Celebrating Blackmoor Campaign Day "April 17th, 1971"

The First Fantasy Campaign "Blackmoor" Map from the Jovian Clouds Blackmoor Archives

Today we (no not the royal we) are celebrating the beginning of the Blackmoor campaign. It started on April 17th, 1971. Yes, I am aware that no one knows for sure the "real" date and it could have been as early as December 1970, maybe even November, but there is no agreement on a "certain" date and April 17th, 1971 is the date that comes up most often.

So let us take a look at who is citing April 17th, 1971:

The author of Playing at the World - Jon Peterson on Friday August 3rd, 2012 at his blog of the same name uses this date in a comment of his on August 12th, 2012 in the resulting discussion to this post.

The author of Hawk & Moor - Kent David Kelly gives the same date in his post of a timeline near the bottom of the page in this post at The Acaeum. 

A pre-release pdf copy of Designers & Dragons: The 70's by Shannon Appelcline, that was available from Evil Hat back in 2013 also cites this came date.

Google search also brings up this CoT - Dave Arneson's Newsletter at The Comeback Inn forum, where only members can read the thread. This thread as several heavy weights in the history of Blackmoor weighing in also with Jon Peterson.

That date also comes up in these posts/threads:

http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2017/07/blackmoor-as-chainmail-campaign.html

https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?30584-When-exactly-did-the-first-Blackmoor-session-take-place

A little more info is in this blog post:

http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-timeline-from-braunstein-to-blackmoor.html

So I am comfortable with celebrating April 17th, 1971 as the beginning of the Blackmoor Campaign.

Join me today in remembering David "Dave" Lance Arneson and his Blackmoor Campaign to which we owe our hobby.