Obviously, there are a lot of motifs from Appendix N literature in D&D. But how much D&D is there in Appendix N literature? Myriad traces of myriad pulp fantasy/horror/sci-fi works have made their way into the DNA of D&D; but at the same time not many texts feel completely like a D&D session. Which is logical, of course: what works as a game session is not necessarily enjoyable literature. But as an exercise, I thought it would be fun to set up a scale of just how “D&D-like” is a particular text. This is not a score about the literary merits or whatever of the works. It is correspondence to the specific and somewhat arbitrary idea of a D&D session, formulated as:
“A group of adventurers tracks through a wilderness,
descends into a dungeon, explores a place of weirdness and wonder, tries to
overcome obstacles and monstrous enemies through cunning, martial prowess and
magic, retrieves treasure.”
I broke down this description into 10 categories, took three
short stories I like, and scored them:
|
|
“The Weaver
in the Vault” by Clark Ashton Smith (1934) |
“The Jewels
of Bas” by Leigh Brackett (1944) |
“Straggler
from Atlantis” by Manly Wade Wellman (1977) |
|
Group of
adventurers |
1 |
1 |
0 |
|
Wilderness |
1 |
0.5 |
0 |
|
Dungeon |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Weirdness
& Wonder |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Obstacles |
0 |
1 |
0 |
|
Monsters |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Cunning |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Martial
prowess |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
Magic |
0 |
0.5 |
0 |
|
Treasure |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Final score |
7/10 |
8/10 |
6/10 |
“The Weaver in the Vault” by Clark Ashton Smith stars “three
of the king’s hardiest henchmen” on a quest to retrieve a mummy from the ruins
of a royal tomb. If this isn’t a D&D setup, then what is? The wilderness
track is cool, my favorite part is when they rest at the “wayside shrine of
Yucla, the small and grotesque god of laughter”. Also, spoiler: it ends in a
TPK (they should have thought about party balance! Three fighting-men…). [read it online!]
“The Jewel of Bas” by Leigh Brackett starts out with just
two “adventurers” (a bard and a thief!), but along the way they pick up a
rag-tag team of outcasts (like an insane hermit and a hunter). The monster
section is great: there are low-level mooks (the Kalds), Big Bads (the
androids), and even a high-powered NPC. The wilderness is mostly a scenery, not
really interacted with. The dungeon is very cool, and there’s lots of
weirdness, much of it rather dangerous. [read it online!]
“Straggler from Atlantis” by Manly Wade Wellman has a single
main protagonist, which is, of course, not very D&D-like. And he faces the
monster without bringing henchmen or torchbearers, the fool! Still, the story
(which has a great Odyssey feel) has a small cave dungeon, an interesting
monster (alien ooze!), nice NPCs, and a capable cunning warrior. [buy digital/print]
