This post was intended for yesterday, but I had to think about it some first so it is a bit late.
Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
As those who have been following along know, I have just completed a long series of posts going through the original three little brown books of OD&D almost line by line. Although they were not posted in the comments here, although that would have been welcome, I got quite a bit of push back on that series. The biggest criticism was that if I were intending to celebrate Dave Arneson and Blackmoor why am I talking about OD&D or anything other than Blackmoor? Let me try to answer that.
I took this all back to September of 1975, prior to that all of this was completely unknown to me. But in September of 1975 I was introduced to OD&D. To say that I loved it would be a severe understatement. No other game before or since has grabbed me like OD&D. There is a forum poster known as Diaglo had on several forums that following signature:
So all I knew about Dave Arneson was his name and that he started a medieval fantasy campaign game in a weird enclave he called "Blackmoor". The bit about the Chainmail fantasy rules, I immediately discounted because I had access to OD&D and to Chainmail and IMO, having read and studied both, that claim held no water, I believed that in 1975 and I believed it today in 2020. OD&D was Blackmoor (I thought) put into writing, it was many years later before I found out that was not quite true, that OD&D was derived from Blackmoor, but the faithful copy part only belonged to the game engine and all of the core concepts, but not necessarily all of the mechanics. The mechanics were largely Gygax and his preferences and by the time I know that, they had through long use become my preference too. If I had had the chance back in the day to play under Arneson's mechanics would I have preferred them, I truly do not know.
I felt it would be useful and hopefully interesting to return to what I knew in 1975. So all that I knew of Blackmoor and Dave Arneson was what I knew of through OD&D. Later when I obtained the Blackmoor Supplement I was fascinated by The Temple of the Frog, that I was sure was all Arneson. But I did not know about that the first full year that I played OD&D.
So that is what I spent the past several weeks doing was reviewing OD&D and what I knew about it and how I used it and house-ruled in during the 1975-76 school year at college.
So again that is why I spent time talking about OD&D ( and I will come back to it later on if time permits) and now I am going to transition to talking about The First Fantasy Campaign. It is strange, but true, that I knew about Arduin a long time before I knew about The First Fantasy Campaign. I did not learn about it until sometime after 2007 IIRC and I did not obtain a copy until about 2010.
So write this down, that Blackmoor Supplement to OD&D that I did not see until the fall of 1976, that should have been The First Fantasy Campaign. How I wish that I could have seen it then instead of about 34 years later.
So I have been encouraged the last 10 years to discover that even though I knew virtually nothing directly about Dave Arneson or Blackmoor I ran my game in many ways similarly. I also found out that the things I loved about Arduin were things that Dave Arneson did in Blackmoor. I have always wondered how much Dave Hargrave knew about Blackmoor and did he directly imitate what he loved about Blackmoor or did Arduin turn out the way it did because Hargrave was just a kindred spirit to Arneson and their minds gravitated to some of the same things. I have said before that Blackmoor and Arduin are exactly what I mean when I say Gonzo, i.e. multi-genre gaming. Medieval with a touch of space-ships, aliens and tech, along with anything that works on a given day.
I cannot talk about Blackmoor without talking about OD&D because for 30+ years I while I knew they were different, I had no idea how different. I am enthused about Secrets of Blackmoor and the documentaries (yes there should be more coming) and all that is being revealed by the remaining players of Blackmoor, some who like Dave have already passed away, all of them way too young.
It is interesting and someone more fluent in the newer games should write it, that between Arneson, Gygax and Hargrave before 1980, virtually all of the things since 1980 till now in 2020 that have been viewed as new and original, were things that the three of them did before 1980. Therefore, I view it it as a truism the claim by Rob Kuntz that the next big breakthrough is yet to happen. Dave Arneson's True Genius by Robert J. Kuntz gave us more of the puzzle and explained in some detail the things that are part of what Arneson created and brought together into one game - Blackmoor. Rob has more books in the pipeline and they cannot get here too soon. I really hope they get published.
So I am going to move on from OD&D to talk about Blackmoor/The First Fantasy Campaign and then after that I will move on to other things that I think are part of the picture. I will be talking about things as I see them today and I will also be going back to those college years in the 1970s and looking at things as I saw them then. I will be doing that throughout this year along with some other things.
In addition, to my regular Year of Blackmoor posting, in a few days I will do Arduin Week and Dave Hargrave Day, then in July I will do Greyhawk Week and Gary Gygax Day and in the fall at the end of September I will do Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day on Oct 1st.
So on with the celebration of 50 years of Blackmoor!
Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
As those who have been following along know, I have just completed a long series of posts going through the original three little brown books of OD&D almost line by line. Although they were not posted in the comments here, although that would have been welcome, I got quite a bit of push back on that series. The biggest criticism was that if I were intending to celebrate Dave Arneson and Blackmoor why am I talking about OD&D or anything other than Blackmoor? Let me try to answer that.
I took this all back to September of 1975, prior to that all of this was completely unknown to me. But in September of 1975 I was introduced to OD&D. To say that I loved it would be a severe understatement. No other game before or since has grabbed me like OD&D. There is a forum poster known as Diaglo had on several forums that following signature:
OD&D is the one true game, all others are a pale imitation of the real thing.
Diaglo by all accounts is a great guy and he does not say this lightly, neither does he say it to denigrate any other game. He says it because all other roleplaying games are derived from this one game, but it goes beyond that IMO, because OD&D is derived from Blackmoor. So it might be more accurate to say that:
Blackmoor is the one true game, all others are a pale imitation of the real thing.OK, so why was I talking about OD&D, well in September of 1975 and for about a year afterwards all I knew about Dave Arneson and Blackmoor was the brief mention by Gary Gygax at the beginning of the first volume titled Men & Magic:
So all I knew about Dave Arneson was his name and that he started a medieval fantasy campaign game in a weird enclave he called "Blackmoor". The bit about the Chainmail fantasy rules, I immediately discounted because I had access to OD&D and to Chainmail and IMO, having read and studied both, that claim held no water, I believed that in 1975 and I believed it today in 2020. OD&D was Blackmoor (I thought) put into writing, it was many years later before I found out that was not quite true, that OD&D was derived from Blackmoor, but the faithful copy part only belonged to the game engine and all of the core concepts, but not necessarily all of the mechanics. The mechanics were largely Gygax and his preferences and by the time I know that, they had through long use become my preference too. If I had had the chance back in the day to play under Arneson's mechanics would I have preferred them, I truly do not know.
I felt it would be useful and hopefully interesting to return to what I knew in 1975. So all that I knew of Blackmoor and Dave Arneson was what I knew of through OD&D. Later when I obtained the Blackmoor Supplement I was fascinated by The Temple of the Frog, that I was sure was all Arneson. But I did not know about that the first full year that I played OD&D.
So that is what I spent the past several weeks doing was reviewing OD&D and what I knew about it and how I used it and house-ruled in during the 1975-76 school year at college.
So again that is why I spent time talking about OD&D ( and I will come back to it later on if time permits) and now I am going to transition to talking about The First Fantasy Campaign. It is strange, but true, that I knew about Arduin a long time before I knew about The First Fantasy Campaign. I did not learn about it until sometime after 2007 IIRC and I did not obtain a copy until about 2010.
So write this down, that Blackmoor Supplement to OD&D that I did not see until the fall of 1976, that should have been The First Fantasy Campaign. How I wish that I could have seen it then instead of about 34 years later.
So I have been encouraged the last 10 years to discover that even though I knew virtually nothing directly about Dave Arneson or Blackmoor I ran my game in many ways similarly. I also found out that the things I loved about Arduin were things that Dave Arneson did in Blackmoor. I have always wondered how much Dave Hargrave knew about Blackmoor and did he directly imitate what he loved about Blackmoor or did Arduin turn out the way it did because Hargrave was just a kindred spirit to Arneson and their minds gravitated to some of the same things. I have said before that Blackmoor and Arduin are exactly what I mean when I say Gonzo, i.e. multi-genre gaming. Medieval with a touch of space-ships, aliens and tech, along with anything that works on a given day.
I cannot talk about Blackmoor without talking about OD&D because for 30+ years I while I knew they were different, I had no idea how different. I am enthused about Secrets of Blackmoor and the documentaries (yes there should be more coming) and all that is being revealed by the remaining players of Blackmoor, some who like Dave have already passed away, all of them way too young.
It is interesting and someone more fluent in the newer games should write it, that between Arneson, Gygax and Hargrave before 1980, virtually all of the things since 1980 till now in 2020 that have been viewed as new and original, were things that the three of them did before 1980. Therefore, I view it it as a truism the claim by Rob Kuntz that the next big breakthrough is yet to happen. Dave Arneson's True Genius by Robert J. Kuntz gave us more of the puzzle and explained in some detail the things that are part of what Arneson created and brought together into one game - Blackmoor. Rob has more books in the pipeline and they cannot get here too soon. I really hope they get published.
So I am going to move on from OD&D to talk about Blackmoor/The First Fantasy Campaign and then after that I will move on to other things that I think are part of the picture. I will be talking about things as I see them today and I will also be going back to those college years in the 1970s and looking at things as I saw them then. I will be doing that throughout this year along with some other things.
In addition, to my regular Year of Blackmoor posting, in a few days I will do Arduin Week and Dave Hargrave Day, then in July I will do Greyhawk Week and Gary Gygax Day and in the fall at the end of September I will do Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day on Oct 1st.
So on with the celebration of 50 years of Blackmoor!
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