Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
So here is where I am going next with this in honor of and in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing! Something I have been working on for quite a while is putting all of OD&D into a text file. When I say OD&D I mean the entire text of all of the different printing of the three volumes: Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. I started with grabbing the text from the 2013 so-called premium edition. (IMO you cannot call something premium when it has a lot of the original text deleted)
I am adding back the missing text from the 1st-3rd print, the 4th print and the 5th print. Then I will check to see if anything is to be added from the 6th print, the so-called collectors addition. Same criticism applies that applied to the premium edition. In the 6th print, which sells much higher than a 5th print, hobbits, ents and balrogs are missing as they were removed and replaced with halflings, treants and nothing. So in the compiled text both will be included as halflings and hobbits are different creatures as are ents and treants.
In the process of doing this, I am also compiling a document of how to turn a 6th print or 2013 print into a complete 5th print for those that would like to know what is missing. I will likely be working on this through the end of the year as I am also trying to eliminate all typos and other editing (or lack thereof) errors.
The next step is to create supplements which extract the things that I like(all the IMO good parts) and sometimes use from the three supplements: Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardy. A second supplement which draws from the seven issues of The Strategic Review. The third supplement will draw from the first several issues of The Dragon. Yes, Dragon Magazine was originally named The Dragon and for reasons unknown to me they dropped the "The" from the name. A fourth supplement will draw from The First Fantasy Campaign, Adventures in Fantasy and other Dave Arneson and Blackmoor related materials. A fifth supplement will draw from my own stuff that has accumulated over the last 45 years. This will also include all of the things that I like from Arduin and other rule-sets.
The next step will be to combine all of these documents into a final tweaked and reorganized document that represents OD&D as I use it - except for one thing, I very seldom refer to the rules during play. It will also have blank space every few pages so that I can write things in with pencil as they occur. The reason for this is that like Arneson, I never stop tweaking the rules and trying new stuff - new to me at any rate.
There is one final step that may take years to complete and that is to rewrite the whole into an original document (sans the OGL) that will be shareable and for free distribution to anyone (if any) that might want to see it. My working title is "Perilous Dreams - The Game." I have another name for it that I am keeping under wraps.
All but the final step are about 30% complete, the final step is more of a dream than anything else at this point.
So why am I telling you about this, mainly because as I have been working on this and reading what other people have to say about Original Dungeons & Dragons and Blackmoor, reading and hearing what Arneson's players say about Blackmoor in the Secrets of Blackmoor Research and other books that range from historical works such as Playing at the World (and others) on one hand to tell all tabloid style TMI character assassinations on the other hand. So I am going to do a reading OD&D of the first three books a little at a time and comment on how I did it back in the day and how I interpreted the rules at my game table.
Starting tomorrow I will start looking at Men & Magic and talking about it from the beginning to the end. When that is complete I will move on to Monsters & Treasure, followed by The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. This will let you peer into my mind and see how I think about things and also serve as a source document for me for the next to last step of my above noted projects. The other purpose this will serve is to help me create a Table of Contents and an Index for my future documents.
All of this will be filtered through the lens of how I see Dave Arneson style gaming and how I see Blackmoor. Not as a point of direct imitation, but as inspiration. IMO neither Dave Arneson nor Gary Gygax back in the beginning had any desire for anyone to just import Blackmoor or Greyhawk to their own table and try to recreate it (not that these is anything wrong with that, I fully understand why other fans would find that to be a lot of fun), no back at the beginning they thought creating your own world was an immense part of the fun and they thought everyone would see it that way and from the beginning for me (Sept '75) until now, that is how I personally did and do see it. I am completely fine with anyone who sees it otherwise. Personal taste and all that is cool.
At some point in this proposed very long series of posts I will probably spend quite a few posts on world creation and do some world creating on the fly as I post. But I will not get to that part of the series for quite a while.
Hope to see you all back tomorrow and every day after that.
So here is where I am going next with this in honor of and in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing! Something I have been working on for quite a while is putting all of OD&D into a text file. When I say OD&D I mean the entire text of all of the different printing of the three volumes: Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, and The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. I started with grabbing the text from the 2013 so-called premium edition. (IMO you cannot call something premium when it has a lot of the original text deleted)
I am adding back the missing text from the 1st-3rd print, the 4th print and the 5th print. Then I will check to see if anything is to be added from the 6th print, the so-called collectors addition. Same criticism applies that applied to the premium edition. In the 6th print, which sells much higher than a 5th print, hobbits, ents and balrogs are missing as they were removed and replaced with halflings, treants and nothing. So in the compiled text both will be included as halflings and hobbits are different creatures as are ents and treants.
In the process of doing this, I am also compiling a document of how to turn a 6th print or 2013 print into a complete 5th print for those that would like to know what is missing. I will likely be working on this through the end of the year as I am also trying to eliminate all typos and other editing (or lack thereof) errors.
The next step is to create supplements which extract the things that I like(all the IMO good parts) and sometimes use from the three supplements: Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardy. A second supplement which draws from the seven issues of The Strategic Review. The third supplement will draw from the first several issues of The Dragon. Yes, Dragon Magazine was originally named The Dragon and for reasons unknown to me they dropped the "The" from the name. A fourth supplement will draw from The First Fantasy Campaign, Adventures in Fantasy and other Dave Arneson and Blackmoor related materials. A fifth supplement will draw from my own stuff that has accumulated over the last 45 years. This will also include all of the things that I like from Arduin and other rule-sets.
The next step will be to combine all of these documents into a final tweaked and reorganized document that represents OD&D as I use it - except for one thing, I very seldom refer to the rules during play. It will also have blank space every few pages so that I can write things in with pencil as they occur. The reason for this is that like Arneson, I never stop tweaking the rules and trying new stuff - new to me at any rate.
There is one final step that may take years to complete and that is to rewrite the whole into an original document (sans the OGL) that will be shareable and for free distribution to anyone (if any) that might want to see it. My working title is "Perilous Dreams - The Game." I have another name for it that I am keeping under wraps.
All but the final step are about 30% complete, the final step is more of a dream than anything else at this point.
So why am I telling you about this, mainly because as I have been working on this and reading what other people have to say about Original Dungeons & Dragons and Blackmoor, reading and hearing what Arneson's players say about Blackmoor in the Secrets of Blackmoor Research and other books that range from historical works such as Playing at the World (and others) on one hand to tell all tabloid style TMI character assassinations on the other hand. So I am going to do a reading OD&D of the first three books a little at a time and comment on how I did it back in the day and how I interpreted the rules at my game table.
Starting tomorrow I will start looking at Men & Magic and talking about it from the beginning to the end. When that is complete I will move on to Monsters & Treasure, followed by The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures. This will let you peer into my mind and see how I think about things and also serve as a source document for me for the next to last step of my above noted projects. The other purpose this will serve is to help me create a Table of Contents and an Index for my future documents.
All of this will be filtered through the lens of how I see Dave Arneson style gaming and how I see Blackmoor. Not as a point of direct imitation, but as inspiration. IMO neither Dave Arneson nor Gary Gygax back in the beginning had any desire for anyone to just import Blackmoor or Greyhawk to their own table and try to recreate it (not that these is anything wrong with that, I fully understand why other fans would find that to be a lot of fun), no back at the beginning they thought creating your own world was an immense part of the fun and they thought everyone would see it that way and from the beginning for me (Sept '75) until now, that is how I personally did and do see it. I am completely fine with anyone who sees it otherwise. Personal taste and all that is cool.
At some point in this proposed very long series of posts I will probably spend quite a few posts on world creation and do some world creating on the fly as I post. But I will not get to that part of the series for quite a while.
Hope to see you all back tomorrow and every day after that.
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