Own Personal Appendix N

In response to the Appendicitis N Blogwagon and Prismatic Wastelands request for "a list of inspirational media (books, movies, comics, video games, what have you) that impact your design, inspired by the original Appendix N at the back of the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D" here is a list of the inspirational material that fed my original AD&D games back in the early 90s.

The first thing to note here, this is a younger persons reading list - I came to the game pretty early ~ 12-13 as I described in "On childrens story gaming and later play style". Second thing to note, there is little to no overlap with the original AD&D Appendix N - what we have below is a mix of kids stuff, original myth and legend and derivative fantasy - second or maybe third wave after the books from the original Appendix N and probably influenced by them. All this strongly steered by what was on the shelves in my local library or at home.

For the first block - kids stuff; animal folk and a mildly gonzo mish-mash of stuff:
* Rupert Bear annuals
* Curly Wee books
* Enid Blyton kids series - Faraway Tree, Wishing Chair, Noddy
* Roald Dahl - particularly BFG, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
* Asterix comics
* Tintin books

Of the second block - "original sources" - the kind of thing that would have been influences on the books of AppendiX N, being written earlier
* Irish Faery tale collections
* Greek myths
* Hobbit (Tolkien)
* The Seafarers non-fiction books
* King Solomons Mines
* Biggles novels
* Three Musketeers
* Last of the Mohicans
* Ivanhoe

The third block - riffing off the established fantasy tropes
* Riftwar (Feist)
* Discworld (Pratchett)
* Belgariad & Malloreon (Eddings)

Within that third block I would include the direct gaming related stuff like:
* Fighting Fantasy books
* Heroquest scenarios
* White Dwarf

The two 'adventure series' that complemented all those were
* Courtneys of Africa series by Wilbur Smith
* Aubrey & Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brien

In parallel to this I read a lot of sci-fi which did not directly inform my AD&D tables but was in mind for other stuff.
* Dan Dare comics
* Tower and the Hive (Anne McCaffrey)
* Dune series (Herbert)
* Culture novels (Banks)
* Asimov short stories - Robot series
* The Damned Series (Alan Dean Foster)

All this to say the 'open system' mix that got shovelled into my early AD&D games was not the same as the classic Appendix N - but for The Hobbit it is an almost perfect donut of sources around those books.

Other media going in there to inform things were early morning cartoons: Transformers, Fraggle Rock, Chip'n'Dale Rescue Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Alladin cartoon, Thundarr the Barbarian, Galtar and the Golden Lance, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Robotix, Defenders of the Earth, X-men, Flintstones, Captain Planet and the Planeteers and post-school Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Things I note as I compiled this list: the gonzo 'anything can happen' aspect that came from the kids books worked fine at the table. Riftwar is, to the best of my knowledge, inspired by Feists own D&D campaign so that is a direct 'second order' input - delivering the tropes of D&D distilled from their original sources.

After this, things evolved - starting with a Dragon magazine subscription and then with the internet coming available in my area, getting to college and accessing bigger libraries and finally with Amazon and DriveThruRPG coming online and making both RPG books and original Appendix N books much more easily accessible. I sought out influences that were mentioned as part of the origins of D&D, read more D&D supplements themselves, and consuming other media which was influenced by D&D.

By the time I came to many of the original Appendix N, I had seen the tropes washed through D&D so often it sometimes seemed un-original but only because I had seen so many derivative works. I am not necessarily recommending anyone attempt to replicate this as their own Appendix N, more just to record for curiousity how little of an overlap with the 'official' canon of inspirational materials I had when I started.