[4] Appendix N is now used to describe a subset of imaginative fantasy and science fiction from the early-to-mid 20th Century that predates the global mass media popularity of the genre; much of the work in the list was originally published as serials in pulp magazines of the 1930s.
[6] The early design of D&D drew so widely from Appendix N influences, that very few of the classic monsters are even claimed as Product Identity by Wizards of the Coast (notable exceptions including the Beholder and the Mind Flayer).
[8] Gary Gygax has stated that D&D was not meant to recreate the work of any one specific author in the Appendix,[9] but his list singled out the impact of L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt over the others.
[5] D&D's influential alignment system of Law vs Chaos was derived from the Elric stories of Michael Moorcock and their precursors in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, which also inspired the player character class of Paladin.
[7] Vance freely gave permission to Gygax to use his Ioun Stones as a magical item in the game on the condition that his books received a mention (as they then did in the Appendix).
[12] TSR was served with papers threatening damages to the tune of half a million dollars by Elan Merchandising on behalf of the Tolkien Estate in connection with D&D and a Five Armies game.
[3] Games designer, Joseph Goodman, read every book in Appendix N in order to create the Gygax-inspired OSR RPG Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC).