Proper order to play Blackmoor's adventures?

[finarvyn]

I think that part of what makes this an interesting question is that 50 years after the founding of the Blackmoor campaign there isn't a real answer. Historically, Blackmoor has always been a "sandbox" style setting -- which is to say that there is a map and there are interesting places on the map and players usually get to choose what places to visit. Sometimes the DM might give a nudge with rumors about so-and-so plotting an uprising somewhere, or some such, but in general my Blackmoor has always been more player-driven plots. I think that Arneson's Blackmoor was done the same way.

The "linear plotline" concept (what we used to call "rail roading") is a more recent thing, I think. My son ran a 5E drow adventure from a giganto hardback and it was very linear with a specific over-arching goal and chapter after chapter of sequential events designed to get the party from the start to the finish. Sort of like a novel or a movie, but we played through it. The first such sequence that I can recall in D&D was probably 1980's Dragonlance, which featured more than a dozen individual modules linked together to retell the first trilogy of Dragonlance books.

I sense that the author of the original post in this thread is looking for something like this for Blackmoor.

Blackmoor, as published, has never had a single plotline nor a single sequence in which to adventure through the products. My Blackmoor campaigns typically start in Blackmoor city with a bunch of rumors or a "help wanted" style job board. Players would see the fun things that they might experience, tell me what interests them the most, and then I would try to prep for that particular place. Much of the "plotline" is actually the hex-by-hex travel with various planned or random encounters along the way. No over-arching plot, other than getting to the interesting place and then exploring it.