Who was the First King of Blackmoor? (Split from Erwin Andah

[aldarron]

I consider the FFC as part of the documentation of the original campaign, while the DA modules and the 3E and 4E material are the foundations of the published campaign.

Righto, different scaffolding, and I'm sure there are some who ignore the ZG stuff altogether or the FFC or what have you. I would say that I don't think it's quite fair to exclude the FFC from published (official?) material though - at least not the whole of it. Certainly "Facts about Blackmoor." was written as an official published piece (where the Ra-all reference is), originally published in the Domesday book.

The other thing I would say about that is that there are very few direct contradictions between the FFC and the ZG material. In fact there is only one clear contradiction I can think of: the dating of the third Coot invasion. In the FFC campaign that took place in 1973, or Blackmoor year 997, whereas the ZG timeline places it impossibly late at 1005.

The only other contradiction is somewhat self manufactured, and that is the "40 years ago" business for when Ra-all completes the black hall. That date is prolly 20 years too far back if you accept that Alvarez was baron in 985 when Uther was born according to the ZG timeline.

I will note there is a "mistake" in that section in the FFC - the events described are known to have been part of what we now call the First Coot Invasion, not what we now call the Second. I think at the time he wrote that, Arneson might have been thinking of an earlier wargame as the First Invasion, or else it is just a mistake.

Now, the relationship between the DA modules on the one hand and the ZGG 3E and 4E books on the other is interesting. If you compare the two, the vast majority of information in the ZGG books are lifted from the DA modules. Where they differ are for the most part linked to either a) changes made to accomodate the new rulesets, MMRPG play etc and b) material lifted from a fan known as Zimriel. This might sound a bit harsh towards the ZGG desigers and freelancers and I am not saying there isn't more to their contributions than that, but I think the last part is going to help us out in this specific discussion.

Basically I'd agree, but not entirely. I think there is a noticeable tension in the ZG books between new material and DA sourced material. I think if you look at it closely you can see quite of lot of differences, especially in color material. I get the sense that the writers were listening to Dave and his stories and the way he characterized things and that influence is noticeable and notable. I could point to any number of details, like the description of Blackmoor castle with it's moat of black goo, or the Pirate Insurection that is given as the reason for foundation of the Duchy of Ten. These sort of characterizations present a Blackmoor that is sometimes subtly and sometimes openly altered from the DA series.

For those who aren't familiar with Zimriel's work on Blackmoor, download his gazetteer here. What Zimriel did was to incorporate elements from the DA modules, the FFC and whatever other sources were available to him from the original campaign. If you compare Zimriel's timeline to the timelines inthe ZGG 3E and ZGG 4E books, you will find that there are only minor differences.

Looking at Ra-All in particular I found the following:

995-1000 First Fantasy Campaign Season.
995 Ra-All is “promoted to [Earl] of Vestfold”, succeeded in Blackmoor by a contemptible fellow known to posterity as “the Weasel”. The Weasel is, of course, no Andahar.

Now, the footnote is what is the most revealing:

Thonia was famed for its irresponsibility towards its northern frontier; but I doubt they would elevate their nobles to client-kingdom status. There is slight confusion about whether Vestfold was a Kingdom (JG p. 16, 21) or an Earldom (JG p. 4, 6, 13). JG p. 16 was written long after the fact, and does not explicitly refer to Vestfold. It could refer to the “Great King”, i.e. the Emperor. JG p. 21 was written around 1974 (after the war, but before the Wizard of the Wood died) and is probably a slip-up.

So it seems that Zimriel discovered that the FFC was inconsistent to the status of Vestfold and reconciled this as making Ra-All an Earl, but he does adress the posibility of a Vassal Kingdom as suggested by you (Aldarron and Greg) in this thread!

It is interesting though that the 3E and 4E books decided to go with Zimriel's interpretation.

Anyway, I am glad I went back to Zimriel's work on this matter. His footnotes are well worth a read for further analysis of this and other research into the pre ZGG material.
-Havard

Zimriel's work was generally good for it's time I suppose, but not without it's flaws - the passage you site being one of them. Leaving aside the information we've gotten since he wrote that, his conclusion that Arneson's writing was confused in this regard was never tenable. It wasn't Arneson who was confused. The facts are actually not even that complicated. Vestfold is the capital city of Blackmoor - that has always been the case. As the main city it is therefore an earldom of higher rank than the baronages. The ruler of Vestfold holds the higher title of Earl.

When Ra-all is "promoted to king of Vestfold" he is naturally moving to the seat of power in Blackmoor- from the Barony of Blackmoor to the Earldom of Vestfold. That move doesn't magically erase the earldom. There is still an Earl of Vestfold, and there is a King of Blackmoor in Vestfold, just as there is a queen in London and a Mayor in London. For convenience, we have supposed that Ra-all has assumed both titles because he could have and because we don't have a name for the earl, but we probably should keep these personages separate. What we shouldn't do, is assume "king" is a mistake when there is no good reason to.

Zimriel sites p16, where Bill, the mechanical horse "pulled his master to safety during the retreat" from the siege of Blackmoor and "carried the word of the battle to the King"

Strangely, in his timeline, Zimriels turns the above statement into a rescue mission for Baron Fant! Apparently Zimriel mistakes the horse for William and assumes "the master" must be Fant. Leaving that aside, Zimriel asserts Arneson must be wrong here because "JG p. 16 was written long after the fact, and does not explicitly refer to Vestfold." Huh? The FFC was published in 1977. Arneson's campaign had only ended 2 years earlier, and that assumes that this particular piece was written late. I don't see how this makes the references to the king somehow invalid. His further speculation that "It could refer to the “Great King”, i.e. the Emperor." is grasping at straws and hard to take seriously.

Further Zimriel ignores the very next page where (17) the king is referenced again. Svenny was indeed a "Long time pal of the King and First Paladin of the Kingdom " who "the King always calis upon".

Of course, in reality we know exactly who the "king" was - Dave Arneson. Ra-all (the all seeing god) is likely an avatar of Dave just as Uther is.

Zimriel was simply wrong here, not Arneson. That was always demonstrably the case, but now, of course, we've also got CotTs to be even more sure with references to "the King".