I've been thinking a lot about the way the Appendix N can be treated as a prescriptive list of What is Good and Proper inspiration for one's OSR-influenced adventures rather than what I think its intended as: a jumping off point. It's why I try to include all of my influences in each of the adventures I publish because so often it's just a soup of everything I was reading, watching and listening to at the time.

Some of my roots

Some of my earliest memories are my Gen-X cuspy parents playing Pink Floyd and the Who, watching my Dad play Eye of the Beholder and Hexen (my first exposure to D&D-type things). I remember my father attempting to read the Hobbit to me but my probably-undiagnosed ADHD brain needing to take the book and read it myself at a young age. The Metropolitan Opera of NY used to broadcast operas every Sunday and my mom would blast it in the house while she was cleaning and the epic sweep and tragedy of opera is something I still very much appreciate. I think today about how my campaigns ideally feel like an airbrushed wizard fighting a dragon on the side of a van playing psychedelic guitar music, prog rock and city pop. I've been listening the Sword a lot lately and running an Agon game so that's going to end up in there.

Listing your influences in what you write

Right now, I have a Mothership adventure about to be published by Space Penguin Ink, LLC called Resonant. I've listed its influences as:

• The Aliens series by Ridley Scott
• The Expanse book series by James S. A. Corey
• A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
• 1940s government manuals,
• The podcast Well There’s Your Problem by Justin Roczniak, Liam Anderson, and Alice Caldwell-Kelly
• The Animorphs series by K. A. Applegate and Michael Grant, and
• Reading about carcinization, rabies, and Havana Syndrome.

I try to include a list like this in all of my adventures because I want where I'm coming from to be understood. I like to know what other people are reading, watching, listening to because so much of the Appendix N is just books. Books are wonderful, but are you telling me that Danse Macabre couldn't have been an influence for Strahd? I'm here for a more comprehensive and open idea of what is listed and what influences ones' works.