Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The MMRPG

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor - The original Blackmoor game

gsvenson - Apr 08, 2007 - 04:31 PM
Post subject: The original Blackmoor game

This is a thread where members of the original Blackmoor campaign can post their recollections. This idea originated from my encountering Bob Meyers, who is also known as Robert the Bald in Blackmoor's "history", on Rafael's Wayfarer's Inn web site and starting to discuss what we remember via e-mails. I am hoping that Bob will have a chance to post some of his recollections and that we will both invite some of the other former players to participate, too.

I was a member of a gaming group in Excelsior, Minnesota back in the late '60s. The group consisted of Scott and Dave Belfry, Bob and Mike Meyer, Fred Funk, Tim Seamans, Steve Randenberg, my brother Fred and myself. Initially, we played historical board games every week, mostly produced by Avalon Hill. We also tried some aincient miniatures games, as I recall.

We joined a national gaming group. I can't remember the name, Agressor's Homeland or something like that. That brought us in contact with Richard and John Snyder, Marshall Hegfelt and Mike Carr (he had a WWI air combat group - the Fight in the Skies Society). Marshall Hegfelt took me to a meeting of the Midwest Military History Association, which was based at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis at the time (1969). I met Dave Arneson there. I pulled the rest of our little group into the Napoleonic miniatures campaign Dave was running at the time and then into Blackmoor when that got going.

I have written details of two of those early Blackmoor adventures at my website http://web.tampabay.rr.com/gsvenson/svenny Unfortuantely, while I participated in literally hundreds of adventures those two are the only ones I could remember clearly enough to feel it was worth writing up the details I can still remember from them.

[I edited this to correct the spelling of Bob's last name and to add my brother to the list of players in our original group.]

tadkil - Apr 08, 2007 - 08:45 PM
Post subject: RE: The original Blackmoor game

Thank you for that!

havard - Apr 09, 2007 - 10:18 AM
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Thanks for sharing Greg! I love hearing tales of old Blackmoor campaigns, especially those with Dave himself in the DM's chair.

I have heard that Dave's DMing style is quite unusual. Do you remember any examples that could illustrate this? Does he like producing unique NPCs for roleplaying situations? Is he mostly down to business, getting you into the Dungeon right away for some serious hack and slash, or did you like hanging out in towns and starting Bar Brawls with Marfeldt? What about the humourous elements that fill the Blackmoor books. Do these make their way into the games beyond place names etc?

Havard

gsvenson - Apr 09, 2007 - 12:25 PM
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I updated my original post to explain why I created this thread.

robertthebald - Apr 09, 2007 - 07:41 PM
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Havard,
The answer to your question about David is rather complicated. The nature of the original Blackmoor changed over the years. I was not involved in the original good vs. evil phase for reasons I will explain later. Greg would be able to talk about that period of time. By the time I became heavily involved, there was a lot of adventuring generated by the players. David still generated events himself, and some adventures were responses to other adventures. David was definitely in control of any adventure or event where he was DM. He had plenty of ways to give hints, clues, or impart information (a passing villager, a visit to the elves, a messenger that delivered the news that started it all). But he gave a lot of latitude to adventurers (within the rules) as to how they wanted to do anything. Yes, he did give us all the rope we needed to hang ourselves with. As you can see, adventures varied widely, depending on the circumstances. I will provide some examples later of adventures I was on.

Something that has to be kept in mind, we are talking about a period of time that covers many years, and had many different players joining and leaving over that time. Adventures usually consisted of whomever happened to be available at the time. Like any game, Blackmoor expanded and evolved. David is probably the only person who knows everything that has happened there. This brings up another point. Greg and I have already discovered that we remember events differently. If I can have more of the old players posting here, there will inevitably be discrepances cropping up. You will have to make allowances for time and memories. This is not in any way an official history, and do not expect David to post here (though it is always a possibility). We will sort it out the best we can.
Bob

gsvenson - Apr 10, 2007 - 08:56 AM
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The humor was always in the game. We were playing to have fun. The rules were not codified yet so things couldn't be locked into the "rules" either. Still in the early games Dave pretty much let us do what we wanted and go where we wanted, as long as he had already detailed the area.

To Bob's point, Dave and I have compared our memories on some of the events in the original game, too, and we found that we disagreed on some of the details, as well.

gsvenson - Apr 10, 2007 - 09:00 AM
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Here is another brief tale, I am sorry that I don't remember more of the details...

The Blue Rider

During the Fall of 1972, I had an adventure with Bill Heaton (William of the Heath), Mel Johnson (Mello) and, I think, Steve Rocheford, but I am not sure. I place it at that time because it was shortly after Dave Arneson had introduced Blackmoor to Gary Gygax and the group in Lake Geneva, leading to the creation of Greyhawk. I don't remember a lot of the details, we probably played from 1 PM to 4 AM that Saturday.

It was a dungeon dive deep into the dungeons of Castle Blackmoor. This trip was the deepest that we ever went. I had pretty much memorized the upper levels at this point and was able to lead us quickly and safely down to the nineth level.

As we wandered we stumbled across a staircase that led to a secret door which came out behind the throne of the king of the Orcs of the Blackhand, King Frederick the First. We decided that we were not a strong enough party to take on the Orcs at that time, but I marked the location in my memory for a later adventure (see the Orcs Bane story).

We found another stairs that led to the tenth level and went down. I don't remember much of what we found here. But soon we found a stairs to an eleventh level (to my knowledge this area was never published) and we went down.

The walls here were rougher and there was a dim red light through out the corridors. Soon we found ourselves on a ledge over looking a hugh cavern with a lake of lava at the bottom. In the center was an island covered with treasure. On top of the mound of treasure was a dragon (I think that it was golden, but the colors meant less at that time).

William wanted to jump down to the island. Svenny was opposed, mostly ss self preservation thing. I couldn't see how we would ever get off the island if we managed to get there. William jumped anyway and managed to land on the island. The rest of us stayed on the ledge and watched. Mello took some chalk and wrote "Kilroy was here" along with the famous sketch of the head peering over a wall on the wall of the ledge. The dragon posed a puzzle for William. I don't recall the details, but he solved it and was was rewarded with a blue suit of magic armor and mechanical horse. I have always thought of the armor as a dark metalic blue, but the description was just blue. The armor was more like powered battledress then a suit of plate armor, for Sic-Fi fans. William doned the armor and somehow was back with us on the ledge. We all traveled back out of the dungeon.

At this point Dave got busy with something else and asked me to take over as the DM, quickly briefing me on the armor. William and Mello then tried to figure out what the buttons on the left arm of the armor did. It was quite funny for those that were watching and quite frustrating for William as it led to the stories of him charging into battle screaming "No! No! Stop!" later. This is how William of the Heath became known as the Blue Rider.

[I edited this post to remove my discussion of DMing and to make a correction]

havard - Apr 11, 2007 - 12:47 PM
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Keep these coming!

About differing memories: Something I learned when I was doing my MA in History is that people will always remember things differently, sometimes amazingly so. The historian's sollution is usually to let all "witnesses" speak, compare to facts etc etc. Since a big part of gaming is what goes on in each player's imagination, this must be doubly true for memories of games.

Still, I would love to hear all the different versions. They can in many ways account for equally true impressions of the Blackmoor games and can all provide inspiration for new generations of Blackmoorians Smile

Greg: I loved hearing about the Blue Rider! I read about this character in the FFC, but it is quite cool to hear it from another perspective Smile

Havard

robertthebald - Apr 11, 2007 - 01:40 PM
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I did not like Blackmoor when David first introduced it. The idea of going toe to toe with creatures much stronger than myself sounded insane to me, especially when you are out of the adventure when your one and only character was killed. Also,I had a very aggresive style of playing. Attacking a Troll with a first level character was a quick way to commit suicide, even when you had surprised the Troll. I soon decided that I would rather play other games. I re-entered Blackmoor because virtually all of the other guys were in it and kept encouraging me to try it again. By this time, they were starting to figure out how to handle magic and the various creatures encountered. Unfortunately for me, they were all advancing in levels, and were starting to accumulate some pretty cool equipment. My first level characters just couldn't survive the places they were going. David finally sat down with just me, and ran through several adventures more on my level, until I finally was surviving to the next levels and was able to start adventuring with the others.

The adventure that was my big breakthrough was with a fighting man for whom I rolled a decent set of characteristics. There were some woods east of Blackmoor that were unknown. Anyone who adventured into them just disappeared. Like David, I am a big fan of anything naval, and I knew that if I went through the woods I would reach the coast and could run into the Skandiharrians. David thougt I was crazy, but he could not talk me out of trying. My dice rolling was fantastically lucky, and I made it through the woods to the coast. I joined the Skandiharrians and went on several voyages with them. I became the captain of a ship by challenging the captain to a duel and defeating him with the help of a mysterious stranger ( I believe he was Kurt Krey). He was a magic user who wanted to go back to Blackmoor. This was possible by ship, and I agreed to take him. What he did not tell me was that he had been a central figure in an invasion and burning of Blackmoor in the past. In any event, the journey up the river back to Blackmoor was so hazardous that I lost most of the crew before reaching Blackmoor bay, and Gertie (the dragon in the bay) soon took care of the ship. The wizard managed to drag me to shore, along with a couple of the men. He then disappeared to where he really wanted to go. All of this adventuring was over a period of time of a couple of months, and Greg was actually the Gamemaster for the trip up the river. Once in Blackmoor town, and once again penniless, I then went to the only place guarantied to have treasure, the dungeon. Unfortunately, I don't remember much about what happened in the dungeon (it was relatively tame compared to my life as a Captain). I do remember that for some reason the other sailors did not want to follow me anywhere, and at least one became a NPC in the town.

Players were constantly wandering off to other places in the map, and David usually had something waitng for us wherever we went. Identifying Blackmoor as the game with the dungeon does not do it justice. A great deal of adventuring happened outside of blackmoor town, let alone the dungeon. I will talk about the big move to the border with the Great Kingdom another time.

gsvenson - Apr 11, 2007 - 03:20 PM
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That's cool, Bob. I vaguely remember my DMing and that it was primarily for you, Dave Megary and John and Richard Snider. That was probably because we were all roommates for a while. The funny thing is that I have absolutely no recollection of your adventure up the river!

I am sure that Bill Heaton would tell the story of how he became the Blue Rider totally differently, too. I suspect that he would remember many more of the details.

You are right about Blackmoor being much more than dungeon trips. That was where it started, but we quickly found many new places to explore...

robertthebald - Apr 13, 2007 - 01:47 PM
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Any feedback on the little we have said so far? Are you bored yet? What would you like for me to post next?I am contacting some of the others to see if they will also share with you. This could take a while.

gsvenson - Apr 13, 2007 - 02:29 PM
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I have been trying to remember any details I could of the original "Temple of the Frog" adventure, but so far all I have come up with was the endless sloshing through the swamps searching for the temple and Dave's using a large ceramic frog for the actual temple (a planter from his mother's garden, I think) when we setup the miniatures after we finally found it...

Sheridan - Apr 13, 2007 - 11:33 PM
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robertthebald wrote:

Any feedback on the little we have said so far?

I love it!

robertthebald wrote:

Are you bored yet?

Not at all!

robertthebald wrote:

What would you like for me to post next?

City of the Gods, Egg Of Coot, Dungeons of Glendower

robertthebald wrote:

I am contacting some of the others to see if they will also share with you.

Awesome!

robertthebald wrote:

This could take a while.

I will attempt to wait patiently!

As a Blackmoor-related side note, I am posting this message from UBCon, as I just finished running four new players through Episode 1: The Comeback Inn - they all enjoyed it!

Desdichado - Apr 14, 2007 - 04:37 AM
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As Scott has said. Smile

I really enjoy this and would like to hear more of it! Smile

robertthebald - Apr 14, 2007 - 01:34 PM
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Thanks for the encouragement guys. I wish I could be more helpful with some of the specific requests (Glendower had a dungeon?). Blackmoor had so many things going on through its history, not to mention all of the different areas available.If you talked to two different people from the old campaign, you might wonder if they were talking about the same game. I have contacted some of the other players with rather mixed results so far. A couple of them did seem to be interested. I will keep trying.

havard - Apr 16, 2007 - 05:07 AM
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robertthebald wrote:

Tell us more about your character! Smile

Havard

robertthebald - Apr 16, 2007 - 11:56 AM
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Havard,
Just a quick post today. I have been on the phone, e-mailing, and talking to people in person all weekend. I just finished a phone conversation with a couple of them this morning. I am hopeful that we will have more contributions fairly soon. Have to go get some sleep now (I work nights). I will post a story soon on Robert the Bald, where he moved down south on the Outdoor Survival map. Trying to gather some more information first.
Thanks
Bob

gsvenson - Apr 17, 2007 - 01:53 PM
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Yes, Bob makes a good point. At some point (probably in 1975 give or take a year) Uther granted many of his loyal servants their own fiefs. Since the original Blackmoor area was already occupied, the new fiefs were created in the south. An area we called "province one". Dave simply placed the map from Avalon Hill's "Outdoor Survival" game next to the Blackmoor map and showed us which hex had our new fief in it. The area was roughly where the Eastern Hak is located on "modern" maps of Blackmoor. This would probably have been an area that had been secured from the Thonian Empire by the Kingdom of Blackmoor in the War for Blackmoor's Independence (that's speculation on my part as I don't really remember anymore). We then spent many gaming sessions exploring and securing our new Baronies and their surrounding areas. Newgate was originally located there. It was the first fief you came to as you traveled into the area from Blackmoor, so it was referred to as the gateway to the new region and its name bacame Newgate. Svenny was very active and systematic in searching the area surrounding Newgate to destroy all of the evil or dangerous creatures in the vacinity. Trying to make it a safe place...

havard - Apr 19, 2007 - 09:00 AM
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The information you guys just shared is gold! I had no idea Dave used the Outdoor Survival Guilde map as a basis for the southern region. I know the official Blackmoor also uses the term 'new baronies' (or something) for the southern fiefdoms such as Robert the Bald's lands (Cloudtop Castle), Dragonia and the Dragonhills. I didn't think Newgate was included here.

I'd love to hear more about both of your fiefdoms. How did you imagine them? Why is Robert's land so far from the others? Is it because he is a reclusive wizard? Has he gone off exploring the nearby Valley of the Ancients?

Havard

robertthebald - Apr 20, 2007 - 02:20 PM
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In contacting and talking to the other original players, I am learning more about Blackmoor than I knew back when I was playing it. I have contacted, or can account for, about twenty of the people in the list of original players.At least one is a gold mine of information, but for various reasons can not post on any of these forums. I will have to drag him over to my house and do it from here. As it is now summer, and I have more than I care to think about to do outside, this may not happen for some time. I found an interesting pdf over at The Wayfarers Inn forum.
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/zimriel/Blackmoor/
I think it is worth looking at.

havard - Apr 20, 2007 - 02:26 PM
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robertthebald wrote:

Thanks for the effort Bob! I am really looking forward to hearing more from you and your mysterious co-player!

The site from the link you provide is indeed great. David Ross did an excellent job there. For years that was my main source of information about Blackmoor, before I got ahold of the DA-series, the FFC and finally the ZGG stuff. Smile

I recommend everyone who hasn't already to go check it out.

Havard

robertthebald - Apr 20, 2007 - 03:15 PM
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Robert the Bald's origins are obscure. I stayed away from "politics" and the towns as much as possible: virtually all of my adventuring was outdoors. When the big move was made to the southern provinces, I was very much in my element. As I had the experience and desire, I was located in a particularly isolated and wild area. I raised my own small army of well trained cavalry, and soon cleared out and pacified my Barony. I continued my adventures and quickly went up in levels. When the others ran into problems, I would go help them out, and when a large force attempted to invade the area, I leant my army to Greg and the Sniders to help defeat it. I did indeed go the the Valley of the Ancients, but no longer remember the adventure, other than it was a disaster that decimated the players that went. I also had an adventure in the mountains nearby that I think had something to do with the Ancients, as the Sniders and I investigated some strange doings in some huge caverns we discovered and ran into some very strange things that could have come from the Valley. This was also disasterous, and I believe this was when the yellow mist ended up covering John's area. Personally, I not only survived these adventures, but I acquired enough interesting things to study that I ended up locked away in my tower studying them. This all proved to be my undoing, as I was the first of the original players (and one of only two I am aware of) to reach the highest possible level in David's rules. When I asked David what happened now, he told me that"The Gods welcome me". I lost Robert the Bald to David's control and had to start a new character. David has called me Duke (see the special acknowledgements page in the Adventures in Fantasy books); this probably dates from this time.

gsvenson - Apr 22, 2007 - 03:30 PM
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As I recall, Robert the Bald was the first character to reach the highest level Dave would allow. Richard Snider's character was also promoted out of play sometime shortly after that. I think that I was so horrified by the thought that I could lose Svenny that I stopped trying to gain experience. I might have been a bit too attached to my character...

I think that there were six new baronies on the outdoor survival map. Bob's, Richard Snider's, John Snider's and Svenny's Baronies, of course. I can't remember who had the other two new Baronies. It was most likely Dave Megarry and one of the Belfry brothers (Scott or Dave), but I am not sure anymore.

Newgate was originally further south and was placed further north with the ZG effort to define Blackmoor in a way that was compatable with the various other settings it has been tied to. The original Newgate was not nearly as well developed as the new Newgate has been. I wrote up some fairly extensive material on the Barony of Newgate for ZG a couple of years ago. I had hoped that it would be put out as a free PDF, but they had other plans for it. We will have to wait and see...

DClingman - Apr 22, 2007 - 04:04 PM
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gsvenson wrote:

I wrote up some fairly extensive material on the Barony of Newgate for ZG a couple of years ago. I had hoped that it would be put out as a free PDF, but they had other plans for it. We will have to wait and see...

We haven't forgotten about that Greg. Smile

Dustin

gsvenson - Apr 22, 2007 - 04:54 PM
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DClingman wrote:

gsvenson wrote:

We haven't forgotten about that Greg. Smile

Dustin

Thanks, I am glad to hear it!

Desdichado - Apr 23, 2007 - 03:08 AM
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Finally got the chance to read the thread in detail.

Amazing, just amazign. Please keep the info coming! Smile

havard - Apr 23, 2007 - 06:47 AM
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DClingman wrote:

gsvenson wrote:

We haven't forgotten about that Greg. Smile

Dustin

Wow! I'd be very interested in seeing something like that Smile

Havard

robertthebald - May 18, 2007 - 09:46 PM
Post subject: the original Blackmoor game

I know it has been a month since my last posting to this site. I was hoping that some of the other people I contacted would be able to come in and post their own stories. Unfortunately, some of them have had difficulty registering here. This is not just the site, but an almost total unfamiliarity with forums in general. They have all talked about their lack of time for this, and their lack of memory. I found it interesting in talking to them, that they each had their own little fragment of the story. If I had the time and resources I could piece together quite a bit of what happened. I have a vacation coming up in November when I hope to be able to devote more time to this. In the meantime, I have become involved in posting to The Wayfarers Inn (http://wayfarer.myfreeforum.org/). Greg also posts there, and Richard Snider has his own thread there. I will not abandon this, it will just take a while for me to continue on this.
One of my projects for November will be posting the Wizard of the Woods story here. I asked him how he got the name. He said that the small woods just outside of Blackmoor town looked like a logical place for a wizard to locate himself. So that is what he did, hence the name. By the way, this wood on the tabletop had some model trees that had some apples(?) in them. These kept falling off, and Peter(or someone) decided to use them in the game. They become magic berries that were used in many ways. Funny how things in the game came from the most mundane things.
Thank you for your patience.
Bob

havard - May 21, 2007 - 01:39 PM
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Too bad there won't be more people joining you guys. Anyway, I enjoyed hearing about the Wizard of the Woods. I always assumed this was a specific title. One that perhaps came with some special powers as well. Such as that sylvan creatures would show him obedience etc. I am considering doing something like that IMC. Smile

I'll also pick up the idea about the magic berries. Perhaps the Wizard of the Woods manufactures such berries...

Havard

gsvenson - May 23, 2007 - 06:05 PM
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I am sorry that I have neglected this for so long. I guess I have been busy, between a business trip to Tempe, AZ for a week (I don't travel well anymore) and the stuff at Dragonsfoot, I have been a bit preoccupied.

My recollection is that the Glendower dungeon was pretty small. It took only one adventure to clean it out. But during the same adventure (or perhaps the next one, which we played on the same day-we usually started at about 1 pm often went until 3 or 4 am) we discovered a dragon temple south of the city that led to the legend of the flying monk, Brother Richard, who was played by Richard Snider. Richard is also the author of Avalon Hill's "Power and Perils" game and co-author of Adventure Games' "Adventures in Fantasy" game, if I remember correctly - memory is a terrible thing to lose...

TraverseTravis - Oct 01, 2007 - 01:50 AM
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Wow, this is great! Thanks you guys for sharing about the olden days.

Travis

JohnHanna - Dec 11, 2007 - 09:30 PM
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Desdichado wrote:

As Scott has said. Smile

I really enjoy this and would like to hear more of it! Smile

I concur with the other newbies (comparatively). This is great!
It sure beats surfing the internet with various keywords "Great Svenny", "Temple of the Frog", etc.

John Hanna
aka Daniel Draper, Noble Paladin of Henrin
aka Roget dal Tree, Bard
aka Peshwah na Seshta, Ranger