"Across Black Moors" is a Blackmoor inspired adventure by Carlos Lising of CASL entertainment

I recently recieved news of this new adventure inspired by Dave Arneson's Blackmoor. It is written by Carlos Lising of CASL entertainment. The module is announced as the official module of DaveCon, a convention to commemorate Dave Arneson's legacy next month and will presumably be sold or given out to attendees of the convention. The convention has drawn some criticism for not involving Dave Arneson's family, but has been described as a passion project of its founder Victor Dorso.

 

"DC1 Compliant with OSRIC. 

Dungeon Module DC1 Across Black Moors. By carlos a.lising. An adventure for characters levels 3-5

Long has the bizarre and potent entity known as Orrg of Oot held sway over the Black Moors, controlling the common folk of the land beneath the weighty chains of thralldom and a silent, pervasive terror. Despite its fearsome power, however, an opportunity to fight back against this alien foe has made itself known. Will your heroes strike a blow for freedom on behalf of the Black Moors - or will the Oorg of Oot continue its reign of tyranny over the land forevermore?

This module was the official adventure from DaveCon 2022. It contains a challenging scenario and eight pre-rolled, playtested tournament characters. DC1 is a complete adventure in and of itself and may thus be used for competition among players (pr groups of players) or as a non-scored adventure included in the cnotext of an ongoing game. Also included are referees's maps, notes, encounter descriptions for players, and a background scenario allowing the module to be easily placed withing a pre-existing campaign."

The cover blurb quoted above is of great interest to me. The villain's name is spelled Orrg of Oot and Oorg of Ooot in the same paragraph, but it is obvious that it is a nod to the alternate names given to the Egg of Coot in Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, where the names  Ogg of Ot and Orrg er Druig were presented as two aliases of this legendary Blackmoor villain. The description of the Black Moors as being ruled by this being suggests that the adventure takes place before Blackmoor was liberated by the elves and long before the DA modules or the ZGG D20 version of Blackmoor. My immediate thought is that the module will be harder to reconcile with the Greyhawk version of Blackmoor, but the blurb does say it can be easily integrated into any pre-existing campaign.

Across the Black Moors is not the first gaming product to be created as a tribute to the legacy of Dave Arneson of course. We also have Dragons at Dawn and Champions of Zed both by DH Boggs, Rob S Conley's Blackmarsh well as the excellent campaigns and sourcebooks organized at the Comeback Inn Forum. Greg Svenson The Lost Dungeons of Tonnisborg feels like its  more than a tribute, but I wanted to mention it anyway. More on that later. 

What other Dave Arneson inspired games may we see in the future?

Did I forget anything? Please let me know in the comments!

-Havard

3rd Annual NYC Arneson Memorial Gameday: October 1

A little over a month to go to the 3rd Annual NYC Arneson Memorial Gameday! Previously this New York City based event was held in March, but has now been moved to October 1st which is Dave Arneson's birthday. Although I have yet to get it confirmed, it is believed that it will be held at the Brooklyn Strategist. This year's events include:

• Michael Curtis will be running games of Stonehell Dungeon
• Joseph Bloch will be running games of Adventures Dark & Deep, and will have a new version of the Bestiary
• Luke Crane will be running games of DNA/DOA using a hack of Burning Wheel Gold
• Darren Watts will be running games of Lucha Libre for the HERO System
• Tavis Allison and others will be running games of the soon to be published Adventurer Conqueror King
• Paul Hughes will be running 4E using his poster of the OD&D random monster charts
• Daniel Boggs can't make it, but will be writing a piece for the program book and sending a single-volume collection of Dragons at Dawn & its first sequel
• Panel discussion about Arneson's legacy and how it's shaped modern culture; panelists will include journalists Ethan Gilsdorf (Wired, Salon) and David Ewalt (Forbes) .

More information can be found here. If you are going, make sure to send me the reports, pictures, videos or sound recordings. I want them :)



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-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

Arnesonian Rules Discussion

The other day I mentioned Adventurer Conqueror King System, and I have previously talked about the excellent Dragons at Dawn RPG. These are two of several games looking back to the way Dave Arneson ran his games. Because of this, we have added a new section to the Comeback Inn for discussing the RPG rulesets Arneson wrote or contributed to as well as systems attempting to follow this tradition.

Check out the discussions, sign in and participate here.

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-Havard

Dave Arneson's XP system

I just read Paladin's interesting article on the XP system in Dragons at Dawn. According to the article, Dave Arneson did not award any experience points for killing monsters or taking their treasure. Instead they were awarded for roleplaying only.

In my opinion XPs are a useful tool in encouraging the players to behave in certain ways. I can think of few players who really need encouraging to go out and kill things and take their stuff. Arneson found a way around that. Worth thinking about for any campaign.

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 -Havard

Dave Arneson's Adventures in Fantasy (1979)

In 1979, Dave Arneson and Richard Snider created an RPG called Adventures in Fantasy. Two versions of the game were published that year, one by Excalibur Games and the second by Arneson's company, Adventure Games. The game consists of three books -- Book of Adventure, Book of Faerry and Magic, and Book of Creatures and Treasure. A good review of the game appeared on Grognardia earlier this year. DH Bogg's "arnesonian" RPG , Dragons at Dawn, is said to have drawn heavily on Adventures in Fantasy.

Jeff Berry worked for Dave Arneson in 1979 and could reveal the following about the life at Adventure Games (AGI):

I was working for Dave at the time at Adventure Games, as the chief 'Tekumel Boat Person' (as he described us); the staff at AGI was made up of Dave's friends from the First Minnesota ACW reenactment group, and none of them were fantasy gamers of any type. Ken Fletcher and I were the only people there with any fantasy gaming experience; Richard was a free-lance author, and rarely in the shop.

Why didn't the game do better? At this time, D&D was still a young game and it would seem that the market was hungry for fantasy RPGs. If RuneQuest could coexist with D&D, why not AiF? Was it simply not good enough? Jeff Berry has the following explanation:

The problem with AiF wasn't that is was a bad game or anything, it was simply one of no marketing. Dave had bought it back from Excalibur with the money that the first of his settlements with TSR, and like many other of the AGI product line was more or less just there because Dave or one of his friends had done the game. There was no real 'in-house' support for this game like there was for, say, "Compleat Brigadier", and it has to be said that there wasn't much support for fantasy gaming of any kind in house. AGI's Tekumel line existed because of Dave's personal friendship with Phil, and my presence at AGI was a direct consequence of that. It always amazed the AGI staff that we 'boat people', so-called because we lived on pallets in AGI's basement under tarps (it was a very wet basement!) could sell our rather recondite products and the main AGI line never seemed to sell at all; I kept pointing out that one needed to run games at conventions and advertise the heck out of a game, otherwise it'd never sell to anyone.

Recently there has been speculations to whether it would be possible to get ahold of the lisence to the game so it could be published again. Unfortunately, Rafael just shared the following on Dragonsfoot today:

The news back then were, as the admin staff over at the CI discussed in various threads, that with Dave Arneson's death, apparently all of his rpg-related IP reverted to WotC. INCLUDING AiF. - This was apparently part of the agreement that allowed the licensing of the BM d20 line through several companies associated with Arneson. A dead end, it seems.Though IANAL, as to the Comeback Inn crew, things so far look far more like we will go on an produce our own setting some day instead of continuing DA's work.

So, the chances of seeing Adventures in Fantasy back in print seem very low indeed. Thankfully there are other things happening in the Old School community and many out there who are interested in honoring Dave's legacy in any way they can.









-Havard

D@D in the mail!

Real life has been keeping me away from my blog for a while, but I promise to make up for it! Just a quick note to let you all know that I finally got my copy of Dan Bogg's Dragons at Dawn, which I have mentioned earlier in this blog. It was so cool to finally read through a physical copy of this game. I will write more on it later.

Also, in the same package from Lulu, I got a copy of the hard cover version of Labyrinth Lord. As some of you will know, I am a big fan of Frank Mentzer's BECMI, which I consider to be as close to D&D perfection as you can get. From what I understand Labyinth Lord is based on Moldvay/Cook, but its close enough to BECMI to give me that warm and fuzzy feeling. I know what you're going to say, "what took you so long?" I know, I know.

Well, those are two sweet games from Lulu, which should keep me busy in between the two parties I have planned this weekend.

-Havard

Dragons at Dawn Reviews!

Only a few days since Dragons at Dawn came out and people are already writing reviews. Here are some highlights:

From Sean Wills at Bite the Bulette:

"My 1st impressions is that Daniel has faithfully drawn on the discussions with those who played with Dave Arneson, as well as info from the man himself over the years, to recreate a very old old school experience. Have a look at the Lulu preview and you'll see what I mean. Combat has a big-ass chart, if you can dig that - DAD's for you.

It reads like a labour of love, it's audacious, a product of studious enthusiastic research and a fitting tribute to DA."

From Steelcaress at Roll 'Em:

"Overall: 4/5 (This is a neat game! Part of me wishes this had been published in '74 instead)"

From Geoffrey McKinney at the OD&D Board:

"This is a very cool, VERY old-school game. It’s as close as you can come to playing the game the way it was played when NOBODY in the whole world played it except for Dave Arneson and his buddies back in 1970-72. To my way of thinking, this game is 38 years overdue. We owe Dan Boggs a great debt of gratitude for all the hard work and research he devoted to re-creating the original role-playing game."

Although Old Schooler reviews tend to be positive towards old school material, all of these great reviews are making me optimistic about this Arnesonian game. And this is not all we can look forward to from the author. Dan Boggs has already announced that he is planning the release of the first expansion rules, Dragons at Twilight.

-Havard

Remembering Dave Arneson

David L. Arneson (October 1, 1947 - April 7, 2009)

"Gone, but not forgotten," says today's Grognardia article. A year has passed, but today the blogosphere and various forums are honoring Dave. Gaming events are being arranged as a tribute to him. My previous entry here detailed the game Dragon's at Dawn as another example of how Dave Arneson is being remembered by the many fans of his ideas.






-Havard

Dragons at Dawn RPG released!

The following was announced by aldarron at the Comeback Inn yesterday: 

The long asked for, long awaited recreation of the rules behind Blackmoor...


Welcome to Dave Arnesons Basement. It’s 1971 and you’ve been invited to play this cool new game… Experience the thrill of the very first RPG adventures with Dragons at Dawn, the rule set that hearkens back to the first days of adventure gaming when everything was new and the possibilities endless. Dragons at Dawn is a retro tribute to the very first fantasy gaming system pioneered by Dave Arneson, the man who later went on to co-author the worlds most popular roleplaying game. The result of years of careful historical research, Dragons at Dawn is entirely consistent with Arneson’s original, largely forgotten methods of play developed roughly in the period 1970-1973. It is an imaginative foray into what it was like to game long before the rules were available in stores.
The History:
Partly inspired by a horror movie marathon, Arneson sat down one weekend in December of 1970 and began the design of a castle and village peopled with monsters and heroes, with players able to play either one. Mr. Arneson thought it would be fun to have the players adventure as individual warriors in a vast dungeon beneath the castle. His group of Napoleonic wargamers loved the new game and clamored for more. There were no rules for this sort of thing so Dave made them up, inventing things like character classes, ability scores, experience points, magic systems, alignments, and level advancement. Later, Arneson introduced his new game to Gary Gygax and the two partnered on writing up a rule set that became quite famous, but was quite different from the game as Arneson played it. Dragons at Dawn returns to the first version of play at the dawn of fantasy RPG gaming.
The Game:
First debuted at the 2010 Dave Arneson Memorial Game Day in NYC, the 60 page rule book allows play in two formats; original game where players take on the role of either Warriors or Wizards, or an enhanced game where additional classes – Elf Mage, Thief Assassin, Merchant and Sage – are also available. The combat system is easy to master as it uses some very familiar statistics in some very unusual ways reminiscent of the early wargames from which role playing games developed. Upon this basic format, layers of complexity can be added as players desire. This same philosophy is found throughout the game. Dragons at Dawn approaches gaming with none of the assumptions and habits developed from later rules, allowing a return to a kind of free form and open style of interaction between players and referees to develop and play whatever aspects of adventure gaming the group likes best.
Dragons at Dawn is available as a downloadable pdf at
http://sites.fastspring.com/apriorcrs/product/dragonsatdawn
or in print at
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/dragons-at-dawn/8609478

I am pretty excited  to see a retro-game inspired by Dave Arneson's original rules. I know that the author, DH Boggs has been doing alot of research over the last few years onto this matter, so I am really looking forward to getting my hands on a copy to see the results for myself.

A discussion of the game, can be found here. 










-Havard