Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Strange Attractor Press News

Back in October, Strange Attractor Press announced an upcoming anthology of pulp fantasy literature entitled Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons & Dragons. The book is now available for sale here. I hope to do a review of it at some point in the future. I'm particularly intrigued by its endpapers, which depict an old school blue-and-white dungeon that reminds me vaguely of the sample dungeon from the Holmes Basic Set. 

11 comments:

  1. This looks interesting. Thank you!

    Also have to plug one of the first modern day Appendix N researchers and reviewers, Jeffro Johnson.
    Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons

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  2. As soon as you mentioned Holmes, I immediately thought of his book, Maze of Peril

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  3. Seems the special version with the hardcover and dungeon endpapers is OOS. Only the paperback "non special edition" is in stock at this time. FYI for those interested.

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    1. I just saw a copy in the game store 30 minutes ago. I didn't buy it because I'd read every story in it except one. It had the dungeon endpapers.

      If you want one, contact Games & Stuff in Glen Burnie MD: https://gamesandstuff.com

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    2. The special edition was also shipped with a booklet containing A. Merritt's 1918 novella People of the Pit.

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  4. That map does not inspire a lot of faith in the author's deeper understanding of the game. Very little freedom of movement or choice there. It's a straight line with a bunch of one-off or two-off branches springing from the main trunk. Zero Jaquays.

    It's a little thing, but if you can't get a detail like that right, what does it say about the rest of the book?

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    1. That "map" is rather a decoration, not a play map. It serves as a sort of TOC for the book. Each story has its own room assigned, e.g. #8 with a secret door is connected to a section of the book called a "Secret Chamber" and so on.

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    2. Ah, thank you for keeping me from going off more than half-cocked. Much obliged.

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  5. Mine arrived a few months back (ordered from the UK) accompanied by a beautiful standalone copy of The People of The Pit. That was nice.

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