Appendix N

In 1979, Gary Gygax published the Dungeon Master’s Guide, a manual for running role-playing games. In it, he included an appendix listing the works that inspired the making of Dungeons & Dragons, which he co-authored. Featuring authors such as Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Jack Vance—who shaped the genre’s roots in weird fiction—Appendix N has become a key reference for understanding the literary (and other media) influences on gaming culture. People like Jeffro Johnson and Peter Bebergal have studied it.  Prismatic Wasteland recently compiled a meta-Appendix N.

Today, the term "Appendix N" is widely used to place (playful) cultural works within their respective lineages.

The following is an ever-changing Appendix N of my world.

Água Viva (1973) – Clarice Lispector

Akira (1982–1988) – Katsuhiro Otomo

Alien (1979) – Ridley Scott

All in Circles (2022) - Shida Shahabi

At Folsom Prison (1968) - Johnny Cash

A Thousand Plateaus (1980) – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Being and Time (1927) – Martin Heidegger

Black and Blur (2017) – Fred Moten

Black Hole (1995–2005) – Charles Burns

Bugonia (2025) - Yorgos Lanthimos

Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) – Thomas Piketty

Chaos, Territory, Art (2008) – Elizabeth Grosz

Clumsy (2007) – Jeffrey Brown

Coercion, Capital, and European States (1990) - Charles Tilly

Columpios de vuelo (S.F.) - Andes colombianos

Desierto sonoro (2015) – Valeria Luiselli

De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003) – The Mars Volta

Dictionary of the Khazars (1984) – Milorad Pavić

Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (2015) – Jacques Rancière

Dracula (1897) – Bram Stoker

Ethics (1677) – Spinoza

Ghosts (2023) - Hania Rani

Ghost in the Shell (1995) – Mamoru Oshii

Horizontes (1913) – Francisco Antonio Cano

Impossible Landscapes (2021) – Dennis Detwiller

In Transit (2006) – Albert Hammond Jr.

LEGO system (1932) - Ole Kirk Christiansen

Los ríos profundos (1958) – José María Arguedas

Muerte en una tarde de verano (2023) - Sergio Díaz de Rojas

Ordinary Affects (2007) – Kathleen Stewart

Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972) – Pierre Bourdieu

Pedro Páramo (1955) – Juan Rulfo

Queer Phenomenology (2006) – Sara Ahmed

Remain in Light (1980) - Talking Heads

Salsipuedes (2020) – Harold Muñoz

Si viviéramos en un lugar normal (2010) – Juan Pablo Villalobos

Space Oddity (1969) - David Bowie

Staying with the Trouble (2016) - Donna Jeanne Haraway

Tango in the Night (1987) - Fleetwood Mac

Telas (2020) – Nicolas Jaar

The Adventures of Tintin (1929–1976) – Hergé

The Call of Cthulhu (1928) – H.P. Lovecraft

The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980) – Michael Taussig

The Fire Next Time (1963) – James Baldwin

The Four Seasons Recomposed (2014) – Max Richter

The Holy Mountain (1973) – Alejandro Jodorowsky

The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (2018) – Emanuele Coccia

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) – Max Weber

The Savage Detectives (1998) – Roberto Bolaño

The Sociological Imagination (1959) – C. Wright Mills

The Undercommons (2013) - Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

Todo está muy caro (1984) – Antonio Caro

Twin Peaks (1990) - David Lynch and Mark Frost

Ultraviolet Grasslands (2018) – Luka Rejec

Uzumaki (1988–1999) – Junji Ito

Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010) – Jane Bennett