Cross Plains Barbarian

R.E. Howard and White Box
I have been giving some thought to my own Appendix N, in other words, influences on my personal preferred style of gaming and on my own homebrew world. The work of Robert E. Howard must stand at the beginning of my list. Mr. Howard's barbarian tales excite my imagination like few others and have done so since boyhood. As I look back over my gaming career, I am reminded that I have continuously steered my games toward a more Howardian style - fast paced action, a feeling of antiquity, magic with a supernatural flavor, a human centered milieu and fantastic monsters. My love for these elements I trace to the barbarian stories written by Robert E. Howard.
R.E. Howard's stories are fast paced, full of violence (and a hint of sex), often with a touch of the supernatural or weird. They are foremost adventure stories usually set in exotic locations and involving exploration and discovery of some ancient ruins or forgotten horrors. Rather than being apologetic for the racism and sexism in his work, I will simply state it is there and that I obviously don't want to bring those aspects into my gaming. Though Mr. Howard barely left his Cross Plains, Texas home, his fertile imagination produced wide ranging, fantastic vistas that continue to inspire readers to want to grab the reins of a swift stead, leap aboard and race headlong into a rough and tumble world of high adventure full of fights and surprises.
From all accounts, Gary Gygax also enjoyed the heroic tales of Robert E. Howard from an early age (Michael Witwer, Empire of Imagination). It appears to me that despite the fact that there are Hobbits and memorized spells forgotten once cast (Vancian magic), the major literary influences on White Box come from the works of Robert E. Howard (Conan),  Fritz Leiber (Lankhmar) and L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (Harold Shea) and Gary Gygax lists these authors among the "most immediate influences" (along with Jack Vance, HPL and A. Merritt). There is no doubt that the implied milieu of White Box is a blending of many sources, but the emphasis on fast pacing, fighting, encountering the unknown, and seeking one's fortune seems to model very well the themes explored in Mr. Howard's barbarian stories.