Greg Svenson's Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg now live in Kickstarter (and funded)

 

As mentioned at The Comeback Inn yesterday, the new Kickstarter for Greg Svenson's Lost Dungeons of Tonnisborg is now live on Kickstarter. Within hours of launch, the Kickstarter reached its initial goal.

Greg Svenson was one of the early members of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Group and Dave mentions Greg's role in Blackmoor in the First Fantasy Campaign (1977). Greg originally designed this mega dungeon below the town of Tonnisborg which was placed in the Blackmoor map on the spot where Vestfold appears in later Blackmoor material. Interestingly both Vestfold and Tonisborg share real world inspirations. Greg has also been a friend and eager supporter of my work since I first started doing Blackmoor stuff on this blog and the Comeback Inn so I hope this project is highly successful!

Behind this Kickstarter is the duo known as the Fellowship of the Thing (Griffith Morgan and Chris Graves) best known as the producers of the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary. Mr Morgan recently spoke about this project in this video interview with the Wandering GM

Disclaimer: The author of this blog is in no way associated with this Kickstarter or any commercial activity connected to RPGs.

Check out the Kickstarter here.

-Havard

Playing Blackmoor in the real Vestfold

Slottsfjell, in Vesfold, Norway

Like many Minnesotans, Dave Arneson and several of his players were of Scandinavian ancestry. As I have mentioned previously, the origin of the name of Blackmoor's city of Vestfold, is probably the Vesfold region of Norway, rather than the Tolkien version. Tolkien most likely got the name for his Vestfold from the same source. It is also interesting that the recent Thor and Captain American movies both have their opening scenes in this area, a fact well appreciated by the locals.

In any case, it was quite cool to be able to go to the real Vestfold this weekend and DM a game of Blackmoor. A member of my original gaming group lives in the region and invited me and other friends from the good old days for a weekend of gaming. We each ran one game, and I chose (surprisingly?) to run Blackmoor.

The game involved exploring the town of Newgate, getting to know a Peshwah Monk, and the quest to find King Uther's lost son. The game was a great success. One of the best games I have run in a while. My players did a great job getting into roleplaying their characters and had alot of fun just talking to NPCs, getting into an epic bar brawl and enduring a petty quarrel with an officer of the city guards. All in all a fun weekend!



-Havard

Welcome to Vestfold!

As Arneson's campaign developed, he realized that he needed a bigger city to be the capital of the realm. Blackmoor was but a small town, and it had been continuously sacked by the forces of the Egg of Coot. As a name for the new capital, he chose Vestfold. It is not unlikely that this was a reference to Westfold, the district within Tolkien's Rohan. Afterall, Blackmoor already had Hobbits, Ents and Balrogs at the time.

On the other hand, places like Mohacs (the Imperial City) and Borno were taken from real world locations of a certain historical significance. It is not unlikely that Arneson borrowed this name, like Tolkien did from the county of Vestfold, Norway. Given Arneson's interest in history, it is not unlikely that he was familiar with the petty kingdom of Vestfold, the staging point for the unification of Norway in the Viking Age.

Arneson's player, Greg Svenson originally developed a town in this part of Blackmoor which he called Tonisborg. The spelling is curiously not too different from that of the town of Tønsberg, located within the Norwegian county of Vestfold. Being Norwegian, I found this quite fascinating, although in my own campaign I had to rename the City, Westridge, as it would have been too familiar a name for them. Hopefully Dave would not have minded me doing so! :)





-Havard