2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Forty-Seven

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

Today I continue my comments in regard to this post(XP Started as One of D&D’s Breakthrough Ideas. Now the Designers Don’t See the Point ) at the DM DAVID  blog.

I was commenting yesterday about this part of DM David's post:

When Gary created this aspect of the game, he needed to find ways to entice players deeper into the dungeon. If a cautious party could gain nearly as much loot on an easy dungeon level as on a deeper one, why go down? Gaining experience could become a safe—and dull—grind.

To draw characters to danger, Gary doubled the number of experience points needed to advance to each level, then matched the increase with similar increases in treasure. To rise in level at a tolerable rate, players needed to delve as far down as they dared.

So today we will continue on from this point.

He says that one of the benefits of this approach is that when new characters (lower level characters) joined a party with higher levels, the new ones would tend to "catch up" and this would make it easier to replace deceased characters and also was a moderating factor to level drain by monsters.

From this he segues into:

In the decade after D&D’s introduction, a mania for creating realistic alternatives to D&D dominated the hobby. Every D&D player who ever wielded a foam sword cooked up a more realistic alternative to the D&D combat system.

IMO non OD&D combat systems (at least the ones I have looked at) tend to run much slower and be a lot more complicated (even when they "claim" to be less complicated and to be "objectively" better). One factor in many combat systems is they extend to making character generation take a lot longer. Compare OD&D chargen (about 5 min) to 3E or 3.5E (which I have read is quite complex and takes hours). If it takes 5 min for chargen, then character death is a feature of the game. if it takes hours, then IMO character death is a bug. 

This one thing alone is the reason that I looked at but never played 3E/3.5E it just deviated too far from what I know as D&D. (Now in Classic Traveller chargen takes a while, but not hours, but you can die during chargen and have to start over, but 1. you are generating an experienced character with some or a lot of career in place instead of a rookie and 2. that is a feature of Classic Traveller you know when you start to play.)

Now DM David says something that I take issue with:

The XP-for-gold system struck players everywhere as unrealistic. In the original Arduin Grimoire (1977), Dave Hargrave wrote that in his game, “[Experience] points are given for many reasons, but NOT for gold or other treasure. After all, it is the act of robbery, not the amount stolen, that gives the thief his experience.” In 1989, with the second edition, D&D would follow suit. The game would never award XP for gold again.

I do not dispute that it is unrealistic, I dispute that any other system is an improvement or does anything that makes the game more playable. IMO using XP-for-gold is quite an elegant system, it is quick and easy to use. Of course as I mentioned in an earlier post that are a number of things I also award XP for, just not for killing things. Also please note that I am a big fan of Dave Hargrave and Arduin. Also to be clear,  run my game on the Silver Standard and award XP-for-Silver with Gold being present but more rare and appearing in the toughest to secure treasures.

He says:

Without XP for gold, only killing monsters earned specific experience awards.

To me when I looked at games that did this it was a red flag for a play style that I was not interested in myself (do what you want at your own table).

While second edition stopped granting experience for gold, “a character can earn experience points for successfully completing an adventure or achieving a goal the DM has set.”

I have to disagree with this too. IMO sucessfully completing an adventure is defined by the players from game session to game session and could be any number of things, but IMO the ref (DM) is not there to provide goals for the players, the ref is there to provide a complete sandbox living world where things are happening all the time regardless of what the players do through their characters. There are a multitude of things happening in the world, NPCs recruiting for any number of things, rumors, scams, caravan arriving and leaving, ships coming in or leaving ports, expeditions, and all manner of things. The players select the things they are interested in or just pick a direction and go - it is their decision and the goals are entirely their province. 

Granted you might have new players or players of other games or newer versions or shy people or whatever who for a lack of a better word are decision challenged, they may need to be taught how to think on their feet and how to make decisions and how to set goals.  An experienced ref should be up the challenge of doing this and helping the players learn to stand on their own two feet. I have no problem with helping players along for a few games, but I do inform them that I will be removing the training wheels and they need to learn the questions that need to be asked to elict the information they need from the ref/npcs and etc. I have seen a number of players over the last 10 years learn these things and be able to tackle more difficult things. They did not complain and they kept coming back, so for me it was very satisfying to see them do a 180 in the way they approached the game.

But neither dungeon masters nor published adventures tended to follow the advice. Everyone, professionals included, tended to ignore improvised awards for experience in favor of the set numbers printed for each monster.

This is I fear far too true and is what has lead to the current majority view that the murder hobo style is the original style and the best style. DO NOT get me wrong here, if you in your game at your table want to play the murder hobo style that is your business, go for it. It is just not for me as a ref or as a player. So I AM NOT calling you out for bad wrong fun to be clear.  Just do one thing for me, do not go around spreading the story that far too many do that the murder hobo style is the original way that ALL of the early OD&D gamers' played, because it is not true. 

I interpret (from many online stories I have read) murder hobos as killing anything that moves, even complete innocents if they need 1 more XP to level up. The torture of anything and everything for "fun" and complete disregard for all in game morals, social norms and legal authorities in tandem with a DM that buys into letting the players do that. If that is not the way you play, then IMO you are not a murder hobo. Again play anyway you want to at your table. It is not my intention to "judge" you.

My original group were always the "good" guys with a sprinkling of neutrals and that is what I like to ref and all my later groups have went with that as well. Again if you want to play the bad guys, go for it, as long as you are not at my table, no harm, no foul. Go have fun.


More tomorrow.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Forty-Six

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

Yesterday I posted a bit more in regard to this post(XP Started as One of D&D’s Breakthrough Ideas. Now the Designers Don’t See the Point ) at the DM DAVID  blog.

He says:

In addition to rewarding players for seeking fun, the XP-for-gold system offered another benefit: It created a simple way to award experience points for succeeding at non-combat challenges. As a new PC in the original game, potentially with 1 hit point, you had little chance of leveling through combat. Players joke that D&D is about killing things and taking their stuff, but in the original game, you were better off using your wits to take stuff. So long as your cunning led to gold, you got experience.

If you look at fairy tales, a lot of them were about outsmarting and/or tricking the monsters. If you have not read fairy tales and for the last 50 years an ever decreasing number of people have go read Jack and the Beanstalk, Brave Little Tailor (Seven at One Blow) and numerous others as well as the older pre-Tolkien fantasy.  My original group was made up of people that were steeped in this literature. We had also read widely in mythology - Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic and some selected mythology from around the world outside western culture.

He goes on to talk about Gygax increasing the XP needed to keep advancing in levels and that leading to players going ever deeper in dungeons in search of more loot to gain more XP to fuel increasing levels with bigger treasures the deeper you went.

The part that is not mentioned as much was the creativity of the dungeon design itself, that made exploring the dungeon interesting in and of itself aside from the monsters, the treasure and going up in levels. As a referee, I strove then and strive now to make the exploration worth it on its own.

The first dungeon I ever did, did not have any physical treasure in it. During the week I picked out about a dozen quotes (I am looking for them, I am sure they are still in a box somewhere) and they traveled for a several weeks across a desert to some old ruins and down they went and at an entrance to an area there was the quote craved into the wall beside the door with it all looking very foreboding and then from that point on it was all improvisation generated from the quote and the players reactions.  We played for 14 hours with twelve players and got through all of it. No battles and no treasure, but they talked about it the rest of the school year (four more months) during which time we played twice a week. At least eight of the players made a point of telling me directly that treasure would have spoiled it/ruined it. 

I had other dungeons and wilderness adventures that the players talked a lot about between games with battles, treasures, heroics, sacrifice and glory, but nothing they talked about as much as that game. IMO treasure and leveling up is not the seven course meal, it is dessert.


More tomorrow.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Forty-Five

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

Yesterday I posted a little bit in regard to this post(XP Started as One of D&D’s Breakthrough Ideas. Now the Designers Don’t See the Point ) at the DM DAVID  blog.

Today I am going to look at the remainder of the post in a little more detail. This might even stretch over a few days. I never know how much I have to say until I sit down and start writing. ;)

DM David says that Arneson originally awarded players 1 XP for each hit point worth of monsters they killed, but he kept everything behind the screen and the players really did not know the mechanics, he just told them when they leveled up. He further says:

His method for awarding experience certainly evolved. In a 1978 interview, Dave Arneson recalled awarding experience for characters who used skills associated with their class. “Each player increases in ability in a given area by engaging in an activity in that area. For a fighter this meant by killing opponents (normal types of monster), their ability to strike an opponent and avoid the latter’s blows was increased.”

DM David says:

While realistic, awarding experience points (XP) for different activities could have split groups to work their separate professions. If characters gained, say, spellcasting ability through endless hours of practice and study, players would face choosing between the fun of exploring dungeons and the drudgery of practice. 

He then quotes Gygax about "realistic" vs "playable" from the AD&D DMG (Dungeon Master Guide). Then shows a quote of what kind of thinking a quest for "realism" can lead to:

In the pursuit of realism, Chivalry & Sorcery (1977) took study so seriously that the authors argue that magic users shouldn’t leave their labs at all. “What real ‘experience’ is to be had in a dark, damp dungeon?”

He says: 

Gary saw dungeon expeditions as the second compelling innovation in Dave’s game. To succeed, the budding D&D game needed a way to lure every character into the dungeon, and then to reward their risk taking. 

And talks about stocking the underworld with to motivate the hunt for treasure saying:

Gary wrote, “If you, the real you, were an adventurer, what would motivate you more that the lure of riches?”

The proof of that is the history of every gold rush that ever happened. Men do and have gone anywhere and took any risk to strike it rich. Although that history shows that the ones who get rich are not the miners for the most part with some exceptions, but the ones who separate the miners from their gold in a wide variety of ways.

While I have always loved dungeons, I have never exclusively focused on them like some of you do. Yes, I love my mega dungeons and I have run players into some huge ones, one was the inside of a four mile tall mountain that was honey-combed from the top all the way to way below the base(that is a story for another day). But I also love the wilderness, the oceans, the deserts, the mountains, the forests and the plains as well as the cities, the towns, the villages, the hamlets, the thorps and so forth.

The lure of treasure for me was the magic items. I loved creating them and I liked to create very unique one of a kind items. While as a player, I always wanted to get something very unique and very one of a kind, something that was only suited to the character I was playing. I am still hoping that happens, if I could split into two people I would just play in my own game. 

But DM David's article is about XP (experience points) and unlike Arneson, Gygax and the rules, I have never given out XP for killing anything. I give out XP for gold and treasure, but not for magic items themselves. I give out XP for roleplay and for great ideas, for putting the group ahead of yourself, for out of the box thinking and for making connections, from bread crumbs, that most people never notice that I spread out. I like to hide things in plain sight and players that take a closer look are well rewarded. 

Players that remember to look up (almost no one does) and to look down, especially at times you  would ordinarily forget to do that are players that earn extra XP and other rewards. But for killing things, no, no matter how tough and even if they were super lucky to survive the fight, I do not give out XP for killing things from day one till now.


But more on this tomorrow.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Forty-Four

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

Here is a recent post over at the DM DAVID blog about XP (and other related things)

XP Started as One of D&D’s Breakthrough Ideas. Now the Designers Don’t See the Point

He says:

When Dave Arneson ran a session of his Blackmoor dungeon for his Dungeons & Dragons co-creator, Gary Gygax’s biggest impression came from two innovations: (1) the dungeon expedition and (2) how characters improved with experience. In Playing at the World, author Jon Peterson describes reactions to the revolutionary game and shows new players and reviewers always touting the experience system. The steady reward of experience and levels forged an obsession for many players. I shared their fervor. In my junior high cafeteria, when I overheard some kids talking about a strange game where you could kill an orc, gain experience points, and get better at fighting, that single notion hooked me.

A couple of quick comments here, the first month or so I played had no dungeons and once I started reffing it was a couple of months in before I created my own dungeon with the only guidance being the tiny amount of information in the OD&D rules. For me the primary draw was I got to pick up a sword and stand between the monsters and the non-fighters. I also got to (i.e. chose) stand in the gap during a strategic retreat. Leveling up with gained experience was tertiary for me, gaining treasure was my secondary draw. But for me protecting others was my primary pleasure as a player.

Now once I ran a dungeon, I really got hooked on dungeons. But the other ref in our group did not run dungeons and during the four years of college gaming I never ran a character as a player in a dungeon. In fact, I first got to run a character as a player in a dungeon after 2013. From the time I left college in the spring of 1979 I did not play other than as a referee until after 2013.

So please read the article, because tomorrow I am going to comment in some detail as I revisit the article itself.

Laser Engraved D20 70mm for sale

The Osmium Dragon is offering a 70 mm D20, $15+shipping {free customization within reason of the 20 spot}.

Contact osmiumdragon1992 at gmail dot com

These are of hollow wood construction laser engraved.

This blog and blog owner have no financial interest in this item.

Robert J Kuntz 6th Column Post at EN World

(no pun intended)
Here is a link to Rob Kuntz and his 6th in the series of his columns at ENWorld.

BURMANIA! Part 2: "Keep on Going!"

As the neutral DM I was positioned to see how the opposition to Bob Burman had manifested, especially among two primary players in my campaigns and games, James Goodfellow and Eric Shook. Where does this animus derive from? It can be narrowed down as a reaction to Bob’s philosophy (or lack thereof) embodied in his endlessly repeated phrase during almost all game situations: “Keep on Going!” No matter how simple or complex the problem before him appeared to be his rubric in every case, without rhyme, reason or plan, was just to push onward.

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

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

I referred to the blog Hidden in Shadows yesterday and I am going to return to that well again today. This goes back to one of the early posts titled The Ghost of Arneson and D&D Next.(the development name for 5E).

In the beginning he lays out all the reasons that he was not interested in "brand D&D" and what things led him to being surprised and intrigued.

My caveat here is that I have never played any 5E so I do not know how much of what he talks about ended up in the final product. I would love it if someone well versed in 5E as published would do a comparison of this Hidden in Shadows blog post and the finished product. That said I am going to throw out a few things here and then encourage you to go read the full post and comment. So he says:

I’ve been seeing things in the 5e discussions that are making me blink, and wonder if the ghost of Arneson is haunting the design team (although I’d be very surprised if Mearls and co realize in the slightest who’s design ideas they are echoing.)

One of the things about this post that is fascinating for me is that when I read it back years ago is that it told me things about Arneson's game that I did not know at that point in time. It also made me sad that so many creative people die so young.

Mearls:
“…it's OK to do different things with D&D.  One of the things I really want to do with Next is build in different group and DM styles, and make it clear that those are just ways to play the game. Like, if you're group likes to make optimized characters the DM runs the game in Nightmare mode and that's fun, or the group that hates combat uses story-based XP and never fights anything.”

Compare to:

Arneson:
“D&D at its start was a simple system with guidelines that could be tailored to the players. The game was a co-operative effort by the players (Each having strong points and weakness.) to overcome the obstacles (Problem solving.) set up by the DM, The skills (Such as found in my *AIF game.) allowed you to build your character. As each edition came out new layers and more/different ruled were added. Some good, some bad, always more restrictive in some way even if it was a more 'simple' game.

*Adventures In Fantasy

Obviously I cannot quote the whole thing, although I would love to do that and comment on it line by line. There are quite a few comments about roleplaying and paying lip-service to that part of the game. Arneson and Mearls both talking about skills and how they should work. Arneson talks making a really unique character class, that he did that in his original campaign all the way up to today.

So I feel vindicated because a lot of the stuff I wanted to do has now been added.  People don’t realize that I came up with it way back when.  You have to look at an early first edition to even get an idea of that.  So, I’m happy.” 

There are tons of quotes in this article, all of them enlightening from about 8 years ago. How many of these things have you done in your campaign? How different is it for younger people and for older people like myself?

Arneson says things like:

“We’re trying to capture a different flavor of how you do magic and how you implement magic…

Again, just to catch the flavor of a fantasy world where you can’t assume the orcs you’re going to find are the same old orcs and you can kill them in the same old way

I always thought that dragons should be huge blusterous things that, each of them, are unique.

This is one of the things that has always been a feature of my campaigns is that all my dragons have been completely unique from each other. Yeah, I have a dragon write-up, but it merely a loose guideline that I created so a player could take a dragon as a character, but NPC dragons - no two are alike.  

It’s important to note here that first magic items Arneson designed for play were intelligent, aligned spell casting swords.  He made a list of each one and it’s powers.  Magic items in Dave’s campaign were always of the quirky and unique variety with a story behind them.

I love magic swords, and I have never used the table, I design each one as an individual work of art. In fact most of the tables I create are for reference and so I do not forget different options and ideas, but I do not actually follow the tables or the write-ups when I create magic items. My players are not going to come across multiples of the same item, they are going to come across unique occurrences of an item type.

Oh btw, the reason there is no link to the reddit post by Mearls is because I do not have the link and have not read the full post.

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

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

One of the best places to go for information about Blackmoor, Dave Arneson and OD&D is the Hidden in Shadows blog authored by DHBoggs who describes himself as a Game Archaeologist/Anthropologist.

Arneson did not use "Vancian" Magic, but had his own system which included a change of spell failure. A recent post titled Spell Failure in Blackmoor addresses this and goes into a dive into the information we have about Arneson's magic system.

Magic in early Blackmoor has often attracted interest, in part because it appears to have been so different from the "Vancian" system Gygax adopted for D&D.  When Arneson developed the magical component of his Blackmoor campaign he had little to go on in terms of source material.  The first edition CHAINMAIL booklet did list a handful of battlefield spells, but not much else.

In particular, one aspect that has drawn some attention and has attracted a number of fans over the years is the idea of spell failure.

It is an interesting read and I highly recommend this blog. I have never used the spell failure option in game, so maybe I should take another look at it and try it out.

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

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

From back in 2011 over at the Beyond the Black Gate blog(NSFW images) there was an article about Ref Impartiality You might want to read this article first and then go to this post Dave Arneson and Impartiality in the Temple of the Frog. The second link is what I am talking about here, although the first link lays out a background and context.

You will want to read the whole post of course, but here are a few highlights, the added bold print is provided by me for emphasis:

When it comes to the perfect role model for the impartial ref, I need look no further than my experiences with Dave Arneson. As some of the comments of the linked article would indicate, impartiality can be associated with a "ref vs. players" mentality. I probably made similar associations myself in the past, but gaming with Dave dispelled the notion.

Absolute impartiality is definitely not "ref vs. player" although if you are used to a ref that "helps" players and "fudges" rolls then at first glance you might jump to that conclusion. 

Being, for the first time, in a game run by Dave was a bit disorienting. When your character interacted with Dave's world, he became very animated, as if pouring every bit of his personality into making the game come alive.

I would hope that we all aspire as referees to do this, making the game come alive for our players, to help them see what you see and immerse themselves into the game. But he goes on to say if the players were discussing how to proceed among themselves, Dave did not react at all, instead:

He would sit, stonefaced, not reacting to anything anyone was saying. If a question was put to him as DM rather than as an NPC, he would simply shrug and look bored.

This is hard to do and I am definitely not as good as Dave, but when I play with experienced players this is what I strive for. When I ref inexperienced players I gradually move toward this more each game. I start out helping them with the lay of the land and to get a picture of how free they are to take action, but gradually they have to do it themselves, pick up the ball and run with it. I tell them up front that this is going to happen, that I will stop giving them hints and there will be no do overs if they screw up.

If you've ever watched a court trial on TV (a real trial, not a show), you've seen this same behavior - from the judge.

"Judge" would actually be a better description of how Dave ran his games than "Referee". The difference being one of rules vs. rulings. Dave was firmly in the rulings camp. 

This is what I strive for to be more of an impartial "Judge."

Dave had exactly two ways of resolving dilemmas or challenges. 1) Make an absolutely impartial ruling, or 2) if an absolutely impartial ruling was impossible, roll the dice.

I really think this is the way to go and I think that players really respect this. Consistency builds trust and if you do not favor the monsters or the characters, players learn to use the freedom they have to play smart and make good decisions. Players also learn to decide quickly and play quickly as that is to their advantage. 

To say that Dave was completely impartial with regards to the game was not to say that Dave was completely impartial with regards to players, often with hilarious results.

If you did not read the whole thing, then you will want to go back and  read the rest of that paragraph. IMO it is the perfect example of how to deal with someone who whines and complains about "fairness." In the cited example the complaining player had nothing to complain about, but the squeaky wheel learned there were consequences for being irritating and disruptive.

This next quoted section I really love as it nails it all down tight.

It didn't take long in one of Dave's games for the players to realize that we were on our own, completely. There would be no hints, subtle or otherwise, no clues dropped in our paths when we happened to go off-track. No mercy when we stumbled into overwhelming odds. No poison types fudged when we failed our saving throws. It was up to us to search, scout, research, prepare, plot, and react with some sort of competence.

I find myself unable to do this with complete newbies who have no concept of what an old school game is like and have no conception of what freedom of action they both have and are expected to exhibit. But experienced players, I would hope, want to play in a game like this. It means that they have to ask questions and explain what they are doing. Now once they have established that they know how to describe a thorough search (for example) I allow players to say, "We are going to take the time here to do a our standard thorough search, with emphasis on..." instead of taking the time to detail it all out each time. Now if a new player joins the game I ask them to detail it out so the newcomer knows what is up.

If players ask the right questions, then the referee/judge should answers the questions with the thoroughness they deserve. But if they fail to ask the questions, that is on them.

How about you? Are you impartial? 

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Forty

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

A couple of days ago I made a blog post the subject of which was CBI-2 The Thonian Rand - New Fan Made Thonian Empire Sourcebook Available For Free! So today I am posting about another free product that is a Campaign Expansion to the previously linked product.

As I said before, interested in Campaign Resources for Blackmoor? Here is a free Sourcebook Expansion made available by the fine folks at The Comeback Inn forum.

Here is the blog post announcement: Fall of the Dwarves: A Free PDF Campaign Expansion to the CBI-2 The Rand Sourcebook that was make at Havards Blackmoor Blog. This was announced back on June 16, 2019. This is a campaign expansion of the second in the series of Thonian Empire Province Sourcebooks that are written by Havard Blackmoor and friends..

There is a link in the blog post by Havard that takes you directly to the file if you are a member of The Comeback Inn forum. If you are not a member, but you would like to get the file then join the forum and then go to this thread How to get the Good Stuff! (And Downloads). In this thread, it tells you the two things that you need to do to be added to the Bailif Group so that you can download the free resources. (Do not worry, these hoops are quite painless and well worth doing.)

You can read a review of this sourcebook at this link
Happy Birthday OSR Haul & A New Free Blackmoor book - Fall of the Dwarves: A Free PDF Campaign Expansion to the CBI-2 The Rand Sourcebook By Havard Blackmoor by the fine folks at the Swords & Stitchery - Old Time Sewing & Table Top Rpg Blog.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Thirty-Nine

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

Here is a wonderful Blackmoor site courtesy of the Internet Archive. A lot of links work and sadly some others do not. But those that do work are fantastic.

Blackmoor Home of the Ancients

Ye Olde Comeback Inn

There are lots of resources on this page, one is the Gazetteer of Blackmoor v2.3. Of which the author says:

I (David Ross) "wrote" the gazetteer... in a very, very technical sense. My aim was to clarify what was really the work of Dave Arneson (1970-1987) and, to a much lesser extent, Dave Ritchie (1986-7); I saw my role as an editor. This ZIP has 13 files (12 RTF's, one XLS) of the history and geography of the world's oldest Role-Playing fantasy world. You will still need the DA series in order to play; there are no warez'ed maps or modules here.

The download link for this does work. 

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Thirty-Eight

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

Interested in Campaign Resources for Blackmoor? Here is a free Sourcebook made available by the fine folks at The Comeback Inn forum.

Here is the blog post announcement: CBI-2 The Thonian Rand - New Fan Made Thonian Empire Sourcebook Available For Free! that was make at Havards Blackmoor Blog. This was announced back on May 27th of 2019 when I was in the early stages of a three month battle to get my gout under control so I did not become aware of this item until several months later.

This is the second in the series of Thonian Empire Province Sourcebooks that is written by Havard and friends.There is a link in the blog post by Havard that takes you directly to the file if you are a member of The Comeback Inn forum. If you are not a member, but you would like to get the file then join the forum and then go to this thread How to get the Good Stuff! (And Downloads). In this thread, it tells you the two things that you need to do to be added to the Bailif Group so that you can download the free resources. (Do not worry, they are quite painless and well worth doing.)

You can read a review of this sourcebook at this link
Review & Commentary On CBI-2 The Thonian Rand Source book By Havard & Friends For Your Old School Campaigns by the fine folks at the Swords & Stitchery - Old Time Sewing & Table Top Rpg Blog.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Thirty-Seven

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

Today being the 37th day of The Year of Blackmoor we are officially 10% of the way through the year, truly, how quickly time flies when you having fun. (Yes cliches can be true!)😉

Are there other places that you can find information about Blackmoor? Yes, there are quite a few really, even though unfortunately most are small and obscure. One of the more prominent forums where information can be found is at The Piazza (The forum for discussing the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons...and more). Piazza, in case you were wondering, means a public square or marketplace, especially in an Italian town.

It consists primarily of the forum section called Campaign Worlds, the first listed is Blackmoor, followed by Greyhawk which does contain some Blackmoor related threads, followed by Mystara which also contains some Blackmoor related threads, and finally the Wilderlands which contains a sticky thread that redirects to the Blackmoor forum; however, I would urge reading and exploring the Wilderlands if you are a Blackmoor fan.

A lot of good threads and information can be found here and there are links to a lot of other places where information can be found. Enjoy!

Monty Haul: A Fifth Edition 'Zine with an Old School Vibe (Zine Quest 2)

Check out this 'zine Kickstarter! IMO this is a fantastic project (and in my case converting from 5E to
OD&D on the fly is a snap). The bulk of this is already written, which to me is a big plus. Further the fact that is he a big Robert E. Howard and Conan fan tells me that this will be more than usable, I expect it to be an inspirational grab bag.

Monty Haul: A Fifth Edition 'Zine with an Old School Vibe - A treasure trove of new ideas, optional rules, campaign notes, and character choices, straight outta the 1980's!

Monty Haul is a 24-page, saddle-stitched, 5.5" by 8.5" black and white 'Zine filled with usable rules, options, and home-brewed content for any 5e game. What makes Monty Haul different is that I have been inspired to transfer and translate much of the style and sensibility of 1980's fantasy and sword and sorcery for the 21st century gamer. What does that mean, exactly?

As an author and a creator, I love story and storytelling, and Fifth Edition has a lot of mechanisms in place to make sure that players are engaged and willing participants in the larger story going on at the table. But as someone returning to Dungeons & Dragons after a lengthy hiatus, I didn't recognize the world anymore. Most of the content in Monty Haul came from me trying to reconcile the games we played in the 1980's with the newest version of the rules. 

In the early to mid 1980's, books were my primary source of inspiration for my D&D games, along with a handful of comics like Warlord and magazines like Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated.  Movies? Yeah, there were a few good ones, but the drop-off in quality between the top 3 greatest Sword and Sorcery movies of all time and numbers four and five is a literal bungee jump.  

We just didn't have the vast array of resources available to modern gamers, and so we were encouraged (by the proliferation of gamer mags and 'zines) to make role-playing games and worlds our own way. If we needed something, we sat down and wrote up some stats for it.   

With the publication of fifth edition, that DIY Esprit de Corps is back, and with the new version of D&D comes plenty of encouragement to create new archetypes, invent random tables, and brainstorm interesting solutions for the fuzzy edges of the rules. 

Issue 1 will focus on Warlocks, Sorcerers, and Wizards and include new rules for Alchemists and Apothecaries (and what's the difference between the two), new magical-based backgrounds for characters, An Eldritch Bloodline sorcery origin, a new eldritch warlock patron, rules for lesser schools of magic,  a slew of magical pests to plague spell casters with, and more, if we meet and exceed stretch goals. The issue will be available in both print and pdf formats. 

(Issue #1 Delivery - PDF - May 2020 and Print June 2020)

Future Issues (Unlocked with Stretch Goals): 

Issue 2 spotlights Rogues and Bards. The issue is all about how to run a heist in D&D and includes a DIY Thieves' Heist kit, suitable for both sandbox campaigns as well as seat-of-the-pants play styles. Also included is a new Bard college built around the classic Fool, and additional alchemist and apothecary options for thief and rogue campaigns (continued from issue 1): the Poisoner and the Skuldugger. The issue will be available in both print and pdf formats by August 2020.

Issue 3 is for Clerics, Druids, and Monks. Several new domains are introduced, including a complete pantheon of gods and goddesses for the Civilization Domain, designed for large city-states. Also, new archetypes for Druids and Monks; the Circle of the Silver Sickle, and the Tradition of the Pious Hedonist, a monk that is more Friar Tuck than a Shao Lin temple disciple. The issue will be available in both print and pdf formats by November 2020.

Issue 4 takes careful aim at the martial classes, the Fighter, the Paladin, the Ranger, and the Barbarian. The Oath of the Wall, the barbarian Path of the Wild Reaver, and a ranger subclass that rides giant war eagles are among the  new character options, along with new wizard-borne monsters for killing, and magic items to loot when said monsters are destroyed. The issue will be available in both print and pdf formats by Feb 2021. 

As stretch goals are unlocked, so too are higher page counts, which means more content in each issue!

Then he says if it hits $5000 there will be bonus PDFs.

Anything I can't fit into the 4 'Zines will get mooshed into a professionally-edited and illustrated PDF and sent to all backers free of charge.

My time is split between running my business and taking care of my wife. Not for nothing, but most of this material is already written and some of the larger articles are already proofed in digital form. Layout is 90% complete, along with logo and trade dress. If the project funds enough to employ an artist, he'll have plenty of time to create original art for the 'zine. And I will publish previews of my progress along the way.

About Mark Finn

Mark Finn is an author, an editor, and a pop culture critic. He is a nationally-recognized authority on Robert E. Howard and has written extensively about the Texas author. When not waxing rhapsodic about the creator of Conan the barbarian, Finn also writes comics and novels, as well as articles, essays, reviews, short stories and role playing games. He lives in North Texas with his long-suffering wife, too many books, and an affable pit bull named Sonya.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Thirty-Six

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

The below linked blog post was written and posted last year after what would have been Dave Arneson's 72nd birthday. We forget that he died so young.

In Appreciation of Dave Arneson

Free HârnWorld D20 Adaptation Approved by the Copyright Holders

Over on DriveThruRPG there is no available HârnWorld D20. From WarFlail's Armoury:

HârnWorld D20 is a detailed adaptation of the gritty, low fantasy medieval setting of HârnWorld, using the d20 System. This is an unofficial product, approved by the copyright holders.

Recommended resources: HârnWorld and HârnMaster, available here on DriveThruRPG.

HârnWorld is a detailed, realistic, flexible, and system-neutral setting for fantasy role-playing games. Since 1983, HârnWorld has been used by thousands of people across the world to run a wide array of medieval fantasy adventures. HârnWorld can accommodate whatever style of campaign you are looking for, whether your player characters are knights, mages, barbarians, clerics, noble lords, mercenaries, gladiators, craftsmen, merchants, thieves, or even simple peasants yearning for adventure.

The best part is that this resource is a free download. While d20 is of course 3.5E converting from that to OD&D on the fly is a snap.

Also on DriveThruRPG are these two HârnWorld products as pay what you want items.

5E Hârn

Want to play in the HârnWorld setting using D&D 5e rules? Here you will find a 'light-touch' adaptation to capture the gritty, low fantasy medieval feel of Harn, while retaining 5e's elegant game mechanics. This is an unofficial product, approved by the copyright holders.

 Again converting on the fly from 5E to the faster, simple, easy to use OD&D system is a snap.

I also enjoy the 'claim' that these copyright holder approved adaptations are 'unofficial', IMO if the IP holder approved it, you cannot get any more official than that. I realize that WarFlail's Armoury is obligated to put out that little disclaimer, but the disclaimer is obviously not true. If it were not official it would not be available.

5E Hârn Bestiary

A compendium of monsters and NPCs that can be encountered in Hârn. It is a GM's supplement for the 5e Hârn rules. This is an unofficial product, approved by the copyright holders.

Note: placing the word approved in bold is added by me.

The two recommended resources: HârnWorld and HârnMaster, are available on DriveThruRPG by Columbia Games along with other Hârn items. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2182/Columbia-Games-Inc

These products by Columbia Games are in pdf format  and while many items are very reasonably priced (and I recommend getting them), sadly some of the most useful items are way overpriced unless you were receiving brand new 1st edition hardback books. It is hoped that someday these items will be priced to sell thousands of pdf copies instead of 10's of copies. Sad really since Hârn is such a beautifully done setting that they would deliberately limit their customer base to a tiny fraction of what it could have been and still could be. ($49.99 for a pdf of a book published in 2002.)

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Thirty-Five

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

You may not have heard of Fred's World, a campaign that was located in Minneapolis (where Dave Arneson created Blackmoor). While I do not know when this campaign started, in 1989 a lot of the game, the house rules and other information was committed to writing and a few years ago it was published. Sadly Fred the creator of Fred's World is no longer with us, another creative referee that died way too young. 

You can access this document here, Fred's World The First Edition Collection. A Fred’s World Document ©1989 by Fred P. Funk III, First Edition

Willow A Grim Micro Setting (Zine Quest) Kickstarter

Here is a Kickstarter a friend is doing, take a look.

Willow micro setting - click for full size image

Willow is an old-school, grim, backwater micro setting made for Swords and Wizardry rule system, but can easily be used with other old-school systems or even 5E. All in a compact zine format. 

It is a modular town that can be dropped into your campaign. Its fully formed and flavorful. It focuses on game-able content and being easy to use at the table. It is graphic and art heavy and utilizes a lot of random tables to make it easier for GMs to run in a pinch. 

Content:

• Hooks and rumors for players
• 5 Keyed Hex Locations
• Random encounter tables for different areas
• New monsters and monster factions 
• An aquatic themed dungeon
• NPC generator 
• NPC relationship web
• Key NPCs with desires, fears and mannerisms
• A mystery to be solved upriver
• A shop and inn
• Town history
• Organization structure for the society of the town
• Changes and sets of events that happen over time
• New magic items, including magical plants and insects
• Flow charts for how the village will react to different actions players take 

About the author: 

I'm lazy litch, a dungeon master, artist, graphic designer and OSR content creator. I previously self published a book called Woodfall which is now a gold best seller on drivethrurpg. I also collaborated on an adventure book for Swords and Wizardry called Spiral Isles.

Author's Kickstarter history:

This is the third Kickstarter I have been involved in. Previously I ran the successful Woodfall campaign in 2018. I also collaborated on Spiral Isles and Desert Dwellers last year, both of which were successfully funded and fulfilled. I have intentionally kept things very simple with no stretch goals or add-on items so I can deliver a great product without delays.

2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary - Day Thirty-Four

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

Here is a link to an expansive post titled Arnesoniana by a poster that goes by krusader74, he graciously gave permission to post the information to The Ruins of Murkhill forum back in August of 2017.

The first two links are to posts by Dave Arneson under the member names of "darneson" and "blackmoor".

There are a number of links to interviews and some selected quotes that are posted as well.

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

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

Today is the 02.02.2020 post.

This post (Dave Arneson, Blackmoor and Me!) tells this story, Spinachcat writes:

Two weeks ago was the ConQuest San Francisco convention and this is an email I sent a buddy on Saturday night. I was planning on posting something more coherent on RPG.net, but tough xxxx, you get this instead.

That post contains an essay about playing with Arneson and his rules. He closes with these remarks:

BTW, here's a hint if you ever play with Dave. Dave lets the players pick a mission for their adventure. When you complete the mission by returning back to town, the adventure is over. Therefore, if you want to keep playing with Dave, all you gotta do is delay going back to town...

The other useful post in that thread is this one.

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

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

Today we celebrate the beginning of the second month of The Year of Blackmoor.

Dave Arneson's House Rules

Blackmoor Campaigns

A small excerpt:

THE FIRST FANTASY CAMPAIGN

DM: Dave Arneson (with other players filling in for Dave Arneson on occasion)

This campaign started ca 1970 (the exact year marking the start of the campaign is a debate among scholars) and was run by Dave Arneson. The most important events of the campaign were from ca 1970-1975 and are documented in the First Fantasy Campaign (Judges Guid, 1977). Bob Meyer, Greg Svenson and others helped Dave run occasional games when Dave was too busy. Dave Arneson kept running annual Blackmoor games for his players untill his passing in 2009. Bob Meyer has been running memorial games continuing the game since that time. Read more about the Original Blackmoor Campaign here (Comeback Inn registration required).