Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary!
Over at The Alexandrian blog back in Sept & Oct of 2018 there was a multi post series on Running Castle Blackmoor to celebrate Dave Arneson's birthday on Oct 1st. These posts are lengthy and excellent which is par for the course at The Alexandrian blog. I highly recommend, taking your time and reading all of them even for those who may not be fans, there is a lot and I do mean a lot to learn here.
Running Castle Blackmoor
His first two posts are concerned with identifying his goals and focus, the dungeon and the monsters.
At the bottom of the post he printed these design notes which say in part:
With more design notes at the bottom of the post which say in part:
Over at The Alexandrian blog back in Sept & Oct of 2018 there was a multi post series on Running Castle Blackmoor to celebrate Dave Arneson's birthday on Oct 1st. These posts are lengthy and excellent which is par for the course at The Alexandrian blog. I highly recommend, taking your time and reading all of them even for those who may not be fans, there is a lot and I do mean a lot to learn here.
Running Castle Blackmoor
His first two posts are concerned with identifying his goals and focus, the dungeon and the monsters.
At the bottom of the post he printed these design notes which say in part:
DESIGN NOTES
Castle Blackmoor’s dungeons descend to Level 10 in the printed maps. (Reputedly only one expedition ever discovered the 11th Level, but the dungeons were said by Arneson to go as far down as the lava pits on the 25th level.) Despite this, the Protection Factor table ends at 7th Level because that’s as far as Arneson provided information. Beyond 7th level the value would have either capped or continued to increase. (But you run into additional problems in any case in the lack of Group IV monsters.)Running Castle Blackmoor - Part 2: Special Monsters
With more design notes at the bottom of the post which say in part:
DESIGN NOTES
The special monsters listed here are all inspired by the original Blackmoor keys or other accounts of play with Arneson. A few are a bit more of a stretch than others, however: Robots appear only in the treasure tables, not any of Arneson’s keys (but having autonomous robots running around down here feels right). The “Man-Eating Seaweed” appears only as that name and I’ve creatively expanded upon it. Normal Monster With A Special Power is based on “Air Elemental W.A.S.P.” from the original key (for which testimony exists that W.A.S.P. stands for With A Special Power); it follows logically that other special monsters might receive special powers. Living Statues are perhaps the largest reach, being based entirely upon the description of a broken statue of Poseidon found within the original dungeon.Tomorrow I will move on to his 3rd post and after that will talk about things up to his point and then non following days will continue with the series Running Castle Blackmoor.
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