Blackmoor reading list

[Havard]

Thanks, Aldy - this is one of the key questions: How much literary tradition can really exist in something that is build interactively and more or less spontaneously?

For Gygax, the external authorities were always important, but that's because he had to position himself inside the market.
Arneson didn't have to do that, and so his answer is way more direct.

Excellent points.

To be fair to Gygax, I also think his appendix N was at least in part intended as an "here is more stuff you can read as inspiration for fantasy RPGS", but positioning himself as you say was also part of it of course.

82 minutes into the program)
Dave says:
“As far as books go, fantasy books, science fiction/fantasy books that inspired me, we’re talking about Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, and a lot of the other authors, like the author of the Horse Clans series. (Robert Adams) Gary Seems to have listed every book he’s ever read in his bibliography, and I’ll be blunt, I don’t think I’ve read a lot of those books. Although, after having read a few thousand books, I really can’t remember which ones I’ve read anymore… So a lot of it is, Yes, I was inspired by…; but where does the inspiration stop and the game design begin? I mean, you’ve got to make changes. You’ve got to do variations. You can be influenced by something you read and don’t even remember reading, because you want to include “oh here is something neat I can incorporate into my world.”

I think Greg once spoke about how they would read anything of sci fi and fantasy that they could get their hands on. I think that was probably true for Dave, Gary and most other gamers at the time. I think Dave makes a great point about how common it was to borrow sample ideas from all over the place. I would also not be surprised if the game designers often read books solely to see if there were monsters, races, spells, magic items etc that could be raided from the books rather than out of interest for other aspects of them, but that is just speculation on my part.

-Havard