Appendix N Bookclub - Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" Stories

📚 Appendix N Book Club: Reading the Fiction That Inspired Dungeons & Dragons

What Is Appendix N?
At the back of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide (1979), in Appendix N, Gary Gygax included a list of 28 authors, 22 specific titles, and 12 book series that directly inspired the roleplaying game we still know and love today: Dungeons & Dragons. This book club is your invitation to explore those foundational works!

What We Do in Book Club
Each month, we meet up in-person and:

• Discuss a novel or a few short stories from Appendix N, and gain an appreciation for their stories, themes, and worldbuilding
• Share our opinions on the writing styles and influence of what we read in the fantasy genre and beyond
• Discuss how Appendix N has influenced the culture of D&D
• Consider how we might bring ideas from Appendix N into the games we play

Discussion also continues asynchronously in our Discord server for those who prefer online conversation or can't make it to the meeting.

📅 Next Meeting: Selections from the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" Stories by Fritz Leiber -- Saturday, April 18, 2026 · 1:00–3:00 PM 📍 Location: The Hugh, Manhattan (see location details)
For our next meeting, we'll be reading a selection of short stories from Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" series, classics of the Sword & Sorcery genre:

1. "Two Sought Adventure" (later retitled "The Jewels in the Forest", first published in 1939)
2. "Lean Times in Lankhmar" (1959)
3. "The Bazaar of the Bizarre" (1963)
4. "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970)

These are standalone pulp stories with no overarching narrative, and can be read in any order. The one exception worth noting is "Ill Met in Lankhmar," which tells the story of how Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser first met, so you could start there.

Getting a Copy
PDFs of all four stories are provided on our Discord post for this event (see the most recent pinned posts in the Appendix N thread in the book club channel)

PDFs can also be found online pretty easily, but if you want to read a physical copy, the stories were compiled in a popular six-volume collection by Ace Books between 1968 and 1970:

"Lean Times in Lankhmar" was republished in Swords in the Mist (1968); "The Jewels in the Forest" and "The Bazaar of the Bizarre" in Swords Against Death (1970); and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" in Swords and Deviltry (1970). More recent compilations of Leiber's fiction that contain these stories include Ill Met in Lankhmar (White Wolf Publishing, 1995) and Lean Times in Lankhmar (White Wolf Publishing, 1996), as well as The First Book of Lankhmar (Gollancz/Millennium Fantasy Masterworks, 2001).

About Fritz Leiber
Leiber began publishing his stories in pulp magazines of the 1940s, and kept writing until his death in 1992. He was a versatile author, working across horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and coined the phrase "sword and sorcery" to describe the subgenre. His stories are usually short, self-contained adventures, self-aware and humorous, featuring a rich vocabulary, clever dialogue, and memorable characters.

About Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Protagonists of many of Leiber's short stories, "the Twain" consists of Fafhrd, a barbarian from the frozen north, and the Gray Mouser, a streetwise city dweller, and are set in the world of Nehwon, and particularly in "the massive-walled and mazy-alleyed metropolis of Lankhmar, thick with thieves and shaven priests, lean-framed magicians and fat-bellied merchants—Lankhmar the Imperishable, the City of the Black Toga.”

D&D Connections
The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series is directly cited in Appendix N, and many of D&D’s enduring conventions trace back to the escapades of Leiber's two rogues: the adventure hook found in a tavern, the fantasy Thieves' Guild, and the Gray Mouser himself as a key template for the Thief class (later the Rogue). Lankhmar and Newhon have a long history in roleplaying games as well, which we can discuss in more detail at the meeting.