appendix n, revised and expanded edition: the eldritch roots of dungeons and dragons

An anthology of fantastical tales that inspired the creation of the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

Edited by Peter Bebergal, this lovingly-assembled revised and expanded edition of Appendix N adds a new foreword by Arthur C. Clarke award-winning novelist Adrian Tchaikovsky, tales by A. Merritt and Andre Norton, a dark fantasy comic by Gardner Fox & John Giunta, and illustrations by revered master of the weird, Virgil Finlay, and Escape The Dark Castle’s Alex Crispin.

Drawing upon the original list of ＂inspirational reading＂ provided by Gary Gygax in the first Dungeon Master’s Guide, published in 1979, as well as hobbyist magazines and related periodicals that helped to define the modern role-playing game, Appendix N offers a collection of short fiction and resonant fragments that reveal the literary influences that shaped Dungeons & Dragons, the world’s most popular RPG. The stories in Appendix N contextualize the ambitious lyrical excursions that helped set the adventurous tone and dank, dungeon-crawling atmospheres of fantasy roleplay as we know it today.

This new edition, published on the occasion of D&D’s 50th anniversary, includes fascinating new stories, a comprehensive introduction, and a new foreword.

Includes work by Poul Anderson, Frank Brunner, Ramsey Campbell, Lin Carter, Lord Dunsany, Gardner Fox & John Giunta, Robert E. Howard, Tanith Lee, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, David Madison, A. Merritt, Michael Moorcock, C. L. Moore, Andre Norton, Fred Saberhagen, Clark Ashton Smith, Margaret St. Clair, Jack Vance, Manly Wade Wellman

Peter Bebergal is a writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His writing on speculative and fringe cultures have been published by the Believer, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Yorker, Boing Boing, and the Paris Review. He is the author Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural, Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, and Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood.

Ann VanderMeer currently serves as an acquiring fiction editor for Tor.com, Cheeky Frawg Books, and weirdfictionreview.com. She was the editor-in-chief for Weird Tales for five years, during which time she was nominated three times for the Hugo Award, winning one. Along with multiple nominations for the Shirley Jackson Award, she also has won a World Fantasy Award and a British Fantasy Award for co-editing The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories. Her latest anthologies include The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Sisters of the Revolution, and Beyond the Bandersnatch: A Modern Bestiary of Untrue Tales, a forthcoming anthology of original fiction and art.