Are you a D&D Dungeon Master? You need to read this book.

0:14 hey everyone this is me L Dead Viking uh here is another little video that I had this thought actually I read a book and this is actually going to combine the books I'm reading talking about those and role playing games in general so quick backstory uh at least for me uh I had a roommate when I was in my 20s guy's name was Phil uh he was a good guy uh just we we hung out played a lot of games together um you know it was just one of those things where somehow like our paths crossed in life and then we ended up being roommates for a little while and uh he had all of these Conan books uh like he had collected all of um like just the pulp novels right and and so I just started reading them I mean I'd read a few con I I I had purchased and I had had a lot of the Conan Comics but I had never really read a lot of the novels I read a couple here and there uh but you know and I just started uh digesting them and one of the things about it was like it was it was great stuff uh I was really really enjoying the reads but also like it it I ended up using lots of ideas from those books in the fantasy uh RPGs that I played mostly D and at that time um played some other stuff too uh used them for Inspirations for characters that I made or and and

1:45 definitely used them when I when I ran games myself uh and this was like one of those things where um there was a few used bookstores back in the day uh that were in my area that they always had wonderful old pulp fantasy books pulp sci-fi books that I could that I could purchase on the cheap and and read now as time has gone on everything becomes collectible or whatever I mean back in the day it used to be whatever was on like the one place uh Ernie's Discount Books um whatever the price was on the book he charged half of that so if you found an old pulpy fantasy Conan book that said you know a buck 50 on the cover he charged 75 it was it was a wonderful deal uh now when I go to a used bookstore um they check and see what the value is of everything and they they charge way more than that which is fine it's a business blah blah blah I get it but um those days man I used to love I used to be able to go in uh and like have a list of every Hugo and nebula Award winner and just look for those on the shelf and and collect them and and man I I read so many of those books but regardless to any of that um a lot of the stuff that I read back then uh would be what is considered to be uh appendix n and if you go back to what appendix n was it was uh a thing that Gary GX used to create a list of hey

3:18 these are the books that I read uh that inspired me to play D and D or to actually use facets of DnD and that was the whole premise behind it and and they would list in this in the back of the books and they would say oh you know these are the things that you should check these out if you like if you're enjoying playing D and D or you want to like read stuff that inspired D and this is what you should do and when I started looking to those like that opened up the doors to a lot of other stuff that I didn't know about a lot of Fritz lever stuff a lot of Jack Vance uh a lot of Clark Ashton Smith um and so on and so forth so the other day I was at a local bookstore and I was just kind of perusing a uh I I had a couple of like horror novels that I was looking for and I happened to walk by um their roleplaying section and I found this book uh appendix in and I just saw I saw the title and I was like that looks cool and I picked it up and you can kind of maybe it's not really focusing in real well I apologize but it says weird Tales from the roots of Dungeons and Dragons revised and Expanded Edition and it is edited by uh Peter Bol bieberle maybe I don't know um here are some of the the names of the authors that are located in here uh uh Paul Paul Anderson uh Frank Brunner Ramsey Campbell Lyn Carter uh Lord dun Gardner Fox and uh Rob Reed Howard tth Lee Fritz Leber HP Lovecraft uh and so on and so forth Margaret stclair Jack Vance uh Manley Wellman um

4:51 you know lots of people I've read before but here they were included in this one book and I this is my second time of reading uh through uh uh this book these are all short stories that are included in here um they range from being you know like three maybe four pages to you know obviously like 5060 or whatever but um and let me see how many how many pages are in this this thing it's got a really good uh forward it even has like a couple of classic uh pulpy um uh comic book stories in included uh you know so it's definitely it's a little over about 350 or so Pages uh there are tons of videos out there talking about how can you be a really good dungeon master how to run the perfect Fantasy roleplaying game how to inspire your players to do this that and new thing how to make great adventures and so on and so forth and I think that all of those are good ideas and there's probably tons of videos out there that can help you but I'm going to tell you right now this is one book that every single aspiring dungeon master should own you need to buy this book uh and you need to read it um I reread this I I bought this and I read it because I I I I flipped through to see what what stories are in it and I noticed there were probably like a good number of them uh that I recognized that I read before and then there was even more that

6:21 after I started reading them I was like wait a minute I've read this you know because I just you know it clicks in your brain and you realize that you've read it before but there were still sever in here that I have not read and immediately with rereading this stuff I like I'm getting ready to run a d andd campaign here in the next few months like uh the campaign I'm involved in is going to uh is is going to end uh and I'm starting up one with my my uh my gaming group that I've been together with forever and my plan is is that I'm going to do a a a running kind of like log videos like this to kind of detail exactly what is going on in that Campaign World and whatever and and what the players are up to and uh and I want to do that just basically record it but also I think it would be kind of fun thing to do but I have come up with so many cool ideas just from reading these these things like that would make a really good villain uh that would make a really good Adventure that would make a really good magic sword uh to to find and I think that if you went to the trouble I think it's like I think this was just 20 bucks let me see 22.95 uh at my local uh game local bookstore um I know you can get it online obviously um but pick this up the stories are quick reads uh you can you can space them out however you like you can um you can digest it over a weekend or you can just say you know what I'm going to before I go to bed tonight I'm going to read this quick short story and then make notes uh think of ideas add

7:53 those to it and and honestly I think that if you if you read this stuff uh you are going to be inspired you're going to be inspired to create really cool adventures and you're going to be inspired to make cool NPCs and if anything if you don't get anything that's going to help you um it's they're really really good stories too and they're really good reads uh so there you go that's kind of my little review that's kind of my little uh suggestion to the role playing Gamers out there um yeah but there you go so uh thank you very much for watching this quick video uh and like I said this should be in my opinion right next to your dungeon Masters Guide and everything else this this should be there to help inspire you uh to play the best version of D and D that you can play yourself uh but anyway until next time uh if you've read any of these old stories like tell me which ones are your favorites or whatever you know leave comments likes whatever subscribes do the whole nine yards um take care and I'll talk to you again soon