Blackmoor is a
fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game
Dungeons & Dragons. It originally evolved in the early 1970s as the personal setting of
Dave Arneson, the co-creator of
Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature
wargames, then as an early testing ground for what would become
D&D. Blackmoor is one of the longest continuously played fantasy role-playing campaigns in existence.
Early history[edit]
Blackmoor evolved from Arneson's wargaming sessions, after he began to expand them to include ideas from
The Lord of the Rings and
Dark Shadows.
[1] Arneson applied the Fantasy Supplement rules from the
Chainmail game to dungeon exploration in Blackmoor.
[1] Blackmoor was a campaign with an endless series of progression, encouraging cooperative play to succeed.
[1]
The origins of the Blackmoor setting lie in the
Castle & Crusade Society, a medieval-focused subgroup of the
International Federation of Wargaming which was initially driven by
Gary Gygax. Dave Arneson was among the first to join the Society, in April 1970, and many other members of his
Twin Cities gaming group would follow, including Duane Jenkins, Bill Hoyt, Ed Werncke,
Mike Carr and Marshall Hoegfeldt. Within months, the leadership of the Society had decided to form a fictional "Great Kingdom," with parcels of land awarded to, and contested by, members of the organization. Arneson assumed responsibility for the far northern reaches of the Great Kingdom, and it was there that he began to stage medieval games that led up to the Blackmoor setting. An announcement in Arneson's fanzine
Corner of the Table describes the first game in the campaign, one built on the model of
Dave Wesely's "Braunstein" series of games:
There will be a medieval "Braustein" April 17, 1971 at the home of Dave Arneson from 1300 hrs to 2400 hrs with refreshments being available on the usual basis.... It will feature mythical creatures and a Poker game under the Troll's bridge between sunup and sundown.
[2]
The next issue of
Corner of the Table promised "the start of the 'Black Moors' battle reports, a series dealing with the perils of living in Medieval Europe."
[2] Initially, Blackmoor functioned as an ongoing multiplayer wargame, pitting the forces of good against evil in a campaign structure largely focused on economics. The Barony of Blackmoor formed the centerpiece of the game, and the various players attached to it (the "Blackmoor Bunch") represented the forces of good. Duane Jenkins, for example, ruled the Northern Marches as Sir Jenkins, and Mike Carr played a village priest, the Bishop of Blackmoor. Early descriptions of the activities of the Blackmoor campaign circulated in a news sheet called the
Blackmoor Gazette and Rumormonger.
[3] Players became increasingly drawn to the innovative dungeon exploration mechanic that Arneson invented; by 1972, that had become a major focus of the game. As demand for Blackmoor increased, Arneson fielded out refereeing duties to other players in his local circle.
In the summer of 1972, Arneson famously wrote an article detailing "Facts about Black Moor" for
Domesday Book #13, which brought his innovations to the attention of the rest of the
Castle & Crusade Society. That fall, Arneson demonstrated the game for Gygax, and work on
Dungeons & Dragons commenced. As rule development proceeded, the Blackmoor campaign continued, and began coordinating with a parallel campaign known as
Greyhawk run out of
Lake Geneva by Gygax and his circle.
[4] After the publication of
Dungeons & Dragons, the Blackmoor campaign continued, but as a number of key participants (including Arneson) left Minneapolis to work in Lake Geneva, play of the campaign grew more sporadic.
Original publication[edit]
The original
Blackmoorsupplement (
TSR, Inc., 1975)
The original
Blackmoor product was published by
Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in 1975, as the second supplement to
D&D (the first being
Greyhawk). The booklet was named for the original role-playing campaign world by Dave Arneson, who also wrote this booklet.
[5] It added rules, monsters, treasure, and the first published role-playing game adventure, the "Temple of the Frog," a scenario from the Loch Gloomen section of the Blackmoor campaign.
[6] Other than the "Temple of the Frog," however,
Blackmoor did not include any information on the Blackmoor setting itself.
First Fantasy Campaign[edit]
Written by Dave Arneson and published by
Judges Guild in 1977,
First Fantasy Campaign added information on the actual Blackmoor campaign setting. It included baronies, citadels, history of leaders and details on the Blackmoor dungeon. It also contained additional rules for creating lairs, character interests and vocations.
[7]
The
First Fantasy Campaign anthologizes material produced at various stages of the Blackmoor campaign, from Scenario 3 (1972) up to the Blackmoor dungeons Arneson commonly ran at conventions in 1976. Only a relatively small amount of original material, primarily link text, was written specifically for the
First Fantasy Campaign, though all maps and some connected illustrations were redrawn and relettered by the Judges Guild's
Bob Bledsaw. Thus, the
First Fantasy Campaign is a rich repository of pre-
Dungeons & Dragons material which preserves original rules and camapaign events. For example, it contains the entirety of the "Facts about Black Moor" article from Domesday Book #13.
[8] It also contains circa-1972 price lists as well as rules dating from the exile of the Blackmoor Bunch to Loch Gloomen late in 1972.
DA module series[edit]
Though Arneson left TSR in the early 1980s, Blackmoor remained a part of
D&D lore and was referred to in many later supplements. In a subsequent re-release of the world of
Greyhawk for the
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, an Arctic region of mysterious black ice in the northwestern area of the map was called
Blackmoor. However, Arneson's Blackmoor would become integral to a different setting and rules-system, those of the
Basic Dungeons & Dragons game.
For various reasons, TSR published two different versions of their flagship game line. Over the course of several supplements, the
Basic Dungeons & Dragons developed its own campaign setting, referred to at first simply as the Known World and later as
Mystara. When the history of Mystara was codified, it was established that Arneson's Blackmoor had existed in the world's distant past, achieved a technologically advanced civilization and then destroyed itself in a global catastrophe that shifted the planet's axis.
Though its influence was now central to at least one of TSR's published worlds, the actual setting of Blackmoor as Arneson described it had yet to be presented. This was finally remedied in the mid-1980s through the DA series of
expansion modules, which carried a party of adventurers into Mystara's past to visit Blackmoor. The first of these, DA1
Adventures in Blackmoor, described in general the geography and politics of Blackmoor and the means by which the characters travel there. DA2
Temple of the Frog expanded the scenario that had appeared in the original Blackmoor supplement. DA3
City of the Gods explored the starship crashed near the Kingdom of Blackmoor, from which the setting's intentional anachronisms derived. DA4
The Duchy of Ten dealt with a horde of invading barbarians, but was the only work not derived from Dave Arneson's original campaign notes. A fifth installment, DA5
City of Blackmoor, was announced but was never written or published.
Though there were no further direct explorations of Blackmoor, later
Mystara products continued to make reference to it. For instance,
The Wrath of the Immortals, an epic adventure which described a massive war involving both heaven and earth, climaxes with the discovery of the preserved control room from the starship that had crashed near Blackmoor millennia ago.
d20 System[edit]
After the
Basic D&D game and its Mystara setting were discontinued,
Zeitgeist Games, where Arneson worked prior to his death, produced an updated
d20 System version of Blackmoor,
Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Campaign Setting, published by
Goodman Games in 2004.
[9] Goodman and Zeitgeist also produced a Blackmoor d20 adventure module,
Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The Redwood Scar (2004) and sourcebook,
Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The Wizards Cabal (2005). In 2006 Zeigteist Games started publishing new books on their own. The 2006 release calendar includes a softcover reprint (with added content) of
Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Campaign Setting, a hardcover version of the
Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor,
Player's Guide to Blackmoor, and the adventure
Temple of the Frog (which had a sneak preview event at
Gen Con 2007).
Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The MMRPG[edit]
4th Edition[edit]
In 2008
Code Monkey Publishing announced that it had reached a deal with
Zeitgeist Games to be the publisher of Blackmoor in the new Wizards of the Coast 4th Edition of
Dungeons & Dragons. The currently announced plans for Blackmoor in 4th Edition include a reprinting of the 3.5 Blackmoor core book using 4th edition mechanics and a series of three books set after a time jump of unknown length.
[11]
References[edit]
- ^ Jump up to:a b c Tresca, Michael J. (2010), The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games, McFarland, pp. 61–62, ISBN 078645895X
- ^ Jump up to:a b Peterson, Jon (2012). Playing at the World. San Diego CA: Unreason Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-0615642048.
- Jump up^ Blackmoor Gazette and Rumormonger #1 at the Playing at the World blog, retrieved May 2013
- Jump up^ Peterson, Jon (2012). Playing at the World. San Diego CA: Unreason Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0615642048.
- Jump up^ Thumbnail Analysis - Blackmoor, Don Lowry, Panzerfaust and Campaign #72 (Panzerfaust Publications, 1976)
- Jump up^ Review of Dungeons & Dragons Supplement II: Blackmoor, Scott Casper (2006), retrieved March 2008
- Jump up^ First Fantasy Campaign at acaeum.com
- Jump up^ Arneson, Dave (1977). First Fantasy Campaign. Decatur IL: Judges Guild. p. 25.
- Jump up^ 3rd Edition Publishing Announcement '6/27/04 - Blackmoor is off to the printer and on track for a Gen Con release! If you want to be one of the first to get your hands on this beauty, be sure to place your preorder now!' Goodman Games 'Past News' page, retrieved January 2010
- Jump up^ What is Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The MMRPG? Dave Arneson's Blackmoor the MMRPG homepage, retrieved January 2010
- Jump up^ 4th Edition Publishing Announcement
External links[edit]