This short phrase is from the first pages of the AD&D Players Handbook, first edition. It comes strategically as the first phrase in the portion of the book describing what the game is about. It would be over a year later that the Dungeon Masters Guide would offer Appendix N to DMs for "Inspirational Reading". It was a different age when Gary Gygax, and frankly all of the early tabletop gamers, developed their love for the speculative & weird. The paragraph above the list of recommended authors describes the age in which many of these men had grown up.
"my father ... spent many hours telling me stories he made up as he went along, tales of cloaked old men -who could grant wishes, of magic rings and enchanted swords, or wicked sorcerors and dauntless swordsmen." I readily identify with this experience as my mother did much the same for me. I was her first child, and she admits to raising me on a steady diet of fantastic tales, legends and quaint childhood fantasies. This was a common experience for many raised long ago, and I would dare so there are still those who do so. Lucky is the child raised by an adult with an open storybook and a fertile imagination.
And Gygax goes on to mentioned several of the very books we may have been read. The Brothers Grimm, Andrew Lang and the like. And then he cites comic books, which were in his age a mélange of fantasy and science fiction and horror, all three genres he cites as being big inspirations for the game. Such things that lead a child onward to mythology, medieval bestiaries, and the rich and deeply archetypal stories within.
I think this alone can do much for giving an idea of what sorts of things were imagined as fodder for an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The list he offers here is less a prescription than it is a phantasmagoric garden from which "you will be able to pluck kernels from which grow the fruits of exciting campaigns." And he urges even more to expand beyond this mere list from "any other imaginative writing or screenplay," more ideas that may not be captured here.
More than anything, for me, this list and this idea captures what the imaginative ground from which D&D grows. We all too often find ourselves constrained by the predominant fantasy of the day. We are indeed richly blessed with so much to choose from in a publishing world that daily offers up new wonders for us to select from, and an entertainment industry that makes such awe inspiring series of fantasy epics that we should stop and consider how lucky we are. And, might I add, with which Gary Gygax had a large part to do. However, the danger in having such wonderful selection is that we become overly influence on a certain kind of fantasy. JRR Tolkien for example, only one of famous Inklings, has come to exert such a strong influence over the genre that it can become near impossible to escape his shadow. I would dare say over half of today's fantasy offerings are hugely indebted to his vision, or what has become interpreted as his vision. For instance. As much as I love what Peter Jackson has done with the franchise, that was decidedly not my vision of the Lord of the Rings when I first read There and Back again or The Fellowship. In my mind's eye it had a much weirder and more dark fairytale quality than what is today called "High Fantasy". The movie Excalibur, is instructive for those who might wonder what sorts of visions arose from the 70's, or even the original animated movies which sought to capture Tolkien's epic. They have more in common with the infamous Wizards or Fire and Ice animated movies than they do with more modern offerings.
Now, this is not to say "better" or that the late 70's and early 80's did not also have their "standard fare" or interpretation of what fantasy is. Only that it did not loom so large as some do today. So, I today recommend broadening our visions, stepping out of our proverbial fantastic comfort zones to enliven our fantasies. Much of the OSR creative field has captured some of this, and expanded the vision of what swords and sorcery can be, and I heartily encourage continued exploration in this vein.
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