Gary Gygax’s Appendix N

A Hindu Rakshasa re-imagined in D&Ds Monster Manual

When I was a teen and enamored with Dungeons & Dragons, one treasure I discovered poring over the rules books was Appendix N of the Dungeon Masters Guide. D&D co-creator Gary Gygax lists nearly thirty pulp and genre writers as major influences on the development of the game. Upon such a base I built my interest in fantasy, Gygax wrote, being an avid reader of all science fiction and fantasy literature since 1950.

In the early 1970s, Gygax...