Happy Gary Gygax Day 2024

 

Today is Gary Gygax birthday. Together, he and Dave Arneson created Dungeons & Dragons and thus our hobby was born 50 years ago. 

Thank you Gary!

-Havard

WotC removes Blackmoor from Greyhawk in 2024

Wizards of the Coast has produced a new map of Greyhawk where Blackmoor has been removed. I first learned about this when I saw a post by my friend Big Mac at the Piazza the Piazza D&D Worlds forum where he discusses the lastest youtube video from Greyhawk Grognard video from Greyhawk Grognard going through the new WotC produced map. 

The map in question is the Greyhawk map that is going to appear in WotC's upcoming 2024 D&D Dungeon Master's Guide. Greyhawk is from what I understand going to be used as a default setting in the new D&D core rulebooks. The new map looks somewhat reminiscent of the beloved map made by Darlene back in the days, but there are some interesting changes. Greyhawk Grognard's excellent video goes through these changes and speculates to reasons why these changes have been made and what might be possible consequences of the large and small changes. 

The change that will likely be of most interest to the readers of this blog is probably the removal of Blackmoor. Removal may be a strong term. Rather, Blackmoor has been renamed Arn. Now Arn is a name that could be familiar to hard core Blackmoor fans as it also appears in several of Dave Arneson's writings. 

Why has this change been made? Could it be linked to rights issues? Could it be to reduce confusion with the other Blackmoor product lines available that are less compatible with Greyhawk? Could it be linked to this map detailing a different part of Greyhawk's timeline?  Or is there another reason? 

In any case, the original intent of paying homage to Dave Arneson is retained in the new name.

What do you think of this new Greyhawk map and the changes made?

-Havard

Happy 40th birthday D&D!

2014 marks 40 years of Dungeons and Dragons. As pointed out by the author of Playing at the World, today could very well be considered the birthday of D&D. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created a game that changed the world in more ways than we can grasp.

Most importantly, the game has given countless hours of joy to us all.


Happy Birthday Dungeons & Dragons!

Image Source


-Havard

Wil Wheaton vs. Bargle!

D&D fans love hearing about famous people who have played our hobby. Joss Whedon, Vin Diesel, Kevin Smith, Metallica, My Chemical Romance, the list is too long to mention everyone here. We all know Wil Wheaton was a D&D player of course, but I did not know that he had journeyed to Mystara. "I started playing with the 1981 Red box" Wheaton says and goes on to mention having throughly explored the Caves of Chaos (B2 - Keep on the Borderlands) and many other known D&D locations.


Wheaton then goes on to mention what may have been the peak of his D&D career "One time, I even talked to a wizard named Bargle." What happened when Wheaton explored the caves north of Threshold in the world of Mystara? Was he magically ensnared by Bargle, like the rest of us, or did he manage to talk himself out of it?

You can listen to Wheaton talk about his early D&D memories at the video recording of the PAX 2012 Penny Arcade DND Celebrity Game (Not Safe For Work: Strong language). Thanks to my friend David Fryer at The Piazza for pointing me in this direction.

Another celebrity D&D player, Hulk Hogan, displaying his favorite miniature.

-Havard

Piazza Member to design 5E.

Monte Cook

Although he is better known for other things such as being one of the main designers behind 3E and his previous work for TSR and ICE, Monte Cook also has a "shady" past as a member of the Piazza. ;) I remember being very happy when the designer of Glantri: Kingdom of Magic signed up to the forum to talk about Mystara with us. G:KoM was perhaps not the best recieved Mystara product, but that had more to do with excecutive decisions than with what Monte did with the assignment given to him.

Robert J Schwalb

Another excellent RPG designer on the 5E design team, Robert J Schwalb, also has a connection to the community. He has made a long list of classic D&D monster conversions to 3E which all appear on the Vaults of Pandius.

I see alot of optimism concerting 5E even on old school gamer discussion boards. Having these two excellent designers on the team definately cannot hurt! :)


-Havard



Image Sources
Monte Cook
Robert Schwalb

D&D 5E Announced

Although speculations have been going on for a good while, its nice to have it confirmed:

NY Times.

Confirmed over at Wizards.com.

Announcing a new edition so early is usually a bad idea as 4E product sales will most likely go downhill from here . Is this evidence that it is impossible to keep a secret in this age of the Internet? The recent Escapist articles gave us some insight about how those inside the industry view the future of the hobby. This was also supplemented by Ryan Dancey's commentary. How will these thoughts shape a new edition?

Is Monte Cook's involvement a sign that 4E stepped too far from the roots and that 5E will be an attempt to bring the game back?


-Havard

Found this image here. 

Hit Points, Levels, XPs everywhere!

In a blog entry at the Grognardia Blog today, James Maliszewski notes how Hit Points, Levels and XPs keep popping up everywhere these days. That is indeed quite a legacy that Gygax and Arneson left behind!





-Havard

THE BIRTH OF BLACKMOOR

Blackmoor was created by Dave Arneson in 1970. He developed his own rules for the game, which gradually grew more advanced, before showing it to Gary Gygax, who had been working with similar ideas, in 1971. The two of them went on to create Dungeons & Dragons which eventually was published in 1974.

It must have been fascinating to take part in the early Blackmoor games. Today it is difficult to imagine a world where the phenomenon of roleplaying games doesn't exist. Although most experienced gamers can perhaps recall the wonders of our own first introductions to the game. I imagine being part of the birth of the hobby must have been a bit like that, only even more amazing.


Original Blackmoor player Greg Svenson describes his introduction to the game like this:

During the Christmas break of 1970-71; our gaming group was meeting in Dave Arneson's basement in St. Paul, Minnesota. We had been playing a big Napoleonics miniatures campaign, which was getting bogged down in long drawn out miniatures battles. So, as a diversion for the group, one weekend Dave set up Blackmoor instead of Napoleonics on his ping pong table. The rules we used were based on "Chainmail", which is a set of medieval miniature rules with a fantasy supplement allowing for magic and various beings found in the "Lord of the Rings". I had never played any games like it before, although I had read "Lord of the Rings". Other members of the group had played the game before, but always doing adventures in and around the town of Blackmoor. By the end of the weekend I had fallen in love with the game.
-The first Dungeon Adventure, Greg Svenson

The most extensive documentation fromthose early days is the First Fantasy Campaign (FCC). This book, published in 1977 by Judges Guild, can best be described as a collection of notes, sketches and house rules from Arneson's campaign. To Blackmoor diehards, it is a gold mine of ideas and insight into the mind of a genius. Although many of Arneson's ideas have been published and revised in later products, there are still hundreds of elements in the FCC that are still waiting to be discovered.

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