D&D Rules Cyclopedia Advert

Kyrel posted this picture over at Dragonsfoot and I just had to share it. Dave Arneson himself apparently even admitted to loving this particular version of D&D. Note the pre-production cover of the Rules Cycøopedia up there in the left corner.

Anyway, there is a call to reprint the RC over at wizards.com, so go ahead and sign the petition. Rumour has it that this is the only edition of D&D that is so good that WotC doesn't risk reprinting it. We shall see!





-Havard

Why Blackmoor ended up in Mystara

Mystara is a setting that grew out of the merging of various components such as the Known World, the Hollow World and Blackmoor. What these components had in common was that they were all linked to the Classic D&D rules instead of AD&D. But there was already a Blackmoor in the AD&D Greyhawk line. Why would TSR want to present another Blackmoor? In 2012 Frank Mentzer revealed the following:

"[...] We all remember the tussle between Gary and Dave :cry: and its effect on certain developments in the game, editions, etc. Once that was settled* (which was in the early '80s, during my time there), we discussed options. Since the World of Greyhawk included Blackmoor, should it go there (AD&D1e)? Or since I was drawing from OD&D & supplements, should Sup2 (Blackmoor) go there? Anyway, it ended up in BECM, as you know.


Once the executive decision for placement was made, tho, it was handled by others; I was too busy to do modules (except some RPGA tourneys on the side) or Gazetteers. Given the importance and nature of Blackmoor -- the first fantasy campaign, to some -- it got its own line, instead of being a 'mere' gazetteer.


* In actuality iirc 'settlements' were reached at 3 separate times -- late '70s, early '80s, and then later '80s with the PoG, post-Gary -- before Dave was finally happy with the whole shebang.


Time for my usual caveat, which I haven't offered for a while. All of these and other reminiscences are, and ever shall be, 'If I recall correctly', and I may be in error on various technical points, precise dates, and such.[...]

Apparently, Blackmoor's return was the result of Gary Gygax approaching Arneson. In spite of their differences, Gary must have realized the significance of Blackmoor and also likely believed it could have commerical value. The result were the DA modules.

The DA modules and later also the Gazetteers suggested that Blackmoor existed thousands of years ago. They were vague on its exact location, but seemed to suggest that it was located in the same region as the Known World would later appear. This was problematic from the beginning as locations didnt match up and was made further complicated when the Golden Khan of Ethengar suggested that the Steppes of Ethengar were the North Pole during the Blackmoor Era. Then the Hollow World Boxed Set came out and placed Blackmoor on Skothar, another continent. At the Piazza today, Bruce Heard explains why some of these decisions were made:

"I had to move it out of the Known World because of design contradictions and, basically, no good place to put it. It was relegated to Skothar which was essentially a blank area. Blackmoor was interesting but really not well integrated with Mystara. Management and marketing wanted to have Dave Arneson's material attached to Mystara because or their common connection to Basic and Expert rules, and so the non-negotiable "request" came down to accommodate Blackmoor. The whole thing was well-intentioned but terribly awkward. It should have been designed from day-one to fit Mystara and not pretty much slapped onto it."

Of course, us fans have been taking care of that last part. :)

-Havard

What I did in Blackmoor this summer

Nah, I did not participate in any pagan summer solistice rituals, but I have taken the last month off from postig here, feeling that I deserved a break to recharge the batteries and spend some time on real life things. I did to some pretty exciting things in gaming this summer however, that I will be sharing with you in the coming posts. Some highlights include:

• Going to Scandinavia's largest gaming convention, RopeCon in Finland.
• Meeting some of my heroes in game design including Frank Mentzer, Erik Mona, James Raggi and others.
• Meeting several friends from the Piazza, the Comeback Inn and Dragonsfoot in real life for the first time. And finding out that they are very cool people in real life as well as online!
• Playing an amazing Blackmoor adventure face to face with Rafael and Saunattonttu. 
• Picking up some very cool RPG items, including Lamentations of the Flame Princess (at last!), Dark Chataeu and many others. 
• Finally getting my hands on Adventures in Fantasy and some other rare Dave Arneson items. 
• And much more... 

I will leave you with just that teaser for now, but expect more detailed reports to be coming up on many of these items.

-Havard

Castle Blackmoor Project

Castle Blackmoor, site of the first RPG Dungeon in history. But the Castle is more than just the dungeon. What adventures can be found above ground level? Aldarron has started a project to flesh out the rooms of the Castle itself over at Dragonsfoot.You can participate by clicking on this link.

I was a little disappointed when the actual Castle was left out of the Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor Sourcebook. Maybe this project can help fill in the missing details?



-Havard

James Ward on the way to recovery

 Recently, it was reported that Jim Ward, creator of Metamorphosis Alpha, has been seriously ill. Therefore I was happy to see him back to posting again on Dragonsfoot:

Thanks again to everyone who has wished me well. I'm still very sick, but I drag my sorry body to the computer has much as possible. I have had some great news in being accepted into the Eldritch Enterprises company. I can't think of better people to work with than Frank and the others. We've just started planning and the projects we are working on are wonderful. You readers will be among the first to find out about them as time goes on. I think of myself as rising out of the ashes of one fantastic company to help make another. James M. Ward

As he mentions, he is part of the newly formed Eldritch Enterprises, which  I wrote about yesterday.

James Ward in the early days of TSR, courtesy of Steve Winter

-Havard

Douglas Niles to appear on Dragonsfoot

Just the other day I saw the announcement that Douglas Niles will appear in his own Q&A thread on Dragonsfoot. Niles is probably most famous for his novels and Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms material, but my favorite work of his remanis CM1 Test of the Warlords.

I also grew to enjoy his Quest Triad novels (warning: written for "young adult readers"). I adapted that setting, Karawenn, to Norwold. You can see a map from my adaptation here.

I am looking forward to seeing Niles answering the questions I have posted in his thread so far.

Doug Niles on Pen & Paper RPG


-Havard

Frank Mentzer's Aquaria

Aquaria is the name of BECMI D&D author, Frank Mentzer's, home campaign. For a while now, Frank has been talking about getting his setting published. Unfortunately, family affairs kept him busy over most of last year, but recent posts at Dragonsfoot and the Piazza have shown that he has not given up on this idea.

Recently, the Piazza in particular has seen alot of interest in the Aquaria setting, and rumours have it that the first ever Aquaria forum will be created at the Piazza in the near future. With the Piazza community getting interested in Aquaria, we are seeing alot of interesting discussions and creative input. Dave L is already in the process of making maps for the setting based on Thorf's hexes. This has all been done with Mr Mentzer's blessing.

Aquaria is of particular interest to me because of Frank's role in it ofcourse, but also the fact that he uses the cosmology he created for the BECMI system with his setting, including Immortals, 5 dimensional spaces, Dimensions etc. Like Blackmoor, Aquaria is nominally located within the Greyhawk Setting, though if it is published, it will probably be presented as an independent setting. This should be relatively unproblematic as the Greyhawk connection has perhaps not had such a strong impact on the Aquaria campaign in actual play.


Frank recieved alot of unfair criticism in the Blogosphere when he last made an annoucement on this subject, so I am hoping the sceptics will wait and see this time around, rather than attack something which might turn out to be the next really good thing for fans of Old School D&D and younger gamers alike.

A list of existing products tied to the Aquaria Campaign can be found here. 



-Havard

Inception (2010), Dreams and Blackmoor

I was watching the movie Inception (2010) the other day and really liked it. Not only did I like the action scenes, but I was fascinated by the concept of shared dreaming and delving deeper into someone's subconcious. Rob S Conley wrote a small review of the movie here.

Dragonsfoot poster Kveldulf made the following suggestions of how to adapt some of these ideas to D&D

On a side note, lots of ideas in there for both planar travel (transfer the film's idea of how things work in dream states to, say, astral travel and what happens when the silver cord is damaged or cut) and psionic combat (dreamer's subconscious projections taking on outside dreamers who intrude, and a few other ideas). 

In the Last Fantasy Campaign, we have been venturing through the Dreamscape lately as well. The characters have been visiting King Uther's subconcious in search of a way to prevent the destruction of Blackmoor and a way to get back at the Egg of Coot. I like how our DM, Rafael used this as a way to incorporate some of the more bizarre elements from Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor Campaign. We have now seemingly at last escaped the Dreamscape, so now we shall see what the real world might bring us of dangers...


Illustration: Gustave Doré's illustrations from Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven.









-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

Holmes' Obituary

Yesterday, I reported that Dr J. Eric Holmes has passed away. Thanks to Dragonsfoot poster Zenopus76, I found this obituary at ERBzine:

John Eric Holmes (1930 - 2010)Word has just been received that John Eric Holmes has died. Holmes was a former associate professor of neurology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, an author and promoter of fantasy role-playing games, a noted fan and enthusiast of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and an American writer of non-fiction, fantasy and science fiction. His writings have appeared under his full name and under variants such as Eric Holmes and J. Eric Holmes. He wrote two excellent ERB pastiches, “Red Ax of Pellucidar” and “Mahars of Pellucidar.” He was guest of honor at the 1993 ECOF in Willows, California, hosted by Ralph Brown.[...] He will be missed. May he rest in peace.

I think Jayson Vey's quotation on Dragonsfoot sums up our feelings quite well:

"What would you have me do, Gandalf? First Gary, then Dave. Then Tom Moldvay, and now you tell me John Holmes has left us. Our list of allies grows thin!"

 Havard

Something is coming...

A storm is brewing.  Lisence questions aside, 2010 will not be a quiet year for Blackmoor. While we are keeping our fingers crossed for the industry to get things sorted out, things are also stirring among the fans. Some clues can be discerned here..

Only a few weeks to wait...

Havard