Creating and Using an "Appendix N"

Compiling a list of inspiration for your TTRPG endeavors and mining ideas from it

Jul 10, 2024

stack of books on black background — Photo by Olga Dudareva on Unsplash

Creative works in any medium are a culmination of media and events experienced by an artist. The philistine quote adage “nothing is original” might have some grains of truth, but it’s more appropriate, especially for art, to say, “nothing is created in a vacuum.” Appendix N is the list of inspirational reading supplied at the end of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons’ Dungeon Master’s Guide (published in 1979), which catalogues the recommended reading for DMs to draw upon when designing their campaigns. These include stories and authors that are household names among fantasy and science fiction fans, including Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and Michael Moorcock. Old school D&D wears the inspiration of many of these authors and titles on its sleeve via its mechanics, races, artifacts, and general tone. In a nutshell, D&D originally replicated Heroic Fantasy (or Sword & Sorcery) stories from the “Golden Age” of the pulp magazines (and its brief comeback in the 1960s and '70s) with smatterings of epic, “High Fantasy” from works like The Lord of the Rings, which picked up traction in the United States around the time Original Dungeons & Dragons developed.

The current list in D&D’s inspirational reading section (called “Appendix E” in the 5th edition Player’s Handbook) preserves most of the catalogue from the 1979 DMG yet also contains many more titles and authors that reflect the growing trends in fantasy and science fiction readers. It also adds older resources like Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men (1905) or stories that released contemporaneously with D&D (but weren’t included for whatever reason) such as Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea, and more recently booming authors like Brandon Sanderson and George R.R. Martin are comfortably situated in there as well.

Gary Gygax concludes his blurb on Appendix N by stating the titles he included were inspirational to himself. While it was decent of the 5e PHB authors to expand upon the list, I can’t help but wonder if they simply went and listed the New York Times’ top 10 fantasy series from the '90s onward rather than taking time to consider how exactly game masters and players could use them in their campaigns. In all fairness, Gygax also doesn’t quite explain how to use his inspirational reading in campaigns either, but if you’re familiar with the stories the influences are apparent.

Although there are already a handful of “Make Your Own ‘Appendix N’” posts on various forums and personal blogs, I thought I would add variety to this one by giving some examples as to how game masters can steal from the titles and authors on their inspirational reading lists to help their campaigns, adventure modules, or entire game systems come to life. As the saying goes, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal”, I invite GMs to don their thief cowls and join me in planning your own great media heists!

Step 1: What Media Do You Watch, Read, or Play?

When cataloguing your inspirations, first you need to take a step back and look at what it is you normally engage with outside of wherever this list is going to be applied. Something that the inspirational reading lists in '79 DMG and 5e PHB forgo is variety in types of media; only books and short stories are really mentioned. While, as a writer, I’d be the last person to knock the written word and the power of literacy, it’s simply impossible nowadays to ignore the amount of media contemporary stories take the form of these days. The speculative fiction genres (fantasy, sci-fi, and horror) at the time of the '79 DMG’s publication were not regarded at all with the same respect in any field as they are today, thus finding feature films, television shows, and other forms of media were not as plentiful as today.

Without worrying about organization for now, write down as many books (fiction and non-fiction), authors, movies, directors, video games, songs and albums, artists (music and visual), podcasts, and even other tabletop games that you regularly engage with and “inspire” you. Inspiration is an incredibly subjective concept, but in short, think of it as the feeling you would get when you read a story, watch a movie, or play a game that makes you say, “I want to create something like this.”

Be as open as you would like with your initial list and incorporate anything at all, even stuff I might not have thought to use as examples above. Since D&D is primarily fantasy, the inspirational reading lists slant towards that genre, but given the boom in TTRPG content creation, a lot more niche genres are getting their own games; feel free to include examples from any and all genres you do engage with. The one thing I would recommend is to not use actual play streams or podcasts as resources. All though these are now some of the more successful “advertisements” for games, I personally find that GMs or players attempting to replicate the scenarios in their home games to wind up lackluster at best or frustrating for everyone involved at the worst. This isn’t to say GMs and players have likely attempted to replicate a book, film, or show in a roleplaying game format and it ended up being a disaster (there are a plethora of real-life horror stories out there with this exact premise), but as we go deeper into this post it will become more apparent why drawing smaller bits from “static” media for a dynamic game may be better in the long run.

Step 2: Organize

The simplest way to organize your Appendix N so it doesn’t make you or a reader go cross-eyed is to alphabetize it by author/creator (or title if there isn’t a known or single author tied to the work). While that is a perfectly good way to sort your list, if you’re like me you may be consistently juggling (or dreaming up) different projects that one monolithic list isn’t going to help with. Or if you’re just the type of person who prefers to sort and compartmentalize as much as possible, divvying up your list may be the best way to go about it.

Here are some ways you might further organize your Appendix N beyond treating it like a bibliography:

By genre or media: Likely your list will have a whole mix of genres and types of media, so it would be easy enough to categorize each one under separate lists based on genre or what each one is. You may have a full list dedicated to books, one for movies, one for music albums, etc. This is probably the easiest way to organize your sources beyond simple bibliographic entries.
By intended game system or campaign: Again, if you’re like me and wind up juggling (or dreaming of juggling) multiple projects, interests, and campaigns (or ideas for campaigns) across different tabletop systems then you may have different sources of inspiration to inspire each of the games you play or wish to play. For example, if you play a medieval fantasy game like D&D but on the side play Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, then the Appendix Ns for both of them would look very different; your D&D list might include Tolkien, Moorcock, Leiber, Hawk the Slayer, Blind Guardian, etc. while your CoC list could consist of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Stephen King, Evil Dead, and Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. This might also be useful if you’re making your own tabletop rpg system in order to narrow down what works game masters and players may look to for inspiration when they try out your games.

Step 3: Parsing Out the Inspiration

As I said in Step 1, inspiration is subjective and the form it takes will vary between people, but for the purposes of this exercise, it is something you engage with (or an aspect from it) that moves you to create something for yourself (specifically, whatever campaign or game you’re working on).

Now that you have your list and it’s organized, it’s time to figure out what inspiration you might gather from each entry. Go down your list(s) and figure out what you can take (or already take) from titles and/or authors/creators. These elements can be as abstract as basic aesthetics or soundscapes from a music album, or copycats of specific items such as Moorcock’s Stormbringer sword showing up as Nightrazor in Dungeon Module S2: “White Plume Mountain.” Your list is likely extensive and might have taken hours or even days to compile, so feel free not to do everything in one go; homebrew worlds, campaigns, and games can be lifelong labors that evolve with the game master and players. New sources of inspiration will come along in the future and be grounds for adding something to your world or game should it align well with your creative vision.

This essentially turns your Appendix N from a simple bibliography to an annotated one. In the academic world an annotated bibliography is helpful for reviewers to understand why and how you’re using sources in an article or book. It can also act as an outline resource for yourself as the writer. In terms of game design, such a resource can be helpful for peers (game masters, players, and fellow designers) to understand how you implement artistic and mechanical inspiration in your game settings or systems.

When I said above that drawing out “smaller bits” from other media may be helpful for games, I really meant to say that it’s little tidbits from your inspirations that can help breathe some creativity into a game. Entire plots (and characters in most cases) are better left where they are since, traditionally, tabletop rpgs don’t follow the set structure of novels or movies as much as game masters and players might try to make it so. An Appendix N is meant to give small tools, building materials, or décor to game system or campaign rather than dictate the complete blueprints. Going back to the annotated bibliography example, it provides materials for the outline but is not the outline itself.

Example: My Own Appendix N

To finish off this article, I put together a somewhat truncated version of my personal Appendix N to illustrate this process I’ve laid out above. Since my campaigns across game systems are somewhat interconnected (my players have yet to find this out), I’ve opted to organize my inspirations by genre, since the same source may provide prompts for several different things. This is not a complete Appendix as I didn’t want to get bogged down in every single thing that inspired me as a game designer, but also because this will likely expand and change with my interests. Not all of these entries have exact inspirations listed but still fueled my passion for game design and storytelling nonetheless.

Literature

Anderson, Poul
-The Broken Sword: The “alien” elves have been a big inspiration on how to portray and describe demi-human races in my fantasy campaign world
-Three Hearts and Three Lions
Andrzej Sapkowski
-The Witcher Series: The original novels and short stories of the Witcher contributed to my desire for incorporating visceral combat into my gameplay along with ideas for streamlined worldbuilding and certain cultural details for my own secondary world
Beowulf: This inspired much of the Anglo-Saxon and Norse analogue cultures in my fantasy campaign world, the geography (there’s literally a strait between areas called “the Whale Road”), and tribal names for dragonborn
The Celtic World (ed. by Miranda Green): Most, if not all, of my fantasy campaign world is inspired in some part by Celtic culture and history
Collins, Suzanne
-The Underland Chronicles: A good chunk of the “Underdark” area in my fantasy campaign world is inspired by the topography and fauna of Collin’s “Underland” beneath New York City
Crichton, Michael
-The Eaters of the Dead: I use wendols as a degenerate, demi-human race in my fantasy world as well as including their home base, the Thunder Caves, as an explorable location
Fenian Cycle: The stories from both folklore and manuscript tradition contain a wealth of material that I have used (and plan to use) in my fantasy campaign world. The general lifestyle of the Fenian heroes is also something I seek to replicate as a possible mode of campaign play; i.e., a survival/outdoor-exploration style of gameplay with emphasis on encountering supernatural creatures in areas where civilization has little or no influence
Herbert, Frank
-Dune: Both the culture of the Great Houses of the Landsraad and the Fremen have inspired how political, religious, and spiritual factions function in my fantasy campaign world; the weird, transhumanism science also slips in for some minor sci-fi aspects
Howard, Robert E.
-Bran Mak Morn stories: The Pictish analogue culture in my home campaign world are called “Morns.” The Worms of the Earth also make an appearance as a degenerate tribe of Morns known as “Worm People”
-Conan stories: Most of the pulpy, Sword & Sorcery tone has inspired how I often wish to conduct campaigns set in my fantasy world; Howard’s worldbuilding essay, “The Hyborian Age”, and general worldbuilding notes, are prime examples of how to create enough background information for a secondary world without getting bogged down in details and having enough to work with for when you’re ready to begin spinning yarns
Lovecraft, H. P.: There is an entire location in my fantasy campaign world inspired by the cosmic horror and vistas referenced in Lovecraft’s stories. Additionally, the various mythos deities and their cults are present in the world. Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu is among my favorite ttrpg systems, so I draw heavily from the sources when running games with this system
Macpherson, James
-The Poems of Ossian: The imagery and themes from the poems have informed much of the aesthetics; many characters and places use “Ossianic” naming conventions as well
Miura, Kentaro
-Berserk
Moorcock, Michael
-The Corum Series: The general culture and behavior of the Vadhagh influenced how elves and other fae-like demi-humans act in my fantasy campaign world
Mythological Cycle
-Cath Maige Tuiread (“The Second Battle of Moytura”): The Tuatha and Fomorians are entities that are present in my fantasy campaign world with similar histories as chronicled in CMT
-Lebor Gábala Érenn (“The Book of Invasions”): The human cultures that inhabit the British Isles/Ireland analogue in my fantasy campaign world follow a similar pattern of invasion and settlement
Seth Skorkowsky
-The Valducan Series: These novels have given me ideas for magic weapon design and potential campaign playstyles based around monster-hunting
Sjoestedt, Marie-Louise
-Celtic Gods and Heroes: The heroic archetypes of the hero within the tribe and hero outside the tribe have inspired potential campaign modes for my fantasy world as ways to give players the opportunity to explore kingdom building or outdoor exploration as opposed to traditional dungeon-crawling
Ulster Cycle
-Táin Bó Cúailnge (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”)

Movies/Television

The 13th Warrior (1999): See my notes on The Eaters of the Dead
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
The Evil Dead trilogy: I have many sentient undead in my games behave like Deadites
The Mummy (1999)
One Piece anime: More to come on this next week!
Outsiders (TV series, 2016-17): The Fir Bolg cultures of my home campaign world take some cues from the reclusive, mountain-dwelling Farrell clan including brewing habits, aesthetics, and Appalachian accents

Music and Podcasts

Astonishing Legends: Many of the historical events covered in this podcast have influenced the history of my fantasy campaign world and provided material for more modern campaigns that utilize “Blanket Forteana”
Eluveitie: The aesthetics and lyrics of Eluveitie’s discography and interpretations of pre-Christian Gaulish religion have been a source of inspiration for my fantasy campaign world since the beginning
Saor: The Caledonian soundscapes provide vivid imagery and background music for my fantasy campaign world, especially around the Celtic-inspired regions
Suidakra: Similarly to Eluveitie, many of the songs’ and albums’ aesthetics have informed the development of my fantasy campaign world very early on
The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Soundtrack: I have used many of the songs extensively in playlists

Video Games

Big Huge Games:
-Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning: My campaigns have emphasis on combat so I like to provide players with options and mechanics to make such encounters flow smoothly and feel epic as in Kingdoms gameplay. Some basic concepts from the worldbuilding have also been sources of inspiration, particularly around the Fae, Alfar, and other factions in the game world
BioWare:
-Dragon Age trilogy: The companions and party-building, particularly from Dragon Age: Origins, is close to how I would ideally like to incorporate player characters—by collaborating with players themselves—into a party in the sense that each one represents something from the world, whether that be a faction, lifestyle, or simple truth about how the world works. Additionally (and in a similar vein as Mass Effect) I like the idea of player characters eventually becoming the best at what they do, especially when it comes to end-game periods
-Mass Effect trilogy: The Paragon-Renegade (or morality) system is something I would like to implement in my games no matter the setting, potentially as an alternative to alignment as well. Additionally, the games’ “point of no return” beats are also fantastic tools to help make player autonomy matter and feel dramatic
FromSoftware:
-Dark Souls III
-Elden Ring
Spiders:
-Bound By Flame: The crafting system featured in this game is both straightforward and useful. Although I normally don’t pay attention to crafting in most games I play, Bound By Flame’s is certainly a potential steal for my own settings and systems
-GreedFall: Similar to the BioWare games, I enjoy GreedFall’s approach to party composition and personal attachments to the world itself. The multi-faction reputation mechanic has also been a source of inspiration. The general worldbuilding as well is something I have drawn from for constructing my own

Now It’s Your Turn!

Finally, for my readers who are either in the midst of running a campaign, thinking of running one, or even designing their own games, follow these steps to make your own Appendix N and share it as a post on your Substacks or in Notes! Be sure to link back to this post as well!

Thanks for reading this week’s post! Kick off your Appendix N by listing three books, movies/shows, or games in the comments!