Eight Appendix N Free Public Domain Authors & Some Thoughts on Expert Dungeons & Dragons Adventures

Here is a quick updated Appendix N style list perfect for a Sword & Sorcery style OSR or old school campaign. These would be perfect for setting up a Dungeons & Dragons Expert game campaign.

All of these are available for download from various sources. 

They represent a nice cross section of only a few of the many tales of sword and sorcery but the reason is that many of these stories take place in the wilderness & dungeon works  of their settings. 

1. Quest of the Star Stone - CL Moore 
2. A Siege of Cranes - Benjerman Rosenbaum
3.  Andre Alice Norton
4. The Spawn of Dagon -Henry Kuttner
5. The Valor of  Cappen Verra - Paul Anderson 
6. Beyond the Black River (First Published in Weird Tales, May and June 1935)- Robert Howard 
7. The Stories of James Branch Cabell 
8. The Black God's Kiss - C.L. Moore

This gives the works a nice touch stone for what the dungeon master can bring to table without dropping into the usual tropes of the 'wilderness experience' for table top gaming. Another good example of what I'm talking about is Robert E.Howard's Queen of the Black Coast. The action shifts to the pirate infested waters around Kush. The implication here is that there is far more to Dungeons & Dragons then the usual monster infested ruins & dungeons.


Taking adventure elements gives the dungeon master all of the control with the player's dealing with the realities of life in the adventurer's campaign by adding a  bit of everything, drawing on ancient history, medieval history, various real-world myth cycles, Tolkien's Middle-earth, Leiber's Lankhmar, Vance's Dying Earth, and Howard's Hyborian Age. This allows the dungeon master to keep things fresh & the campaign moving along.

Expert Dungeons & Dragons was all about picking up & moving the game into other unexplored & expanded upon levels. It wasn't just about adding in more levels & experience but to grab that sense of expanding adventure for your old school campaigns.