his experiences as a young gamer in numerous interviews. He even had a trio of adventurers (motivated by "a lust for gold and experience") in Perdido Street Station.

As far as adding something useful goes:
-Avatar: the Last Airbender gets name checked in the DMG
-I know that WoW comparisons are unpopular here, but I think it's influence is obvious (though I'm not decrying it). That has precedent in D&D's history though since Gygax himself denied Tolkien having much influence on D&D, despite the Hobbits in OD&D.

EDIT: I don't know how that smiley got into the title of my reply. Oops.

[Particle_Man]

Well if WoW is on the list, then we might as well as Savage Worlds, as some of the 4e game designers apparently played it a lot and it had an influence on 4e.

That said, maybe it would be useful to ask the writers of the phb, dmg and mm for 4e what they thought their influences were.