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Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Seventeen: A Merritt

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  Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Seventeen: A Merritt This is a sporadic feature, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works as recommended in the original Dungeon Masters Guide. By now, I’d hope you know what the whole “Appendix N” thing is about, but if not, I refer you back to the  first in the series  where I look at the works of Poul Anderson. This time around, I have reached the works of: A Merritt Abraham Grace Merritt, known as A Merritt, was born in New Jersey in 1894, died in Florida in 1943 of a heart attack. Merritt worked primarily as a journalist, bringing in good pay, and the novel writing was more of a sideline for him. He enjoyed travel (which explains the globe-trotting nature of his stories) and collected plants associated with rituals and magic (which is probably why his protagonist Goodwin, from some of the stories, is a botanist by trade). His biography paints him as a benevolent eccentric, a collector of occult literature and tribal
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Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Sixteen: HP Lovecraft

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Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Sixteen: HP Lovecraft This is a sporadic feature, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works as recommended in the original Dungeon Masters Guide. By now, I’d hope you know what the whole “Appendix N” thing is about, but if not, I refer you back to the first in the series where I look at the works of Poul Anderson. This time around, I have reached the works of: HP Lovecraft Howard Philips Lovecraft is one of the handful Appendix N authors who I think will require no introduction to most people familiar with fantastic fiction. Arguably the Father of Weird Fiction (with Dunsany being the Fun Uncle of Weird Fiction) much of Lovecraft’s inventions have found their way into the general consciousness, up to plushy Cthulhus, and one of the few authors in this list to have had their name turned into an adjective (I’d say also Dunsanian, Tolkienesque and possibly Moorcockian could be added to Lovecraftian). Born in Providence, Rhode
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Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Fifteen: Fritz Leiber

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Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Fifteen: Fritz Leiber This is a sporadic feature, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works as recommended in the original Dungeon Masters Guide. By now, I’d hope you know what the whole “Appendix N” thing is about, but if not, I refer you back to the first in the series where I look at the works of Poul Anderson. This time around, I have reached the works of: Fritz Leiber First, a note. The next author should be Sterling Lanier, but his works are currently very hard to get hold of, so I’ve skipped over him but left him a place at Number 14 should I ever be able to get hold of him. Luckily, there’s only really one book, Heiro’s Journey, so perhaps one day. Back to Fritz Leiber. Born in Chicago, 1910, and died in 1992 in San Francisco, Leiber was an actor as well as a writer, a lay preacher, and a graduate in psychology and physiology (like me! Well, not the lay preacher bit, and I've only done a tiny bit of acting).
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Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Thirteen: Robert E Howard

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Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Thirteen: Robert E Howard This is a sporadic feature, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works as recommended in the original Dungeon Masters Guide. By now, I’d hope you know what the whole “Appendix N” thing is about, but if not, I refer you back to the first in the series where I look at the works of Poul Anderson. This time around, I have reached the works of: Robert E Howard Robert Erwin Howard was a Texan writer, born   1906 and died at the age of 30, committing suicide. That this came soon after the death of his mother means that there’s a lot of speculation about Howard having an “Oedipus Complex” from pop-psychologists; since Freudian psycho-analytical theory is pretty dodgy itself, I’d be inclined to ignore that as just rumour-mongering. It’s entirely possible that Howard had some form of depression which would have been over-looked and undiagnosed in those times. Because of this, it’s somewhat unfortunate that h
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Fiend Factory 5E. White Dwarf 50: Livingstone the Editor

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Issue 50: Livingstone The Editor   For the 50 th Issue, our old reliable chum Phil Masters is in charge of a “special edition” Fiend Factory that provides stats for the various characters that have come to grace the pages of White Dwarf. These are semi-serious at best, with dual stats for Dungeons and Dragons and RuneQuest. Could you use these in a game? In theory, yes. A few of them –Griselda and Wolfhead, Ugbash and Agaroth – would easily make for regular NPCs with no gimmick attached. There was also a boxed set of minis that came was produced to go with this, which I owned but sold many, many, years ago.   First up is the magazine’s mascot, The White Dwarf himself. Kind of a tricky individual to produce stats for, since the White Dwarf is only ever a little icon, and has never, in 50 issues of the magazine, expressed any personality (unlike, say, The Mighty Tharg of 200AD). And so Phil attempts to encapsulate both a typical dwarf, plus the ethos of the magazine gene
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