2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Twenty-Three

Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary!

Continuing with Part Six of our look at Running Castle Blackmoor over at The Alexandrian Blog. Today we will look at Part 8 and 9 of that series "Special Interest Experience" and "Special Interests."

Running Castle Blackmoor – Part 8: Special Interest Experience 

Running Castle Blackmoor – Part 9: Special Interests 

The Introduction:

In the First Fantasy Campaign, Dave Arneson includes a system of “Special Interests” of which he writes, “Instead of awarding points for money and Jewels acquired in the depths of the Dungeon or hoarding items against the indefinite future, the players will receive NO points until they acquire the items listed below…”

He then asks a lot of excellent research oriented questions about when and how Arneson used this. He talks about different interpretations of the above and ppoints out that Arneson did not seem to spend time writing anything up that he was not going to use.

He refers you here for some additional light on the subject: Perhaps Daniel Boggs’ exploration of the Richard Snider Variant can shed some light on this.

He then proceeds to say:

For the purposes of running Castle Blackmoor, as you’ll see below, I’ve decided to go with the most extreme interpretation: The only way to gain XP is to pursue your special interests. (This is, again, not a declaration that I believe this to have been what was happening at Arneson’s table circa-1971. It’s just the most interesting choice to make as we explore alternative play dynamics.)

He says that what is in The First Fantasy Campaign is not directly usable as is, different methods produce different results and it suggests*:

(suggesting that their explanation has either been mangled or that the material is actually an inchoate mash-up of several different revisions of the ruleset), multiple “examples” that all contradict each other and any version of the rules, and copious references to other sub-systems that have simply not been included.

*File this away, I am going to make a future blog post to explore the implications of this quoted idea and why it is a beautiful thing.

He proceeds to talk about the system he devised as being inspired by what he considers the best ideas of Arneson, mixed with his own and ideas from the game Blades in the Dark.

So he has a Table to determine a random Special Interest for which you will have a 100% rating, to which you add a Racial Special Interest. Some races have a specific Special Interest and others such as human roll on a random table for a secondary interest. All other Special Interest you roll 2d6 times 10% to determine the rating.

I have thought about using this system, although I would allow some latitude with players determining a primary interest.

The next Section is Gaining Experience Points. 

You only gain XP for GP which are taken out of the dungeon and spent on a Special Interest.

XP is gained on a 1-for-1 basis modified by the character’s rating in the Special Interest.

So the higher the rating the more experience you gain and the lower the rating the less experience you gain per GP.

Followed by Complications:

Spending GP on a Special Interest may lead to complications.

This is detailed in the second post of the two we are looking at and it is very amusing to the referee part of me. 

Next up is Community Limits: Where he says the size of the community limits what you can do and spend so it behooves you to go somewhere that you can spend the amount you need or want to spend. There is also a frequency at which you can spend that much gold.

The next section is on Caravans and this should prove usual to most of us and our games. He has some great stuff here IMO.

How to setup a caravan and what that entails, the hazards to a caravan such as:

Caravans – Jeopardy: Caravans are subject to brigandry, natural disasters, and eldritch fates of an even stranger character. In some cases, characters might also simply be scammed by unethical caravan masters who simply abscond with their funds.

Rules for Basic Travel, a full Hexcrawl or on a trail/road that is part of a trade route. Also for the hiring of Mercenaries.

Then we have Community Investment and in addition to what he has here I would suggest looking at OD&D which has some useful information in this regard. Remember that Arneson in Blackmoor had "Domain Play," "Wilderness Play," "Dungeon Crawls," and "Town/City Play" all going on at the same time.

He then talks about Carousing, Carnavale, Philanthropy, Religion, Song/Fame, Training, Hoarding, and Hobbies. In a fair amount of detail, more than enough to generate a lot of gaming. 

The Racial Special Interests: Humans are Generalist, Dwarves are Hoarders, Elves and their Trees, Hobbits and Gifting. This could be extended to any number of Home-brewed or other races used in your campaign.

Arcane Projects are discussed and earning XP for these projects, including Spell Forumula, Bespoke Spell Egs, Workshops, Workshop/Laboratory Spell Eggs, Other Magic Items plans. 

In regard to Strongholds he says:

Specific rules for establishing and managing strongholds are beyond this present document, but 100% of GP spent on strongholds grant XP. If strongholds are located within the community, 50% of these expenses are also considered community investment.

He closes this part with a list of things you could add to this system, all of which are IMO great ideas.

Tomorrow we will wrap this series of posts up when we cover his last post the "Blackmoor Village Map."

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Twenty-Two

Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary!

Continuing with Part Five of our look at Running Castle Blackmoor over at The Alexandrian Blog. Today we will look at Part 7 of that series "Restocking the Dungeon."

Part 7: Restocking the Dungeon

He introduces the topic this way:

The creative and evolving process of restocking a megadungeon is something I discuss at length in (Re-)Running the Megadungeon. I’m not going to rehash that material here, and if you’re unfamiliar with that earlier essay you might want to take a few minutes to peruse it.

A large part of the gist of this side article and others is that you should employ standard non-linear dungeon design. I say standard because until I first got online, I did not know anyone did it any other way. The old school dungeon has multiple ways of getting to the various parts of dungeons, multiple entrances and exits, stairways, slides, portals and dozens of other ways (many of them secret or hidden) to enter or exit each level of a dungeon or area of a level. 

Back to restocking the Dungeon. He says that he see restocking a dungeon as a mix of art and science. You want to look at the context of events and the evolution of the dungeon should reflect ongoing events. Then he goes on to say:

With that being said, I often find it rewarding to incorporate random procedural content generation. It can prompt me to pursue unusual creative directions and force me out of my comfort zone. It can also “force” me to put in the work when it can sometimes be easier to default to “nothing happens”.

In restocking the Castle Blackmoor Dungeons he was looking for an alternative to the standard ways he normally does it saying:

As far as I know, however, Arneson never explained his restocking procedures. (If he even had a formal procedure.) So there’s nothing explicit for us to base our restocking techniques on. What we can do, however, is look at how a restocking procedure could be created to capitalize on the tools provided by the Arnesonian procedures we’re using.

He goes into a description of three  approaches that he developed that he calls:

EMPTY ROOM METHOD

GLENDOWER TEMPLATE METHOD

QUADRANT CHECKS

He says in part:

Quadrants, however, give you a simple one-size-fits-all approach that can be quickly slapped down onto any level of the dungeon.

You’ll still want to use common sense, of course: In the map above, for example, you can see how I’ve tweaked the borders of each quadrant on Level 1 to follow natural divisions in the dungeon corridors.

He is referring to a map image posted at the beginning of the post.

He closes by saying that with playtesting you may want to tweak the odds he has listed here and makes a couple of suggestions.

Tomorrow we will look at the Topic of Special Interest Experience.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Twenty-One

Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary!

Continuing with Part Four of our look at Running Castle Blackmoor over at The Alexandrian Blog. Today we will look at Part 6 of that series "The Dungeon Key."

The Dungeon Key.

First off I will let you know that he provides in his post:

There are four versions of the key available for download as Microsoft Word files:
Blank Template – Glendower Template – Seed 1 – Seed 2
COLLECTED ZIP FILE

You can download them individually or as the full zip file and the links currently work.

He says:

In order to make full use of this material, you’ll need copies of the Blackmoor Dungeon maps. The maps from the First Fantasy Campaign are ideal, but those from Zeitgeist Games’ Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor are adequate, despite introducing a number of new errors. (The most notable of which was that the cartographer didn’t understand how Arneson indicated secret doors on his maps, so missed several of them and turned the rest into normal doors.) The Zeitgeist Games release does have the advantage of currently being available on DriveThruRPG.

And yes, his link to the items on DriveThruRPG are working links. He also comments that the procedures he is going to show you will work on any dungeon, especially mega-dungeons and also homebrewed dungeons.

The next section is titled "The Keys" and this is where he discusses each of those four files that he made availabe for download. 

He describes Arnesons system thusly:

As I described in Reactions OD&D: The Arnesonian Dungeon, I found this particular format fascinating because the combination of treasure + protection point budget creates a specific tactical “shape” for the dungeon, but allows the GM to completely reinvent the dungeon on-the-fly each time they run it:

Under "Seed 2" he says:

Perhaps the most notable take-away, in my opinion, is how the same stocking procedure can create radically different versions of the same dungeon.

That seems to me to make it a system well worth digging into.

At the end he gives you his "Observations from Stocking."  He mentions odd results starting about Dungeon level 5 and some different ways of handling or interpreting that. 

After this he has a section on "Using Minimalist Keys in Play."

An excellent read, lots of good advice and a sense that Arnesons lower dungeon levels were brutal.

Tomorrow we go on to the next section "Restocking the Dungeon."