Change Ahead

Working on some major changes at the Comeback Inn.

Stay tuned :)

-Havard

Dragons at Dawn Supplement I is out!

DHBogg's just announced the release of the first supplement for his Dave Arneson inspired game Dragons at Dawn. Named Supplement I: Twighlight, the description at Lulu reads:

Supplement 1 is a broad ranging expansion of the Dragons at Dawn retro-tribute fantasy role playing game honoring the first years of adventure role playing as envisioned by gaming pioneer Dave Arneson. The contents include character class variations, alternate combat tables, new spells and rules for governing magic, expanded information on skills, morale, wilderness adventuring and a whole lot more!

 Click here to order a hard copy or buy the pdf. You can talk about supplement I with other fans as well as the author at the Dragons at Dawn section of the OD&D74 forum, or at the new Arnesonian Rules Section of the Comeback Inn.



-Havard

Dragonsfoot is 9 Years!

The Dragonsfoot Forum is 9 years old. Founded in 2002, Dragonsfoot is probably the best known forum for discussion of TSR era D&D rules. During the time when Edition Wars were raging all across the the Internet, Dragonsfoot became the shelter for people who did not want to move into WotC's (then) brand new version of the game. While sometimes being accused of being a haven of paranoid grognards, it is an amazing source of information about the early days of gaming and the older rulesets. You might have to develop tough skin to participate in the most heated discussions there, but all in all I am glad that a place like that exists! :)

For one this is where I met some of the key people involved with the Comeback Inn!


-Havard

Blackmoor News!

Things are happening!

I know things have been a bit more quiet lately, but we are working on Blackmoor related things all the time! Lately we have been working on expanding the Comeback Inn a little. We have now opened two new sections on the Forum:

One new section, Beyond the Veil, focuses on Blackmoor's connections to various other published settings such as Greyhawk, Mystara and the Wilderlands. The other new section is called the Coot's Watch and focuses on the Blackmoor MMRPG, the "Living Blackmoor" campaign run by Zeitgeist Games.

And this is just the beginning! Those who think Blackmoor is a dead setting are wrong. I can't reveal everything today, but I will have some exciting news for you all in the weeks to come :)




-Havard

Comeback Inn Forum Anniversary

One year ago, we started a new forum for Blackmoor, which we called the Comeback Inn. Since the Blackmoor lisence had ended, we feared that the ZGG Blackmoor forum would eventually disappear. We were right about that. But the Comeback Inn has proved a great replacement. It now has 114 members and 7662 Total posts! Our members include former ZGG employees and freelancers, original Blackmoor players, other gurus from back in the days as well as all the diehard Blackmoor fans. The Comeback Inn is also home to the longest lasting Blackmoor PbP, the Last Fantasy Campaign. If you haven't done so already, please register and join our conversations!



-Havard

Summarizing Blackmoor 2010

With Dave Arneson's passing the year before, things did not look good for Blackmoor as we entered 2010. The year began with Wizards of the Coast, not renewing their lisence with Zeitgeist Games, making the chances of seeing any official Blackmoor product in print in any forseeable future unlikely.

In spite of this, fandom were intent to carry the flame on. The readers of this blog one year ago, numbered 50. Now we are 99! Last february we launched the new Blackmoor Fan Forum; the Comeback Inn. I renamed my website, now called the Blackmoor Archives, to reflect its more defined role, with the forum and blog complementing eachother.

In March and April, I was happy to report, several gaming events dedicated to the memory of Dave Arneson and Blackmoor. On March 27th, the second Dave Arneson memorial game day was celebrated in New York City. On April 10, The second annual David L. Arneson Memorial Maritime Mayhem Miniatures Event was held at The Source Comics. I hope these events will return this year and go on for many years to come. 2010 was also the year when the Arnesonian RPG, Dragons at Dawn was published. In October, Full Sail University honored their former colleague. Last year, a new season of the legendary Blackmoor Play by Post game, the Last Fantasy Campaign was launched at the Comeback Inn with players including former Blackmoor players, former ZGG affiliates and die-hard fans.

The Original Blackmoor Players have also been kind to share their memories of gaming with Dave Arneson. Greg Svenson is a founding member of the Comeback Inn Forum and continues to contribute there. Stephen Rocheford told us about the first D&D archvillain. Bob Meyer told me about his Blackmoor memorial Game.  David Wesely ran Braunstein and gave  a podcast Interview. Thanks to Jeff Berry, we also learned about Deborah Naffziger who played Toska Rusa. Mike Carr also spoke about his memories of playing the first D&D Cleric in history in Arneson's Game. I am also in contact with other players who continue to be supportive of our work. More to be revealed on this later!

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who have been following this blog and responding to my forum posts at the Comeback Inn and the Piazza. You are the reason why I am doing this.

Those are but a few memories of 2010, all in all a great year in Blackmoor's history. All of these events make me optimistic about 2011. Let's make it even better than 2010!

-Havard

Death of the ZGG Forum

The MMRPG Forum over at ZGG's Website is gone and has been so, it seems since mid October. I have yet to get confirmation that this is a permanent removal of the forum, but at this point I would be very surprised if we ever get to see it back up. So what, you ask? The forum has not seen much activity for years, true. Unfortunately, many of the threads at that forum were pure gold. They had loads of setting ideas and tales from the original campaign. Many posts were made by the original Blackmoor players and contained unique information. Fortunately, most of this information has been saved at the Wood of the Revenant over at our Comeback Inn Forum. Still it is sad to see the Forum disappear. This is was a worry that I discussed with a few hard core Blackmoor fans, already when we first learned that the lisence would come to an end, and this was one of the reasons why we set up our own Blackmoor Forum.

Second Time Around
Sadly, this is not the first time for the ZGG forum to be removed. When the original ZGG Forum was "merged" with the MMRPG Forum, the original threads from the ZGG forum were lost. The lessons learned then allowed us to make the backups I mentioned above. I particularly miss the discussions with poster Ecthelion at the original Forum back in 2004. Unfortunately forum threads are not archived through the Wayback Machine, reminding us that Internet information is indeed temporary in nature.

Get Your Downloads While You Can
While I don't want to sound too alarming, I would not be surprised if we will see a complete removal of Blackmoor Content from the ZGG site in the near future. ZGG have not had the lisence to use Blackmoor since the beginning of this year, so there is no reason why they should keep all the freebies occupying their hard drives. Better safe than sorry. Download what you can now.

-Havard

Blackmoor Product Reviews

My buddy Rafael has been posting alot of product reviews over at the Comeback Inn Forum. You can find them through the links below:


Blackmoor The First Campaign (2009)

D&D Supplement II: Blackmoor (1975)

The Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor (2006)

More Reviews!




-Havard

New Look for the Comeback Inn Forum

The Comeback Inn, our forum for Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, has gotten an overhaul thanks to our hard working admin, Angelo. Here's the result:

I am gradually adjusting to the new look of the forum and getting to know all the new features. Hopefully the new forum will be smoother and easier to manage. This work is still in progress and new stuff is added as we speak. I hope everyone will enjoy the final result!. :)

You can visit the forum here.


-Havard

New Releases from the Comeback Inn!

The two first major publications from the Comeback Inn were made available this weekend. They are based on the ongoing PbP game, collectively known as the Last Fantasy Campaign, and incorporate both Blackmoor and Wilderlands lore.

Both have been uploaded to the Blackmoor Archives (my website):

The Maiden's Blackmoor

"A short written companion, containing information on our past games, on the concrete changes we made to our setting,  AND the big "Maiden's Timeline", the backbone of the setting we use, containing about all information about our game that we can spare."

The Grim Winter PbP Backup Files

"The complete transcript of the "campaign that started it all", from December 2005 to April 2009. Docs come in txt and rtf format."

-Havard

The Blackmoor Archives

I first set up my Blackmoor Website back in 2002. I had just heard that a new company called Zeitgeist Games had obtained the lisence to release new Blackmoor products. I really wanted the company to succeed in putting out a line of Blackmoor supplements and I wanted to to my part. The idea was to set up a website collecting various fan produced material from across the web, collecting links an so on. My initial plan was to try to have an update each month, so that it would be clear that this was a vibrant site, not just a static collection of information.

Having the site also increased my love for Blackmoor. I got a deeper understanding of the setting because I had to process all of the material I was uploading to my site. In 2003, I went to GenCon where I ran into Dustin Clingman. I was really proud when he introduced me to Dave Arneson and Joseph Goodman, stating that I was the keeper of the best Blackmoor fansite on the Internet.

This year the Fansite saw its biggest expansion to this day, with the grand opening of the Comback Inn; a forum connected to the site. This weekend I have gone over the site again, renaming it the Blackmoor Archives! Links have been updated and new articles and downloads have been added. I have many other interesting plans for the website in the coming decade.






-Havard

New Blackmoor Forum Opening

Here's the big announcement I've been dying to share with you: 

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my special pleasure to announce the grand opening of "The Comeback Inn", the new home of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor on the internet!
As some of you might already know, Blackmoor was one of the last "Golden Age" D&D settings that was officially supported by WotC,
through license holders Zeitgeist Games and Code Monkey Publishing.

When WotC didn't renew the license last autumn, our little group, tentatively called "The Regency Council", decided it was time to step up and do something to save our favorite setting from falling into oblivion.

The result is our little message board, which we now humbly present to the public:

http://blackmoor.mystara.us/forums/index.php

What are we?!

"The Comeback Inn", called so in reference to the first D&D in-game tavern of all time, is already the biggest database
for Blackmoor lore on the internet, and also home to the "Company of the Maiden"
and the latest installment of their long-running PbP campaign "The Promised Land".

We have prepared a small line of fan publications that we will present to the public in the next few months,
starting with a rules-free 30-page companion to the "Company of the Maiden's" take on Blackmoor.

Also, expect all kind of supplementing articles on gaming in Blackmoor for all editions,
investigative articles on the history of the setting, interviews with some of the icons of D&D's earliest days,
reviews on old and current gaming items of interest, and many more things that will help you to run a campaign
in Blackmoor, in a time were it is increasingly harder to get one's hands on out-of-print books.


What is that "Blackmoor" thingy we are talking about?!

Ugh... I know there might be some among you who don't know what I am talking about...

So, let's check Wikipedia's article on Blackmoor:

Quote:

Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. It originally evolved in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature wargames, then as an early testing ground for what would become D&D. Blackmoor is the longest continuously played fantasy role-playing campaign in existence.

Yeah, Blackmoor is arguably the mother of all D&D settings, and in great part responsible for the birth of the original (White Box) D&D game!


So, that's all pretty nice, but why should YOU go there and register?!

The idea of the "Regency Council" is to give Blackmoor what it has lacked all the way through its forty-year long history:
A place for the community to grow and to exchange ideas, and a place to discuss the many aspects and elements of the setting,
while staying accessible and open to n00bs.

In short, if you are or ever were interested in Dave Arneson's World of Blackmoor, this is the place to go!


Hoping to see you soon over at the Comeback Inn,


Rafael, speaking for the Regency Council






-Havard