Appendix N Book Club

Brian Cortijo joins us to discuss Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn”, how wars affect settings, irredeemably evil Drow and Orcs, splitting a wizard's gizzard, the melancholy themes of the film and the books, heroics as showmanship, character agency and the consequence of choice, the abundance of printed material available about the Forgotten Realms, having a mythical creature in your adventuring...

Tim Hutchings joins us to discuss Octavia E. Butler's "Fledgling", modern D&D-insired art, the effect of slavery on language, the book's use of childhood sexuality, vampire fiction of the early 2000s, vampire society, old racist vampires, Thousand Year Old Vampire, power dynamics between vampires and their symbionts, explaining monster lore as a tool for world building, blueberry pies, being terri...

Ian McGarty joins us to discuss Peter Bebergal's "Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons & Dragons”, games publishing, lifting magic items from fiction, the Swords Against Darkness anthologies, skeletal vampires, Tanith Lee's wild fiction, Elric and Moonglum, the old school D&D thief class, wanting to die a warrior's death, the Vivimancer class, necromancer PCs, crisp mountain air, and much mo...

Matt King joins us to discuss Clark Ashton Smith's "The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1", Italian horror films, Nightshade Press, the Lin Carter anthologies, all the things CAS wants to have sex with, lamias, pulp magazines, cultivating a sense of dread, highways becoming footpaths, Gygax's theoretical stance on CAS, Gary Con, and much more!

Noora Rose joins us to discuss Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Tombs of Atuan", game masters as game designers, non-white people writing fantasy and sci-fi, the trauma of forced identities, sex and intimacy, Le Guin's masterful character development, reclaiming identities, creating barriers with purple prose, cast-and-forget spellcasting, fantasy whodunits, the rising costs of paper, and much more!

Karlo Yeager Rodríguez joins us to discuss Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein”, Vampire LARPing, the 1818 vs 1831 texts, Victor Frankenstein as a narrator, Mary Shelley's commentary on the fate of Native Americans, Frankenstein's monster as a metaphor for queer angst, Victor Frankenstein as Lucifer falling from grace, the Bride of Frankenstein, Wraith: The Oblivion, the claim of Frankenstein as the firs...

Pete Johannsen joins us to discuss Tim Powers's "Declare”, using amber beads as tokens, books found on your doorstep, the language and pace of spy novels, the djinn as fallen angels, power as a human motivator, Rube Goldberg occultism, the U.S. vs the Soviet Union, Torg RPG, djinn as ancient vampires, exploring Christian mythology in fiction and gaming, and much more!

Menion (AKA Rob) joins us to discuss Michael Moorcock's "The Jewel in the Skull”, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the influence of Burroughs on Moorcock, the initial emptiness and passivity of Hawkmoon, character motivation, mixing scifi and fantasy, characters being swept up in the current of world events, old-school versus new-school ways of thinking about gaming, what we lose when gaming online,...

Lucas Zellars joins us to discuss William Hope Hodgson's "The House on the Borderland”, natural history as a science, out of body experiences, b-movie monsters, horse pistols, geological time, unreliability injected into the fiction, cosmic pigs, Super Mario Bros., and D&D as Capitalism: The Game or Colonialism: The Game, and much more!

Jason Lutes joins us to discuss Glen Cook's "The Black Company”, Dungeon World, Ursula K. Le Guin, conquistador helmets, swords-for-hire, what makes a villain, grim dark's celebration of the darkest sides of the human experience, wizards as marketing and PR agents, eating tacos, fantasy metropolises, random words as proper nouns, and much more!

Rev. Dak Ultimak joins us to discuss Fred Saberhagen's "Changeling Earth”, the DCC RPG zine scene, reclaiming H.P. Lovecraft, tanks and UFOs in fantasy fiction, the paperback culture of the 1970s, transcending humanity, cosmic horror, evil characters getting their comeuppance, the Luke Skywalker-type protagonist, genre crossing, throwing out the Firearms issue of Crawl, and much more!

Ellen Kushner joins us to discuss Ursula K. Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea”, Choose Your Own Adventure books, the explosion of Tolkien's popularity, the feminist revision of Earthsea, wizarding schools, designing magic system limitations, Larry Niven's science brain, the teenage search for identity, wizards of color, normalizing protagonists belonging to marginalized populations, the Jewish inspi...

Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Ellen Kushner's "Swordspoint", typing up D&D character sheets on a typewriter, normalized gay content, the 80s crack epidemic, double- and triple-crosses, characters who think they're smarter than they are, playing a D&D game in the Riverside, gamifying Honor, staying true to social mechanism in the game, DCC Lankhmar, A Princess Bride, A Princess of Mars,...

Moss Bosch joins us to discuss Gene Wolfe's "The Shadow of the Torturer”, socially intimate games, tasty and tender world building, reading a book without realizing it is the first in a series, ridiculous ways to introduce new PCs, reading a book written for multiple audiences, cities the size of a nation, Blades in the Dark, stolen sex dolls, flowers as awkward and incredibly dangerous weapons, o...

Angela Lemus-Mogrovejo joins us to discuss Ellen Kushner's "Swordspoint”, the indie tabletop roleplaying game scene, questioning why fantasy is wedded to the European medieval era, our patron polls, confusing characters with one another in political intrigue, relatable gay content, a shortage of female characters being given the spotlight, female characters as whores and laundresses, examples of n...

Cora Buhlert joins us to discuss C.L. Moore's "Jirel of Joiry”, used book store finds, kisses as stand-ins for sex, the appropriateness of using genre to explore our fear of sexual violence, cozy stories, writers being inspired by their peers, comparing and contrasting Conan and Jirel as characters, employing undead suckers, the influence of comics on the early pulps, her work with Henry Kuttner,...

Megan Connell joins us to discuss G.K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare”, chocolate-covered raisin trees, satire we don't understand, club infiltration, anarchist elections and bylaws, issues of trust and emotional risk in therapeutic games, good versus evil, dehumanizing those who disagree with us, using XP to encourage better gaming, whether it was all a dream or not, losing c...

Brendan LaSalle joins us to discuss Clive Barker's "Books of Blood, Volume 1", our listeners 100 years from now, ghosts taking over theaters, Barker's literary beginnings, relatable characters, "Mama, they fed me to the pig!", Kaiju as political commentary, Willpower saves, stories were everything goes wrong, giving monsters the 411, embodying delusional characters, X-Crawl Classics, and much more...

Patrick Stuart joins us to discuss Mervyn Peake's "Titus Groan”, oral traditions, lush prose, taking pride in working as a servant, the sun as an old cake bun, Peake's popularity, Cormac McCarthy, Gormenghast as a demiplane, maintaining status quo as a party goal, the court of Melniboné, physical differences as "monstrous traits", going back in time to support expired Kickstarters, and much more!

Sarah Doom joins us to discuss Michael Shea's "Nifft the Lean”, Vampire: The Masquerade, horror stories set in the Deep South, "big guava breasts", matching prose style to genre, which came first: humans or demons, the Pagan way of doing things, entitled brats, taking away character agency, drawing upon vocational experience for inspiration, playing characters that are smarter than we are, old sch...

Pete Petrusha joins us to discuss Charles R. Saunders's "Imaro”, developing management skills through game mastering, how map projections shrink Africa, flipping the script, Charles R. Saunders's legacy, acceptance through truth, depicting differing cultures without judgment, leveling up through campaigns, DCC RPG corruption, the mysterious world outside the PC's hometown, and much more!

Martian Kat joins us to discuss Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Land of Terror", Star Wars, reading something you wouldn't normally read on your own, effective uses of satire, bearded women, evolving perceptions of Black Americans in the 1940s, the global war on terror, one-shot adventures in comics, escaping captivity in RPGs, the Savage Worlds Adventure Deck, humanizing the "other", Twitch streaming, an...

Alyssa Faden joins us to discuss Lord Dunsany's "Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley", the Tegel Manor map, ancient history as gaming inspiration, the Wheel of Time series, singing blades, Dunsany's poetic and relatable prose, the frying pan as a character, how to win a castle, river travelling, staying in character, Yoon Suin crab-men, designing city maps, and much more!

Little Red Dot joins us to discuss Andre Norton's "Three Against the Witch World", Fate RPG, reading comics in the barber shop, Mars as Australia, Mercedes Lackey, the division between science fiction and fantasy, the gender spectrum, the gendered divisions of labor, Andre Norton's bravery, the love of war history, the D&D druid class, Kobold Press, and much more!

Cora Buhlert joins us to discuss Clark Ashton Smith's "Xiccarph", German science fiction, pulp magazines, morbid beauty, vampire flower women, Jirel of Joiry, the Dark Eye, foreshadowing, Gary Gygax's exclusion of Clark Ashton Smith from the Appendix N, Alphonse Mucha, doomed protagonists, the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, and much more!