Converting Dave Arneson's Blackmoor to Greyhawk's Blackmoor

[Big Mac]

I am wonder if there is some sort of easy (or at least fairly logical) conversion process, where elements specific to Blackmoor (or maybe Mystara) can be swapped out for elements specific to the Flanaess.

I know that some names are the same in both settings and other names are slightly different.

Has anyone ever made an A-Z list of elements in Dave Arneson's setting and how they translate into Greyhawk's Blackmoor?

[Havard]

An A-Z list would be very useful. I am trying to find something Ripvanwormer posted on the subject over at The Piazza (I think), but cannot find the right thread ATM ( I may possibly be thinking about this one) so this is from memory:

Dave Arneson Names --> Greyhawk Equivalent
Afridhi -->Iuz
Peshwah -->Tiger/Wolf Nomads
Duchy of Ten --> Duchy of Tehn
Temple of the Frog Deity --> Wastri
Great Kingdom of Thonia --> Great Kingdom of Aerdy
Skandaharians --> Suel Barbarians

What else?

-Havard

[ripvanwormer]

In this thread I proposed two different conversion schemes. One set Blackmoor back in 336 CY and replaced the Afridhi with the Relentless Horde. The other set it in more or less the present World of Greyhawk with Iuz taking the place of the Afridhi. The Skandaharians get replaced with the Zeai (the Sea Barbarians, closely related to the other northern Suel barbarians) in both cases, and the Egg of Coot stays the same.

There's another possibility, if you don't care much about fidelity to published Greyhawk canon. You can change the map and drop Dave Arneson's Blackmoor just north of the Great Kingdom, approximately where Ratik is in the published map. Something like this:

[Havard]

Thanks for posting this map here Rip!

Lately I have been spending more time thinking of consolidating Blackmoor and Greyhawk with the Castles & Crusades Society World Map.

The advantage of your map is that is more consitent with Arneson's Duchy of Ten and the placement of Blackmoor compared to the Northern Barbarians (Skandaharians) as well as the Great Kingdom.

It seems to me that when Darlene expanded the C&C Map westwards (possibly based on sketches from Gary) it changed many of the shared assumptions of Dave and Gary about what the world looked like. This is part of what makes reconciling the two more difficult.

Gary once said that he added Blackmoor to the TSR version of Greyhawk without putting much thought into it. I think it is more the addition of the Duchy of Ten that was an arbitrary addition, while Blackmoor clearly remains in the position where Dave placed it.

-Havard

[Big Mac]

An A-Z list would be very useful. I am trying to find something Ripvanwormer posted on the subject over at The Piazza (I think), but cannot find the right thread ATM ( I may possibly be thinking about this one) so this is from memory:

Dave Arneson Names --> Greyhawk Equivalent
Afridhi -->Iuz
Peshwah -->Tiger/Wolf Nomads
Duchy of Ten --> Duchy of Tehn
Temple of the Frog Deity --> Wastri
Great Kingdom of Thonia --> Great Kingdom of Aerdy
Skandaharians --> Suel Barbarians

What else?

That is a great start. I guess that each of those things could be given their own thread in this forum, and we could discuss how the difference between the Greyhawk version and the Blackmoor version might force certain parts of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor to bend to fit in with Gary Gygax's setting.

In this thread I proposed two different conversion schemes. One set Blackmoor back in 336 CY and replaced the Afridhi with the Relentless Horde. The other set it in more or less the present World of Greyhawk with Iuz taking the place of the Afridhi. The Skandaharians get replaced with the Zeai (the Sea Barbarians, closely related to the other northern Suel barbarians) in both cases, and the Egg of Coot stays the same.

I didn't really consider that more than one option might be logical. Thanks for pointing that out.

In another thread I was asking how well Dave Arneson's MMRPG might line up with Living Greyhawk, so I guess I would probably go for the option that would make it most easy to raid MMRPG episodes and use them to run a campaign very similar to the Living Greyhawk campaign for the metaregion closest to Blackmoor and the Duchy of Tehn.

There's another possibility, if you don't care much about fidelity to published Greyhawk canon. You can change the map and drop Dave Arneson's Blackmoor just north of the Great Kingdom, approximately where Ratik is in the published map. Something like this:

That is an awesome map. And I guess that would be a fairly easy way to run a hybrid "Blackmoor + Greyhawk campaign".

I would actually like to be able to run a "standard" Greyhawk campaign and use the Blackmoor product line to fill in the missing details.

I'd kind of love to be able to use Blackmoor products to place more locations onto the Greyhawk map and maybe even ask Anna Meyer if she could use any Blackmoor-related research to design a high detailed map of Greyhawk's Blackmoor region. 8)