This is exactly what I am after; there's, ever since Gary Gygax canonized fantasy literature for D&D nerds, an in the end, very narrow talk, and only on a few selected authors: Selected, for no good reason than that the crew at TSR liked them, and/or was involved in promoting products related to their works.

For example - Dune, really? I am mid-through the first novel, and I cannot say that I see any similarity to any aspect of Blackmoor; except maybe the crystals/shards being somehow equivalent to spice; but apart from that, really none.

The same for Cthulhu - I read a bunch of those novels over the last year, and, okay, you have fish-people in Innsmouth - but apart from that? I think the similarities between some very marginal aspects of D&D and the whole Lovecraft material stem from either early 80s reception of Warhammer, and, more importantly, from D&D's reception of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series. - Which is unfamiliar to most of us today, but was in it's heyday in the 70s, and contains nearly all the kind of motifs that we have in BKM, including forces of Chaos, etc.

- Which is one of the reasons why I am inclined to discard Leiber as a primary source for Arnesonian D&D; Greyhawk was essentially Lankhmar already, and, so far, there is no direct indicator for a reception by Mr Arneson.

Rather than that, I'd like to know the impact of stuff he actually is sure to have known - like, probably "Thieves World", given the AiF angle, or stuff he directly references to, like the Beagle.

My idea behind all this is that I am somewhat stalling with my understanding of the setting as is, and this I attribute mostly to the sources commonly named being false ones; for example, I am so going to grab those Horseman books at some point. :)

:oops: BTW, Robert Adams' Horseman books, right?

EIGHTEEN novels... EIGHTEEN. :cry: GAAAAAAAAH.

(You might know by now that I am notorious for usually not reading fantasy that much.)

Eighteen novels alone... That's a year of reading ahead of me... :cry:

I forgot about Michael Moorcock, we were reading his books, too. This is what we were reading, not necessarily what we used in the games. We were all familiar with Greek mythology. Dispite the links to sci-fi more than 95% of our Blackmoor games were more typical D&D adventures. The sci-fi elements were what was unique about Blackmoor that the TSR staff wanted to publish in the late '80s.

Okay, so I wrote a lengthy answer, and then accidentally deleted it; GAAAAAAAAH.

Basically, I think most sources that we traditionally name can be debated.

Of course, there is always a difference between what Mr Arneson himself used for inspiration,
what his players preferred, and what other, later authors did with his material.

For me, the goals are many: :)

First, I would like to explore the depths of 60s and 70s fantasy literature a bit;
this Robert Adams, for example,
it seems he had a great career apart from the Horseclan stuff.

Second, I'd like to differentiate a bit this reigning opinion that everything is either Leiber, Tolkien, or Forbidden Planet.

Third, it would be an idea to make a list for the fans that is a bit more than just numbering the already well-known classic authors.

Like, for example, which of the Moorcock books was the one most influential on Blackmoor?
Can one pinpoint that, in the same fashion that "Tower of Glass" seems to be an influence?

Or, for that matter, Temple of the Frog: Cthulhu, or frogmen from 1930s vintage fantasy books? (I think Edgar Rice Burroughs did them already.)

Or, Philip José Farmer, certainly one of the most prolific writers of his era, how nobody talks about him when it comes to fantasy gaming?

... And so on.

More tomorrow. Now that I have time, beware of my ramblings. :)