One of the things I find notable about roughly the first decade of Dungeons & Dragons is that it was truly a kitchen sink of fantasy tropes. And, most importantly, it was an active kitchen sink: Anybody and everybody could dump stuff into it and it never really felt like it would make anyone blink an eye. Some of this was new and original content, but a lot of it was being drawn from whatever the author’s favorite fantasy novel of the moment was. And the resulting mythic goulash was pretty awesome with a lot of unexpected synergies

Then, at some point along the line, the D&D kitchen sink slowly coagulated into an immutable canon and it became increasingly unacceptable to add new elements to the milieu. Even when new items and the like were created, they often seemed to exist within the existing parameters of the game instead of pushing the boundaries of D&D’s fantasy palette.

One place where this is really obvious is the planar cosmology of the game: If you look at the early years of TSR modules, it’s pretty clear that whenever somebody wanted to include a new plane of existence they would just toss it on the pile and roll with it. Then, at some point, the Great Wheel was codified and that particular kitchen sink was sealed.

4th Edition kind of shook things up with new PC races and an all-new planar cosmology… but it quickly became apparent that they they’d replaced one sealed canon with a different sealed canon.

To make a long story short: Recently I’ve resolved to rip the lid back off the kitchen sink and start pouring stuff into it. I may not be able to shift the core approach of the D&D or Pathfinder supplements, but I can make it so that my personal campaigns aren’t quite so strongly defined by the “official canon” of the core rulebooks. I can infuse my game with all the cool stuff from whatever fantasy novel I’m currently reading. And I can make a point of including cool stuff in my adventure modules without feeling artificially shackled to the “known facts” of what the D&D multiverse is supposed to look like.

I’m going to be starting with some of the nifty keen stuff from Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels, because (a) there’s a lot of awesome stuff that’s easily transplantable in there and (b) it’s what I happened to be reading when I decided that this was a thing that I would be doing.

If you want to do some similar kitchen-sinking featuring your favorite fantasy authors (or films or television shows or heavy metal albums), throw it up on your blog or post it to a messageboard and then throw a link in the comments below.

(I’ll also be adding links to this post as my own kitchen-sinking efforts go live.)

As a general disclaimer, I will note that my goal with kitchen sinking is not necessarily to faithfully replicate the material from which I’m drawing inspiration. (Similarly, rangers in AD&D are gifted in the use of using crystal balls because Aragorn was gifted in the use of a palantir. But AD&D’s crystal balls aren’t palantirs.) I’m also going to frequently take the seed of an idea from the source material and freely riff upon it in order to create entirely new things.

KITCHEN SINKS
Kitchen Sink Brust

Kitchen Sink Brust Advanced Rules: Crowds Utility in Game Design