Riders of Hak (2007) for Dave Arneson's Blackmoor

 

Riders of Hak 

A sourcebook for Dave Arneson's Blackmoor 

Riders of Hak details the human culture known as the Peshwah. The Peshwah are an important nation living near the Kingdom of Blackmoor in Dave Arneson's campaign setting. I have always been fascinated with the Peshwah. In the First Fantasy Campaign, this group of horsemen were referred to simply as nomads, while the DA modules used the name Peshwah and DA3 The City of the Gods gave much additional detail on these tribes.  I also wrote about the Peshwah tribes in this article. 

Looking back at this book now in 2024, my favorite parts of the book are definitely the expansions on Peshwah culture and their history in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting. Like many of the books in this series and other D&D products at the time, I feel that they suffer a bit from the idea that every 3rd Edition sourcebook needed to include a number of new feats, prestigue classes and the like. While having such rules definitely can be useful for fans running a 3E game in Blackmoor, it does some times come at the expense of other things that I would have liked to see more of in the book. 

Here is a review at The Comeback Inn that I wrote some years ago. 

The Back Cover reads: 

Children of the horsegod Hak, the Peshwah believe they are a chosen people. Birthed to protect Hak's sacred lands and guide Hak's sacred horses, they are brothers and sisters of his divine spirit, and feel they hold a particular destiny and a special place in this, their land. From the rocky peaks of the High Hak to the dusty floor of the Valley of the Ancients, the tribes of the Peshwah roam. Horseman, nomad, prophet, merchant, warrior... each is a face of the Peshwah. Welcome to Riders of Hak, the definitive sourcebook on the Peshwah for Dave Arneson

Written By: David Brainard and Tad Kilgore. With additional material by C.A.Suleiman. 

Format: Softcover, PDF 

Publisher: Code Monkey Publishing / Zeitgeist Games 

Year: 2008 (interior says 2007) 

Product Code: CMP4508 ISBN-10: 0978576160 ISBN-13: 9780978576165 

83 pages 

Size: Letter 

Riders of Hak can be purchased from DrivethruRPG for only 5$ (US) in PDF format. 

More details about Riders of Hak at the Comeback Inn, including input from the book's author.

-Havard

DaveCon 2025 Tickets Available

 DaveCon 2025 has been announced and tickets are already available. Organised by Victor Dorso, this will be the fourth DaveCon. Read more about the previous DaveCon here on my blog.  As last year, the convention will take place in Bloomington MN in the Crowne Plaza Suites Msp Airport - Mall of America.

Dave Megarry and DaveCon organiser Victor Dorso

Dates given for the convention are:

•  Fri, Apr 25 2025, 8:00am - 11:45pm
• Sat, Apr 26 2025, 8:00am - 11:45pm
• Sun, Apr 27 2025, 8:00am - 8:00pm

Buy the tickets and find more details at Tabletop Events

Are you going to DaveCon this year?

Discuss DaveCon 2025 at The Comeback Inn. 

Disclaimer: I am not involved in the organising of any of the conventions I discuss on my blog or any commercial activities connected to Dave Arneson, Blackmoor or Dungeons & Dragons. I would love to go to a convention celebrating Dave Arneson some day though! 

-Havard

The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977

 

Dungeons & Dragons: The  Making of  Original Dungeons & Dragons came out in 2024 and was written by Jon Peterson. It is a massive tome with high quality production. I finally picked up a copy. 

The book contains the following:

• The complete original version of OD&D including Tolkien's terms such as Hobbit and Balrog
• The complete text from OD&D supplement 1, 2 and 3.
• Parts of Chainmail and Strategic Review
• Extracts from Corner of the Table (Dave Arneson's newsletter
• Extracts from the Domesday Book (the C&C Society newsletter)
• Letters exchanged between Dave and Gary
• The complete text of an early draft of the OD&D rules
• Commentaries by Jon Peterson

 

As a friend of mine pointed out, much of this material has already been circulating on the web in addition to the books that many hard core fans will have, but it is still nice to have everything in one place. The commentaries by Jon Peterson are insightful as and useful as always. 

D.H Boggs has good review on his blog where he points out that some documents that are mentioned in the book but not included could have been very useful, especially if one wants to explore the often overlooked Dave Arneson side of the story.

-Havard

The Design Team Behind Blackmoor Age of the Wolf

We are now learning more about the people behind the upcoming Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Age of the Wolf.  As I reported back in March, this 15 years in the making project is finally being released at GenCon 2024 and will become available in a free digital format. An exclusive interview with the lead designer was posted on this blog last month, but we now have more information:

(Illustration taken from lead designer C.A.Suleiman's website)

The credits presented for the book will be the following:

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: Age of the Wolf

Publisher: Studio Ink Bat

Developer and Project Lead: C.A. Suleiman 

Writers: Jamie Chambers, George Holland, Rhiannon Louve, Ari Marmell, Harley Stroh, and C.A. Suleiman 

Art Director: Denise Robinson

That is a pretty talent specked list of people. I am not familiar with all of them, but Jamie Chambers is perhaps best known as former vice president of Sovereign Press and Margaret Weis Press, having done considerable game design on Dragonlance, The Serenity RPG and much more. 

Ari Marmell is a well known fantasy author and game designer and he has worked on multiple projects with C.A. Suleiman. Most notably the two worked on Blackmoor in the time before Zeigtgeist Games (ZGG) lost the license to publish Blackmoor from WotC, right before Age of the Wolf was to be published 15 years ago. 

Harley Stroh is another name that should be familiar to Blackmoor fans, making several contribitions to the d20 Blackmoor line including the ZGG version of City of the Gods. He later went on to become a widely published by companies like Wizards of the Coast and Goodman Games. 

Rhiannon Louve has multiple credits for design and translation work for White Wolf, including the Scarred Lands Setting. 

George Holland is a game desgner who has done game design work for  RPGs such as Overlight, Mothership and Cy_Borg. 

C.A Suleiman, the project lead, is  another well known name in the industry, having done considerable game design work for Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf and many other publishers. He is credited for six d20 Blackmoor books, including the upcoming Age of the Wolf sourcebook. See full credits here.

With this team, I have great hopes for the Age of the Wolf sourcebook finally seeing the light of day after all this time. It is such a shame when completed manuscripts end up never being shared with the fans, like Jeff Grubb's Mystara sourcebook for AD&D 2nd Edition. I am very happy that Age of the Wolf will become available to fans this August. 

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: Age of the Wolf will be published under a lisence from Wizards of the Coast. 

Note: I have written this article, not based on a press release, but on my own research, so I apologise that the information is incomplete. No disrespected intended towards anyone mentioned. I will expand on the article as I learn more about each designer!

Discuss this article on The Comeback Inn

-Havard

Jon Peterson's Playing at The World 2E Volume 1 arrives

 

Jon Peterson announced at The Playing at the World Facebook Page that the new edition of his book will be ready soon:

 It has been something of an epic journey since 2012. Playing at the World returns shortly in its new MIT Press edition - or at least, the first volume does. Volume 1 contains the material that was in Chapters 1 and 5 of the 2012 edition; Volume 2 has the deep dives on setting, system, and character that occupied Chapters 2 through 4 of the 2012 edition. V2 is thicker and should appear in 2025. There's a lot of new material throughout, but, to me it's still the same book. Thanks to Erol Otus, there has been a substantial improvement in the cover(s).

I found the original edition a very comprehensive and detailed look at the history of our hobby and  I look forward to seeing the new material he mentions. And having a cover by Erol Otus is an excellent choice!

-Havard

Blackmoor Trademark and Greyhawk Speculation by Semora Verreault and Tenkar

The situation of the Blackmoor Trademark came up in a recent episode on the Vlog of Many Things Youtube Channel. The episode was hosted by Don Semora (Wizard Tower Games), Thomas Verreault and Erik Tenkar and was hosted on the channels of each of the participants. While the video includes discussion about a wide range of topics of less relevance to this blog, but the subject of Blackmoor comes up when  Tenkar brings up the removal of the name Blackmoor from the Greyhawk map of the upcoming Dungeon Master's Guide. The part of the video that is relevant here starts around the 52 minute mark.)

Back in June, I talked about how WotC are now using the name Arn for this part of Greyhawk.Tenkar says he suspects the change was made due to some concern for the Arneson Estate, but the video also brings up possible non-legal reasons for the change. Verrault, however says the recent history of the Blackmoor Trademark is more complicated than that, explaining that the reason the Blackmoor Trademark was not returned to WotC during the recent nuTSR lawsuit where WotC as the defending party apparently won back most of their Trademarks and Icons. He says the reason why the Blackmoor Trademark was not part of this deal is because prior to this lawsuit, nuTSR had somehow "gifted" the Trademark to the Arneson Estate. 

Verrault then goes on to tell a story in which he talked to one of the producers of the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary (presumably Griff Morgan) about the rights to Blackmoor products like Supplement II: Blackmoor in which the producer had given the mysterious answer "we'll see". This lead Verreault to suspect that the Estate (for which the Secrets of Blackmoor producers acts as spokepersons) were planning on awaiting the results of the nuTSR lawsuit and possibly suing WotC themselves (note: this is Verreault speculating). The youtubers then goes on to explain why suing WotC is a bad idea especially over IP that they are keeping in print and selling the items on DrivethruRPG (which includes multiple Blackmoor products). 

When towards the end of the video Griff Morgan actually shows up in the chat section and is asked about the Trademark situation, Morgan says the  and when the youtubers ask him about why WotC have changed the name on the Greyhawk Map, Morgan simply states that the Blackmoor Trademark is owned by the Arneson Estate (it is in fact still listed as pending). 

While some of the content in this video is speculation, but it is nonetheless interesting to follow the discussion.  Blackmoor continues to be a topic of interest to fans, that is for sure. 

-Havard

Threshold #34 The Mystara Magazine is out

 

Threshold Magazine, the Mystara fan magazine that I helped start has another issues out! 

 Issue 34 is called Future and Alternate Mystaras. Download this free 256 page PDF and use it's thirteen articles it in your Mystara games!

It is produced for fans by fans in association with the Vaults of Pandius and The Piazza. 

Download for free!

-Havard