Blackmoor Week Day Seven and Dave Arneson Game Day

When it comes to Blackmoor and The First Fantasy Campaign, most are hard put to find much information about it. I am lucky enough to have gotten a copy a long time ago (well not that long ago) and so I don't have to worry about the high prices that it and other items fetch these days.

One of the ways to find out about it are of course to read a review of it and I am going to link to one here. This review ( First Fantasy Campaign Review) is by Michael Falconer and it  is mostly good. I just take exception to some things when he introduces the review.

This product is nothing like what you would expect. I love FFC, but I am still amazed that it was considered ready for publication, even by the standards of the day. When Gary Gygax published The World of Greyhawk in 1980, he essentially published a huge map and an accompanying booklet which systematically described the lands on the map; it was not a "journal" of his home campaign!

I would take issue with his implication that it was not ready to publish and that it is a problem that it is not like The World of Greyhawk.  Personally I am so glad that it was not like The World of Greyhawk in 1980. Here is why,

One, what has everyone wanted all these years? The answer to that is easy, the real Greyhawk, a "journal" of the Gygax home campaign. That was promised many, many times over the years, but it never happened. I am not going to speculate on the reasons why, although many of them are known. 

Two, the First Fantasy Campaign is something that the published World of Greyhawk never was for Gary Gygax, the FFC provided a real look into the creative mind of Dave Arneson and his players.

Three, the FFC is and was an idea grab bag of inspiration and that it is, just as much today as it was 41 years ago.

Four, you could have taken FFC and have heavily edited it and organized it and in the process removed the life and charm from it too. I am really glad that did not happen.

I could go on, but that is enough. The only thing you could do to make The First Fantasy Campaign book better is to provide additional volumes containing all of the experiments that Arneson did along the way between Christmas 1970 and his passing.

Let's hope that Arneson's heirs and Bob Bledsoe's heirs will bring The First Fantasy Campaign and other items back to print and to pdf. This has been hidden long enough!

Blackmoor Week Day Six and Dave Arneson Game Day

Only a brief post this morning but I just wanted to comment on a few things that Dave Arneson created and was using in Blackmoor before he traveled to Lake Geneva to introduce the game to Gygax, Kuntz and a few others.

The dungeon crawl and the whole dungeon trope.

The sandbox style of play (old school play) where the decisions and actions of the players interacting with the campaign world define and shape the campaign.

Dave's pre-Gygax games included all the basics, things like experience, levels, hit points, dice and tables and many other things.

A unique way of running magic was used and a spell point system was used (yeah spell points can be old school, who knew)

Magic swords got a very complete treatment back in those pre-Gygax days.

Briefly used Chainmail and then abandoned it to create his own combat system based on an unpublished American Civil War Naval game, because Chainmail was inadequate and inappropriate to the task, all in the pre-Gygax days.

Invented and used the character attributes (Str, Dex, Con, etc.)

Unique dragons that were significant in the campaign.

Players also played things like balrogs and vampires. 

Interaction and travel between different worlds and time periods.

Aliens and the presence of some high tech.

The Egg of Coot and other iconic highly unique BBEG;s.

The Temple of the Frog, the first written adventure, and no the idea was not to sell an endless series of modules, it was written as one an example and two to show some of the flavor of Blackmoor.

That is just barely scratching the surface with a little very fast stream of consciousness post.

Blackmoor Week Day Five and Dave Arneson Game Day

It has been interesting this year to see that aside from a few of us posting about Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day, from the rest of the old school community there has been only a deafening silence. 

Here are the things that are not blog posts, aside from the blog posts I linked to yesterday there are only the below things that I have found.

There is a facebook event 

Dave Arneson Game Day 2018 event as part of the single post at the Blackmoor Campaign Setting Facebook Group for which 4 people have committed so far. Many of us don't have access to this group.

At the Facebook The.Ruins.of.Murkhill Group there is an announcement that leads back to the blog posts saying 

https://musingofamavericreferee.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/lets-celebrate-blackmoor-week-2018/ At the bottom of the blog are links to other Ruins of Murkhill member's blog posts as part of our Ruins of Murkhill Blackmoor Week 2018 blogging campaign celebration.

 The blog post at Havard's Blackmoor Blog.

Dave Arneson Game Day 2018 Coming Up!

An announcement at the Comeback Inn

Dave Arneson Game Day 2018 - October 1st

An announcement at The Piazza

Dave Arneson Game Day 2018 - Coming soon! 

Then there is also the 

The Ruins of Murkhill Google+ Group

Yeah, that's it, nothing at all on most of the so-called old school forums and blogs. Most of the links shown above have been mostly ignored. If anything shows up for the first time by the end of the day on the 1st, I will post those links on the 2nd.

Blackmoor Week Day Four and Dave Arneson Game Day

Here are some of the other people who have been posting about Dave Arneson and Blackmoor Week!

Dave Arneson Game Day 2018 Coming Up! (09/22/2018)

Here are the Day One Blackmoor Week Blog Post so far (09/24/2018)
Celebrating Blackmoor Week (Day One)
Blackmoor Week Day ONE
Blackmoor Week Day One
Blackmoor Week Day I
Let's Celebrate Blackmoor Week 2018

Here are the Day Two Blackmoor Week Blog Posts so far (09/25/2018)\
Celebrating Blackmoor Week (Day Two)
Blackmoor Week Day TWO
Blackmoor Week Day Two
Blackmoor Week Day II

Post by Jakob Grimm on 10 hours ago

Celebrating Day Three of Blackmoor Week and here are the blog posts of the day.(09/26/2018)
Celebrating Blackmoor Week (Day Three)
Blackmoor Week Day THREE
Blackmoor Week Day Three
Blackmoor Week Day III
Here are the Day Four Posts for Blackmoor Week (09/27/2018)
Celebrating Blackmoor Week (Day Four)
Blackmoor Week Day FOUR
Blackmoor Week Day Four
Blackmoor Week Day IV
The Mystery of Dave Arneson's Engine

At the end of the week I will post another update of this list in a new post.

So how is Blackmoor Week going for you? Do you have a blog? If you do, are you going to post about Dave Arneson Game Day and Blackmoor Week? If you do, please post your link in my comments as I would hate to miss your post.

Blackmoor Week Day Three and Dave Arneson Game Day

Celebrating Dave Arneson and his awesome setting Blackmoor is a privilege and an honor. People get all wound up about where ideas came from and what inspired them, but that is much less important than the ideas themselves.

Those ideas all came together in the fertile, active, brilliant childlike genius of Dave Arneson. He created the table top rpg, he created the dungeon crawl, he created Blackmoor and from it sprang his creation Dungeons & Dragons that he co-authored with Gary Gygax.

People have exhausted themselves bending over backwards and going through all kinds of contortions to give credit to anyone but Arneson and that continues to this day. As more and more information comes to light, the credit given to Gygax for things he did not do, becomes more ridiculous by the moment. Gygax had the drive to bring the game to market and he should be given full credit for that. Arneson invented table top role-playing games and he should be given credit for that. Yet people strain for gnats as they try to give credit to anyone other than Arneson.

But this is Blackmoor week, so forget all that for now and just celebrate the life of Dave Arneson and play a role-playing game, have fun, create something new, something unique. Be like Dave Arneson!

Blackmoor Week Day Two and Dave Arneson Game Day

As we continue to celebrate and honor Dave Arneson, here are a few more quotes that you may find to your liking.

"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Tell me what you're character is doing. I'll tell you what dice to roll" 

- Dave Arneson

"Just role playing not roll playing." Dave Arneson

Blackmoor Week Day One and Dave Arneson Game Day

This week beginning today September 24th, 2018 through October 1st, 2018 is Blackmoor Week and Dave Arneson Game Day (his birthday the 1st).

To get you into the mood here are a few Dave Arneson Quotes!

"If something doesn't work, get rid of it. If something works in another set of rules and you want to put it in your game go for it"
- Dave Arneson

"Principles, etc., are great, but the Referee always needs to be prepared to change what needs changing when it needs it. A good one knows that."
- Dave Arneson

The True History of Dungeons & Dragons - The Documentary by Secrets of Blackmoor

Are you a Blackmoor fan? A Dave Arneson Fan? Someone that wants to know the truth and not that garbage pedaled by that game company and their paid and unpaid lackey's? There is a documentary on the horizon that will blow the doors off of the mainstream lies that have been promoted for over 40 years.

No this documentary is not about trashing Gygax, there is no reason to do that. Gygax, Arneson, Wesely, Kuntz and all the rest are just humans with feet of clay like all of us. So NO trashing of anybody. But a whole lot of truth telling.

Tired of the lies about who did what? Tired of lies about how the game was originally played? Tired of being told that you're not smart enough or creative enough to play like Dave Arneson and his friends? Want to find out what Killer DM originally meant, and who suggested it was necessary and why?

Well buy a T-shirt or two if you really want to help, so that the final editing and production can be completed. This first two hours is the first of a series of productions that will answer the questions that so many of us want the answers to.

Secrets of Blackmoor

If you have not seen posts in other places, Secrets of Blackmoor the documentary is trying to raise funds to offset expenses on the final stages of the film. Having seen that a lot of people over worked and under delivered on kick Starter we are trying a different approach. We are offering T-shirts for sale. These are original limited edition T-shirts by Bob Bledsaw of judges guild. Bob was kind enough to donate his art to the project.