My favorite Blackmoor is...

[aldarron]

On a couple threads the question has come up "which Blackmoor". So I thought I'd ask and see what our forum members like best.

Although Its no secret, its only fair that I answer my own question first. My preference is for Original Blackmoor, with judicious cherry picking from later works, particularly the ZGG line. My reasons are simple, its the only one that is actually its own original world and not a Blackmoor shoehorned as an afterthought into a world imagined by someone other than Arneson. But I well understand folks who love thier world, be it Greyhawk, Mystara, whatever and want Blackmoor to be a part of it.

[Rafael]

Hehe, which will have been my vote, hehe? :twisted:

[Havard]

Minor Nitpick: The D20 version was published in the period 2003-2009. CMP was only involved in last two years.

Now, what to choose. This is difficult. I started out with Mystara so I guess that is the option that will get my vote. However, I make use of all the material I can get my hands on that is even remotely connected to Blackmoor to enhance my campaign. The Wilderlands are definately included, but for cosmology and planetary information, I use the framework for Mystara/BECMI.

Although I consider the DA series excellent source material, I've gone along with some of the changes made with the D20 line, including the alteration of the Wizards Cabal.

I'd be interested in seeing what other people vote

Havard

[Big Mac]

On a couple threads the question has come up "which Blackmoor". So I thought I'd ask and see what our forum members like best.

Interesting question. The subject of the different Blackmoors has come up over at The Piazza. I don't think I've seen any other campaign setting that has been raided so much (by other campaign settings). But then again, I don't think I've seen many other settings* that have been "shut down" way before their time.

* = Other settings that I think also didn't get a fair chance are Pelenor (the UK TSR setting that got nerfed when they UK TSR team told their US bosses they thought they were idiots), Jakandor (the Barbarian vs Necromancer setting) and Ghostwalk (the 3.0 setting that WotC semi-converted into a 3.5 book).

I think that internal politics (between TSR and Dave Arneson) meant that Blackmoor didn't get the sort of extensive OD&D product line that Forgotten Realms has been given by Wizards of the Coast.

I think that if Blackmoor had been given its chance (way back then) the OD&D product line would have been totally different.

It might have been popular enough on its own to have displaced the Mystara campaign setting. Or Dave Arneson might have had more say with the Known World and Mystara might have been subsumed into the Blackmoor Campaign Setting. So some people might not prefer "what could have been", while others might think it was far better.

I'm not sure the Wilderlands connection would have been there if Dave Arneson had been kept busy inside TSR.

I think the abbreviations we were using (over at The Piazza) were: "G-Blackmoor" for Greyhawk's Blackmoor, "M-Blackmoor" for Mystara's Blackmoor, "W-Blackmoor" for Wilderland's Blackmoor.

I suggested "B-Blackmoor" for standalone Blackmoor, but given what you said, I'm not sure there is only one version of the standalone Blackmoor.

Although Its no secret, its only fair that I answer my own question first. My preference is for Original Blackmoor, with judicious cherry picking from later works, particularly the ZGG line. My reasons are simple, its the only one that is actually its own original world and not a Blackmoor shoehorned as an afterthought into a world imagined by someone other than Arneson.

Hmm. I was under the impression that the ZG version (i.e. Dave Arneson's Blackmoor) was supposed to be a 3e update to Dave Arneson's version. Even if there are ideas in there from other people (and some parts of Dave Arneson's core are excluded) I was under the impression that it was "Blackmoor + new stuff", rather than "something new with elements of Blackmoor".

Am I misinterpreting your use of the word "only"? Or did you not mean to include Dave Arneson's Blackmoor as a "shoehorn setting":?

I was actually thinking of doing the opposite thing to you (starting with the Zeitguist Games stuff and cherry picking from earlier Blackmoor stuff, especially First Fantasy Campaign).

But I well understand folks who love thier world, be it Greyhawk, Mystara, whatever and want Blackmoor to be a part of it.

As someone who would like to one day see a Blackmoor Wiki (or other form of online Blackmoor encyclopedia) I think you have highlighted an important point of confusion with the setting. (And as someone who is still pretty new to Blackmoor, I find this very confusing and think it is something that possibly distracts some, would be, fans from getting into Blackmoor.)

I think there are some elements (I'll call them "core") that appear in all versions of Blackmoor. But there are other ("non-core") elements that are specific to M-Blackmoor, G-Blackmoor, W-Blackmoor or whatever.

Forgotten Realms Wiki did an interesting thing, where they used a second "namespace" for the Living Forgotten Realms version of the same article. I think that sort of canon-splitting could help put the "pure" Dave Arneson stuff into the main namespace, but still show people how that fits into the other settings. (Essentially, a theoretical Blackmoor Wiki could have an "Egg of the Coot" article as well as a "Mystara:Egg of the Coot", "Wilderlands:Egg of the Coot" and/or "Greyhawk:Egg of the Coot" articles)

With Blackmoor being something that has "returned to the fans" for the moment, I think that any progress on any type of Blackmoor would be useful (to an extent) to fans of other types of Blackmoor. And progress on the core elements would be useful to everyone.

So I'm not sure that finding out the favorite Blackmoor is as important as finding out how to dispel confusion between the different iterations.

But for the record, I voted for the 3e version, because that is my preferred ruleset. And when people tell me that I can "make a setting my own" they often don't realise that I specifically do not want to do that. I personally would want to play in Dave Arneson's world.

I'm actually a Spelljammer fan (for anyone who does not know), but would want to build a Blackmoorspace that bent Spelljammer to the Blackmoor style (rather than one that bent Blackmoor away from its own style).

Because Greyspace is already in the SJ universe (and has its own Blackmoor) and because I would also like to have a Wilderlandspace and a Mystaraspace, I've thought about having all of these Blackmoors as some sort of parallel cities (rather than trying to do it the Havard way and merge them all - apart from Greyhawk - into a single world). I don't suppose I'll ever get all of that finished as the research time needed to get my "inner Dave Arneson" working would probably take me several years.

For the record the reason I didn't vote for "Blackmoor + something else" (with the something else being Spelljammer) is that I wouldn't want a Blackmoor-lite crystal sphere. I would want a fully working campaign setting surrounded by a bunch of other worlds that also had Arneson-type themes. So to me the core-stuff needs to be more important than the crossover stuff.

[Havard]

Every setting has this issue. Due to inconsistencies between different editions of a setting, there will always be some fans who prefer the older material or the newer material or that in-between. Consider discussions of BX Mystara vs Gazetteer Mystara vs AD&D Mystara.

I am a bit wary of such discussions because they tend to make people dig into trenches. Furthermore these trenches are problematic since they are built on the misconception that inconsistencies only occur along certain likes (editions for instance) whereas this is really not the case.

With Blackmoor it is an even more absurd discussion. If you consider the 1970s material alone, meaning the FFC and Supplement II, I will be bold enough to say that this isn't even a Campaign Setting. The FFC, brilliant as it is, is just a collection of notes from Dave's campaign. Viewed solely by themselves, they are quite difficult to understand. Supplement II's Temple of the Frog is little more than a dungeon and doesnt turn Blackmoor into a campaign setting.

I will claim that Blackmoor became a campaign setting in the modern sense with the release of DA1. The DA series presented Arneson's ideas in a much more coherent form. Reading the FFC after having read DA1 makes the FFC a magnificent resource since it adds details that the DA series never got around to covering and having read the DA series, you will understand what is meant by the different nations and other references that may have seemed very confusing previously to anyone who had not played with Dave Arneson.

Do the 3E/4E line make for a new Blackmoor? I don't really think so. The ZG line is heavily based on the DA series and simply reorganizes and expands on what was found there. The really great thing about the D20 Sourcebook is that this is the first time you can read about Blackmoor as a campaign setting without going through the format of an adventure module.

In the case of connections between the settings, I will say that this connection was there from day one. Dave Arneson stated that his campaign was connected to Rob Kuntz' campaign and later Blackmoor players travelled to Gary's campaign. How they were connected was kept fairly vague back then, but they were always connected in some way or other.

I think that internal politics (between TSR and Dave Arneson) meant that Blackmoor didn't get the sort of extensive OD&D product line that Forgotten Realms has been given by Wizards of the Coast.

It is actually pretty interesting that while the AD&D line spawned a great number of different settings, something that some have claimed was a mistake, marketing-wise, the Classic D&D line chose to keep the settings integrated. Classic D&D had at least four settings: The Known World, the Hollow World, Blackmoor and Thunder Rift. However, they were all integrated into one larger setting. I wonder what would have happened if the AD&D line had followed the same principle, making Faerun and Ansalon different continents on Oerth?

I think that if Blackmoor had been given its chance (way back then) the OD&D product line would have been totally different.

That is one way of looking at it, but another is that Blackmoor in fact was given a chance. A very likely alternative would have been shutting the trademark down completely, not allowing the DA series to be made.

It might have been popular enough on its own to have displaced the Mystara campaign setting. Or Dave Arneson might have had more say with the Known World and Mystara might have been subsumed into the Blackmoor Campaign Setting. So some people might not prefer "what could have been", while others might think it was far better.

Seems to speculative to comment much on.

I'm not sure the Wilderlands connection would have been there if Dave Arneson had been kept busy inside TSR.

Officially no, but the two settings are connected simply through being very similar in terms of atmosphere.

Hmm. I was under the impression that the ZG version (i.e. Dave Arneson's Blackmoor) was supposed to be a 3e update to Dave Arneson's version. Even if there are ideas in there from other people (and some parts of Dave Arneson's core are excluded) I was under the impression that it was "Blackmoor + new stuff", rather than "something new with elements of Blackmoor".

It is certainly Dave's version first and foremost. Others have made contributions, but this is true for every campaign setting I know.

I was actually thinking of doing the opposite thing to you (starting with the Zeitguist Games stuff and cherry picking from earlier Blackmoor stuff, especially First Fantasy Campaign).

A good way to start IMO, since the ZG version is the one that is most easily accessible.

(And as someone who is still pretty new to Blackmoor, I find this very confusing and think it is something that possibly distracts some, would be, fans from getting into Blackmoor.)

I can see that it can seem confusing, but it mainly has to do with nitpicking and purism. These arent things that will be too helpful to someone who is new to a setting.

I think there are some elements (I'll call them "core") that appear in all versions of Blackmoor. But there are other ("non-core") elements that are specific to M-Blackmoor, G-Blackmoor, W-Blackmoor or whatever.

Here's a quick breakdown:
1) M-Blackmoor: Everything of Arneson's + lots and lots more.
2) G-Blackmoor: According to Gygax, not really the same setting.
3) W-Blackmoor: There is probably no such thing. We're adding the Wilderlands to Blackmoor, not the other way around.

Forgotten Realms Wiki did an interesting thing, where they used a second "namespace" for the Living Forgotten Realms version of the same article. I think that sort of canon-splitting could help put the "pure" Dave Arneson stuff into the main namespace, but still show people how that fits into the other settings. (Essentially, a theoretical Blackmoor Wiki could have an "Egg of the Coot" article as well as a "Mystara:Egg of the Coot", "Wilderlands:Egg of the Coot" and/or "Greyhawk:Egg of the Coot" articles)

This will rarely be an issue. With the Egg of Coot as with most issues, it will be the same entitiy regardless of add-ons.

With Blackmoor being something that has "returned to the fans" for the moment, I think that any progress on any type of Blackmoor would be useful (to an extent) to fans of other types of Blackmoor. And progress on the core elements would be useful to everyone.

Agreed!

So I'm not sure that finding out the favorite Blackmoor is as important as finding out how to dispel confusion between the different iterations.

I read it more as finding out which materials one started out with and where one might have one's preferences in case materials are in contradiction.

But for the record, I voted for the 3e version, because that is my preferred ruleset. And when people tell me that I can "make a setting my own" they often don't realise that I specifically do not want to do that. I personally would want to play in Dave Arneson's world.

Well, then the discussion is: Do you look for Arneson's original vision, or do you accept that since he cooperated with Ricthie on the DA series and was co-owner of ZG, that these proucts did make up his world?

For the record the reason I didn't vote for "Blackmoor + something else" (with the something else being Spelljammer) is that I wouldn't want a Blackmoor-lite crystal sphere. I would want a fully working campaign setting surrounded by a bunch of other worlds that also had Arneson-type themes. So to me the core-stuff needs to be more important than the crossover stuff.

The problem you will face here is that Arneson did not publish a complete campaign setting in the 2E/3E sense. He created a very detailed microsetting.

Arneson did not publish a cosmology or even a planetary map for his setting. That said, there is a planetary map for the world of Blackmoor, but it is found in the Hollow World boxed set. As it is the only existing planetary map for Blackmoor, you could use that one even if you dont want the entire Mystara future history. That is the map I use as a basis for my maps by the way.

Havard

[aldarron]

Yep. Basically what Havard said. Although to quibble, I do think there is more than enough campaign setting material in FFC. It is true that its not detailed "in the modern sense"
If you insist on using M-Blackmoor etc. labels then I suppose original Blackmoor would be O-Blackmoor. But personally I think those kind of abbreviations are too common and confusing.

[Havard]

Yep. Basically what Havard said. Although to quibble, I do think there is more than enough campaign setting material in FFC. It is true that its not detailed "in the modern sense"

I expected some reaction to my comment on the FFC. The main problem with regarding this product as a basis for a campaign setting is that it's not a setting product. It is instead a description of an actual campaign and how it played out. The focus is on what happened, and only to a lesser degree on the basis for the campaign, which is what later setting proucts were like.

Blackmoor is fairly unique in this sense, that it has details on how the creator played the campaign, not just the setting itself.

If you insist on using M-Blackmoor etc. labels then I suppose
original Blackmoor would be O-Blackmoor. But personally I think those kind of abbreviations are too common and confusing.

I tend to agree. It mainly makes sense with regards to Greyhawk, since Greyhawk's Blackmoor is significantly different from Arneson's.

Havard

[finarvyn]

My favorite Blackmoor would be Dave's original notes and the Twin Cities campaign, if only something like that were to be out there for sale.

The next best thing has to be the Judges' Guild First Fantasy Campaign booklet. Not only does FFC capture the OD&D spirit, it comes off a lot like someone's campaign notes and really gives the impresion that you're supposed to take Dave's start and run with it. Reminds me of my own campaigns from the 1970's.