Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary!
Continuing with Part Two of our look at Running Castle Blackmoor over at The Alexandrian Blog. Yesterday in Part One we looked at the first two posts in The Alexandrian series about Running Castle Blackmoor, today we will look at the third post in that series.
Running Castle Blackmoor – Part 3: Treasure Stocking
This essay has a number of tables and a huge presentation of magical and technological items of all sorts. Everything you need to play an Arneson style gonzo game where you mix technology, post apocalyptic vibes, and space travel with magic, Swords & Sorcery and medieval times to mention just a few features.
The creativity level is off the charts both Arneson's and Mr. Alexander's treatment of the material, a veritable gold mine of game ideas.
This post has extensive design notes. However, here a few of the important points that he makes:
In my first post I introduced you to this series of essays made by Mr. Alexander in regard to the setting and the monsters. Here in the part on Treasure Stocking a very important and oft overlooked point is made. That is the point about stripping away the unique character of the setting.
As a side note, I have discussed before many times the differences between old school and new school gaming. Some claim here is no difference albeit they have never actually played the former. Other say there are no schools, that there are no styles of play, they are all the same and all manner of similar dismissive comments about things that some of see as real things. I say I used to use the term old school; however, that term has been devalued and diluted with its application to things that are not even in the same universe as what we are talking about. I have seen other terms used as replacements, Primordial Gaming, Ancient Gaming, Pre-School Gaming and others. I am just calling it Arnesonian Gaming.
Arnesonian Gaming is by its very nature conducted in a setting of unique character that reflects the designer/creator of the game world. People criticize The First Fantasy Campaign because it is not highly polished, totally consistent and perfectly presented. They miss the whole point of creating a living breathing game world. The "Real World" is not highly polished, it is not consistent and it is not perfectly presented. The "Real World" is full of ambiguities, misinformation, inconsistencies, and all manner of skulduggery at every level. When you strip all of those things out of a game world, you neuter it and rob it of its life, you rob it of everything that allows for that "suspension of disbelief" because you removed the very things that make it come to life.
Another point he makes here is that the things that Arneson created for his game are not just things that are useful to the players right now, they lead to other options, new ideas, a jumping off point for players to take the game different places.
Let me ask you this.
Do you create unique things for your game that do not exist in something you bought?
If you create unique things do they "unlock" new possibilities? Do they put new options on the table? Do they create new ideas that go beyond the thing itself?
Tomorrow we will look at his next post on Magic Swords.
Continuing with Part Two of our look at Running Castle Blackmoor over at The Alexandrian Blog. Yesterday in Part One we looked at the first two posts in The Alexandrian series about Running Castle Blackmoor, today we will look at the third post in that series.
Running Castle Blackmoor – Part 3: Treasure Stocking
This essay has a number of tables and a huge presentation of magical and technological items of all sorts. Everything you need to play an Arneson style gonzo game where you mix technology, post apocalyptic vibes, and space travel with magic, Swords & Sorcery and medieval times to mention just a few features.
The creativity level is off the charts both Arneson's and Mr. Alexander's treatment of the material, a veritable gold mine of game ideas.
This post has extensive design notes. However, here a few of the important points that he makes:
DESIGN NOTES
I find it interesting, but also perhaps unfortunate, that every iteration of Blackmoor seems to have stripped away more and more of this unique character, leaving behind an increasingly generic D&D milieu.
The other thing I love about Arneson’s items list is how many of them unlock new game play (rather than just enhancing the existing cycle of play).
In my first post I introduced you to this series of essays made by Mr. Alexander in regard to the setting and the monsters. Here in the part on Treasure Stocking a very important and oft overlooked point is made. That is the point about stripping away the unique character of the setting.
As a side note, I have discussed before many times the differences between old school and new school gaming. Some claim here is no difference albeit they have never actually played the former. Other say there are no schools, that there are no styles of play, they are all the same and all manner of similar dismissive comments about things that some of see as real things. I say I used to use the term old school; however, that term has been devalued and diluted with its application to things that are not even in the same universe as what we are talking about. I have seen other terms used as replacements, Primordial Gaming, Ancient Gaming, Pre-School Gaming and others. I am just calling it Arnesonian Gaming.
Arnesonian Gaming is by its very nature conducted in a setting of unique character that reflects the designer/creator of the game world. People criticize The First Fantasy Campaign because it is not highly polished, totally consistent and perfectly presented. They miss the whole point of creating a living breathing game world. The "Real World" is not highly polished, it is not consistent and it is not perfectly presented. The "Real World" is full of ambiguities, misinformation, inconsistencies, and all manner of skulduggery at every level. When you strip all of those things out of a game world, you neuter it and rob it of its life, you rob it of everything that allows for that "suspension of disbelief" because you removed the very things that make it come to life.
Another point he makes here is that the things that Arneson created for his game are not just things that are useful to the players right now, they lead to other options, new ideas, a jumping off point for players to take the game different places.
Let me ask you this.
Do you create unique things for your game that do not exist in something you bought?
If you create unique things do they "unlock" new possibilities? Do they put new options on the table? Do they create new ideas that go beyond the thing itself?
Tomorrow we will look at his next post on Magic Swords.
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