Gary Gygax Appendix N Alcove

An initiative by the Gary Gygax Memorial Fund, the Gary Gygax Appendix N Alcove is a permanent exhibit inside the Lake Geneva Public Library where Gygax used to do research while creating his popular fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons.

The alcove is named after Appendix N in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide book published in 1989, which is a list of books and authors Gygax considered formative to the Dungeons & Dragons experience. The exhibit features a collection of more than 100 literary works that inspired the design of Dungeons & Dragons, as well as a large “Throne of Reading.”

“Of course no alcove with arcane works and strange tomes would be complete without a fitting, impressive wizard’s chair for the reader,” Gary Gygax Memorial Fund president Paul Stormberg said. “In his home in Stone Manor, Gary Gygax had a throne-like chair that he likened to a magical item in a Dungeons & Dragons game, that he referred to as the ‘throne of reading.’”

The chair, as well as Gary’s own collection of Gord the Rogue and Setne Imhotep novels, were donated by his wife, Gail.