Quote from: jibbajibba;564407You can see why that style of fiction stayed so popular.....

Nice goalpost shifting there, Tim.

Quote from: Benoist;564409Nice goalpost shifting there, Tim.

Okay, mate.
How about that book seems to be unreadable trash

How about that still doesn't mirror any party recruiting bearers or any version of D&D I have ever played it looks more like the roster list for a game of Warhammer fantasy battle......

I was being polite before but meh....

Quote from: jibbajibba;564411Okay, mate.
How about that book seems to be unreadable trash

How about that still doesn't mirror any party recruiting bearers or any version of D&D I have ever played it looks more like the roster list for a game of Warhammer fantasy battle......

I was being polite before but meh....

English isn't even my native language, and I'm a huge fan. Clark Ashton Smith is one of the few truly great writers in a genre rife with hacks. His tales might not be life-changing stuff, but his artistry with words finds few matches; to the best of my knowledge, only Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe compare.

And the size of the party is not too far-fetched if you look back far enough. It is my understanding that both Gary and Dave's games back in the day had huge, huge partis by today's standards, e.g. 10-12 players plus retainers.

Quote from: jibbajibba;564411Okay, mate.
How about that book seems to be unreadable trash

You are kidding, right?

Quote from: The Butcher;564414English isn't even my native language, and I'm a huge fan. Clark Ashton Smith is one of the few truly great writers in a genre rife with hacks. His tales might not be life-changing stuff, but his artistry with words finds few matches.

Fuck yes.

Quote from: jibbajibba;564407You can see why that style of fiction stayed so popular.....

Yeah, because stuff like the Dresdon Files is so much more evocative and inspiring.

That quote is full of fantasy win. There's more genuine imagination and originality in a couple paragraphs than you find in whole 600 page tomes by guys like Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson.

If that kind of writing isn't popular today, it's only because many readers today never progress beyond the juvenilia of intense character identification and wish fullfillment.

Quote from: Haffrung;564428Yeah, because stuff like the Dresdon Files is so much more evocative and inspiring.

That quote is full of fantasy win. There's more genuine imagination and originality in a couple paragraphs than you find in whole 600 page tomes by guys like Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson.

If that kind of writing isn't popular today, it's only because many readers today never progress beyond the juvenilia of intense character identification and wish fullfillment.

Character identification: juvenile

Three paragraphs describing the equipment a band of travelers are using: evocative and inspiring.

Your standards are weird, sir.

Quote from: Haffrung;563791Exactly so. Appendix N wasn't 'the best of fantasy to this point.' There was hardly even a recognized fantasy genre at the time. It was an ideosyncratic list of Gygax's personal inspirations for the game.

I think you're seriously exaggerating this situation; in fact there was a thriving industry of fantasy books by the late 70s.  Tolkien, Moorkock, Lieber, Zelazny, and others were wildly popular, and in some cases very tied to the counter-culture.  Long before Appendix N was written, the works of Tolkien and Moorcock had both ended up having a big influence on rock music, for example.

RPGPundit

Some Comics should also be considered.
Corben's Den  and/or New tales of the Arabian Nights comics and maybe his adaptation of The House on the Borderland
Azrach
Conan (especially W/Buscema or Nord)
Battlechasers ( partially inspired by rpgs, it really reminds me of 4e).
Thor: (Kirby's issues from about 121 on; Simonson's entire run; I don't know shit about the more recent stuff).

Anyway,  comics.

Quote from: RPGPundit;564538I think you're seriously exaggerating this situation; in fact there was a thriving industry of fantasy books by the late 70s.  Tolkien, Moorkock, Lieber, Zelazny, and others were wildly popular, and in some cases very tied to the counter-culture.  Long before Appendix N was written, the works of Tolkien and Moorcock had both ended up having a big influence on rock music, for example.

RPGPundit

Fantasy was a sub-genre of science fiction, itself under the umbrella of 'weird stuff' (as George R. R. Martin calls it). Publishers didn't have a Fantasy imprint. You wouldn't have found a Fantasy section in a book store until Brooks, Eddings, etc. popularized the Tolkien rip-off in the mid 80s. You also didn't have a distinct (and insular) fantasy audience, the way you have today; there simply wasn't enough fantasy material for someone to read it exclusively. If you read fantasy in 1976, you probably also read a lot of science fiction, horror, pulp adventure, and historical fiction.

Quote from: Roger the GS;563257D&D has been such a big gorilla in the room with fantasy literature since about 1980. So it's conceivable to create an "Appendix Z" - works that have been influenced indirectly by D&D, rather than influencing it indirectly. ("Indirectly" rules out the franchise novels, naturally, but also such things as Andre Norton's Quag Keep.)

I'd argue that this applies to most fantasy fiction published after 1980 and essentially every piece of fantasy fiction published after 1990.

If you want to limit it only to stuff that was directly-influenced-but-not-licensed you might be able to constrain the list a bit more: Glen Cook, Steven Brust, Steven Erikson*, and so forth.

* Technically GURPS, but nonetheless.

Quote from: RPGPundit;563558No, I think that there are things on the original list that are not relevant today, they are far too obscure to be useful for the list or have not stood the test of time.

A good chunk of that list had already failed to stand the test of time in '79. Some of it had never been particularly popular in the first place. The idiosyncratic and personalized nature of the list really can't be discounted if you want to understand its character.

Quote from: Haffrung;563791Exactly so. Appendix N wasn't 'the best of fantasy to this point.' There was hardly even a recognized fantasy genre at the time.

'79 is post-Sword of Shannara. The fantasy genre had not only arrived; it had become an institution.

Quote from: Haffrung;564428Yeah, because stuff like the Dresdon Files is so much more evocative and inspiring.

That quote is full of fantasy win. There's more genuine imagination and originality in a couple paragraphs than you find in whole 600 page tomes by guys like Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson.

If that kind of writing isn't popular today, it's only because many readers today never progress beyond the juvenilia of intense character identification and wish fullfillment.

Sorry mate never read any of those guys can't tell you.

I would place my most influential fantasy books as, in no particular order

Ill-met in Lankmar
Gor books (Outlaw, Raiders, Assasin, Nomads the rest meh)
Nine Princes in Amber
Jack of Shadows
Ivanhoe
The Once and Future King
Over Sea, Under Stone
The Wizard of Earthsea
Song of Fire and Ice
The Lies of Locke Lamora
The Blade Itself (trillogy + The Heroes)
The Belgariad
Various collected Myths (Roger Lanselyn Green - Norsemen, Greek Heroes, The Iliad, King Arthur and His Knights, )
Mythago Wood
Faerie Tale
The Books of Magic
Sandman
Lucifer
Dying Earth
The Aeneid
Beowulf
Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange
Legend
StarDust

But my games are probably just as informed/infuenced by
Captain Correlli's Mandolin & The Coco Lord Trillogy
If this is a Man/The Truce/the Periodic Table
100 years of Solitude
Iain/Ian Bankes
Foucault's Pendulum/The Name of the Rose
The Yiddish Policeman's Union
American Gods
etc ...

I stopped reading fantasy for years and only came back to it thanks to Lynch/Ambercrombie/Martin about 3 years ago because 95% of it is absolute crap. As far as I can tell Ashton Smith is the fantasy Equivalent of Zane Grey ...harsh perhaps .....