There's no doubt that Crawljammer sprung out of my reading of Appendix N classics over the past couple of years (and my talking about those books over at Tor.com with my colleague Mordicai Knode), combined with my discovery that Joseph Goodman had blazed that trail and whipped it into the fantasy frenzy that is the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.
That and rereading a lot of Gygax, from the Dungeon Masters Guide to the Dragonsfoot Q&A threads, to Role-Playing Mastery, to The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, to his internet-unearthed contributions to ancient fanzines.
But really, issue #1 of Crawljammer is still built on the bedrock of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Well, not bedrock. Spacerock. Shifting spacerock catapulted into another dimension where guys can just hop in a plane and fly to Venus and join the resistance against an oppressive regime. With swords and ray guns and a flash of this-really-happened-and-I'm-not-making-it-up!
That's how I like to think of Crawljammer. Everything you've ever read in every comic book and fantasy novel and sci-fi epic is true. Embrace it. Crawl into its jam. Jam into its crawl. Burroughs-style.
May I recommend to you the stories of Leigh Brackett as well, and, although not specifically Appendix N, the Northwest Smith stories of C.L. Moore?
ReplyDeleteI have read some Brackett, but I know she's written a lot of stuff I still must read. C.L. Moore I know little about. I will check out some Moore action! Thanks!
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