Newbies Guide to Blackmoor in Greyhawk?

[Big Mac]

Recently I saw a pretty good Newbies Guide to Mystara over on Vaults of Pandius. That was really useful at giving an overview the Mystara. Has anyone ever made a Newbies Guide to Using Blackmoor in the World of Greyhawk?

As well as an overview to how Greyhawk's Blackmoor works, I'd love to see some sort of overview of Blackmoor products old and new, and how well they might fit into the Greyhawk Campaign Setting.

[RobJN]

This would be nice, as I have really liked what I've seen of the historical/cultural differences between DA's Blackmoor and Greyhawk's Blackmoor, as summed up by ripvanwormer.

[Havard]

Recently I saw a pretty good Newbies Guide to Mystara over on Vaults of Pandius. That was really useful at giving an overview the Mystara. Has anyone ever made a Newbies Guide to Using Blackmoor in the World of Greyhawk?

As well as an overview to how Greyhawk's Blackmoor works, I'd love to see some sort of overview of Blackmoor products old and new, and how well they might fit into the Greyhawk Campaign Setting.

I think this is a great idea!
That said, there still seems to be very little groundwork done on adapting "Post FFC" Arneson material to Greyhawk. In fact the main purpose of this forum would be to remedy that fact.

So, I think that a Newbie Guide is something we can work towards, but we probably will have to start with doing some groundwork research. I hope everyone will help out here.

To begin with we have the following resources to build on:

• Converting Dave Arneson's Blackmoor to Greyhawk's Blackmoor
  
• How well does Blackmoor MMRPG line up with Living Greyhawk?
  
• How to fit the Uther era into the Greyhawk Timeline?

Anything else we can add?

How should a guide like this be structured?



-Havard

[Big Mac]

So, I think that a Newbie Guide is something we can work towards, but we probably will have to start with doing some groundwork research. I hope everyone will help out here.

You are right. I guess that a Newbies Guild to Blackmoor in Greyhawk would need to change over time to take in any research that revealed information that was not known about when the first edition of the guide came out.

Perhaps a first edition of the guide would be more about questions a GM needs to deal with, than a set of pre-worked out answers.

How should a guide like this be structured?

Good question.

I guess we need to have an out of character introduction that briefly outlines the creation of Greyhawk by Gary Gygax and the creation of Blackmoor by Dave Arneson and explain that certain elements of Greyhawk were named after Blackmoor and parts of its setting. That should hopefully give people the context to know that Blackmoor in the World of Greyhawk is inspired by Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, but is not exactly the same.

A map of the local area would be good.

Then we need some sort of logical structure to allow people to go through Blackmoor sources and work out what parts they can include in a Greyhawk campaign (and what elements - if any - can not be included). I'm guessing that in between the two extremes comes the details that need a bit of alteration.

Perhaps some sort of Gazeteer format, that covers Blackmoor and the surrounding areas would be a logical way to discuss the locations. Perhaps the same could be done for organisations (including religions).

I guess we need to have a bibliography - or maybe even two bibliographies - to list sources from both the Greyhawk Campaign Setting and the Blackmoor Campaign Setting.