New to Blackmoor? Have questions on actual play? Start HERE!

[Rafael]

Hey all,

For the new year, our circle of friends here has decided to do something specifically aiming to help new players and DMs interested in Blackmoor and the works of Dave Arneson:

Between Havard, Rob, me, and the rest of the team, we sure aren't the ultimate experts to ask historical, or generally, "meta"-questions on Blackmoor - but let's just say we know our way around how to run a Blackmoor game.

So, if you're new to Blackmoor, are thinking about running a Blackmoor game, or have practical questions for your weekly Friday night bout of D&D, please post your questions right here.

Literally, ask us anything you want to know related to the way we run our Blackmoor games! We might not always have the most sophisticated answers, but... We will have some answers for you.


We cordially invite other experienced Blackmoor DMs (ten years of experience with the setting or more, please) to join in on giving advice to new members, or fellow other DMs in need.

The only rules to consider - please! - are: No holy cows, and no hijacking.
Followers of every edition of D&D are welcome here, and if you want to debate a fellow expert's answers, please do so by opening a separate thread and quoting the respective message.


This thread, however, is meant to be for very focused, down-to-earth problem-solving only.

Thanks,

The management

[Rafael]

Because these are some of the most commonly asked questions we get, here's something to serve as a starting point, perhaps:

My personal preferred go-to setting book for actual play is the Blackmoor d20 hardcover by Zeitgeist Games, from 2003/2004.
My personal choice for one of the best "unlabeled" adventures for Blackmoor would be "The Doom of Listonshire" by Ari Marmell - sold by Kentzer & Co, if I recall correctly.
My personal system of choice for Blackmoor-related one-shots is usually Solomoriah's Basic Fantasy RPG, as available via this website: https://www.basicfantasy.org/

(I'm mostly playing the DCC RPG, these days, but that's a relatively recent change.)

--- Mind you that all those are *my* choices, not necessarily *the best* choices one might be able to make, and that they are based on my interpretation of the setting which might positively not match your own.

[RobJN]

I came to Blackmoor via the "Mystara's distant past" references in the various Gazetteers in the late 80s and early 90s, and it was not until the later 90s that I (finally!) managed to acquire my copies of the DA series of modules.

Unlike Rafe, the version of Blackmoor I developed looked to the future made possible by the tech salvaged from the City of the Gods. My adventures in Blackmoor at its techno-magical height -- some unspecified number of years (or is it months?) before the Great Rain of Fire would reshape the world, tipping it on its very axis-- were powered by the Alternity Science Fiction RPG.

The best advice I can give you, fellow DMs: don't be afraid to make Blackmoor your own. Put your own spin on it. Breathe your own life into it, whether you use established rogues, regents & rascals or come up with your own.

Rafe took a humble group of adventurers and a haunted inn and told a great story. Havard has been telling the tale of heroes forging their own place, far to the west of the barony-turned-kingdom of Blackmoor, under the looming shadow of the Afridhi invasion. The descendants of those adventurers could very well be making their own way through the World That Was, the demon-haunted Imperial Blackmoor that is the backdrop of my Throne of Stars campaign.

All of our takes are wildly different from the original game back in the late 60s and early 70s. And all of them are equally valid interpretations. As can be yours.

[Yaztromo]

I grew up playing BECMI in Mystara (thanks to Bruce Heard's amazing gazetteers), so I did a bit like RobJN

I came to Blackmoor via the "Mystara's distant past" references in the various Gazetteers in the late 80s and early 90s.

I came to Blackmoor even later than RobJN, just for curiosity through a website called ThePiazza and then through the Comeback Inn, and the setting swiftly conquered my imagination. I like it because it has a long story behind it, but also because it is "open", i.e. it's not all fully described, but there are important stories and threads that you are free to interpret and describe as you like.

When I started being interested by Blackmoor, I already decided that the D&D rulesets that at the time were most popular at the time (3.5, d20, Pathfinder...) were not suitable anymore for me. At the time (and not it's not much different, to be honest) I needed way simpler rulesets, without classes and levels, with very quick character generation, so I used mostly Advanced Fighting Fantasy, a simple and very quickstart 2d6 ruleset that reminded me the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that I used to play even before I heard about D&D).

Eventually, I settled on a fan made view of Blackmoor (http://www.chimerae.it/download/CHBLW0en.zip) and I made the most of the (fantastic!) MMRPG campaign modules available on this very website, converting them on the fly from D&D 3.5 to AFF2 (it's quick and easy even for me, that I'm a very slow learner).

This worked very well for me, providing everything that I needed: a very quick start ruleset (you can roll a character, learn the ruleset and start playing in about 5 minutes - 10 minutes absolute worst, so you can swiftly enrol any guest) and a number of one-off modules that are loosely related, but the group can change with no real problem for the overarching campaign from session to session, allowing me to run the most appropriate format for my current situation / lifestyle and players' preference.

By the way, the quick start ruleset for AFF2 is free (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/1080...t_filtered), the above mentioned "setting hack" is free and all the adventure modules are free. All aspects of the campaign that are easy to enrol some friend of one-night guest for a one-ff session.... and then they can decide if they want to come back or not.

Of course, this is what during last few years works better for me.
Maybe you have a life situation and likely players that are similar to mine and you can make the most of my suggestions, maybe not.

Ultimately, running Blackmoor is my (very humble) way to remember and honour Dave Arneson, a person that helped me having countless hours of fun and good social interactions. A person that I admire for what he gave me.
Perhaps you have similar feeling and you want to check out the (free) documents that I mentioned above. I hope they will be useful for you.

[Greg]

Have any of you incorporated some of the original characters and monsters from the original Blackmoor campaign? Is The Great Svenny in your campaign? What about Brother Richard, Bosero the Drunkard, or Gertie the Dragon? Is King Uther the reigning King of Blackmoor, ruling from Blackmoor Castle, and is there an orc King Funk? Or is Blackmoor Castle an abandoned fortification, waiting for the PCs to explore the dungeon below?

I am always curious to find out how other DMs set up their Blackmoor campaigns and whether they incorporate some of the original characters, lore and situations.

[RobJN]

Have any of you incorporated some of the original characters and monsters from the original Blackmoor campaign? Is The Great Svenny in your campaign? What about Brother Richard, Bosero the Drunkard, or Gertie the Dragon? Is King Uther the reigning King of Blackmoor, ruling from Blackmoor Castle, and is there an orc King Funk? Or is Blackmoor Castle an abandoned fortification, waiting for the PCs to explore the dungeon below?

I am always curious to find out how other DMs set up their Blackmoor campaigns and whether they incorporate some of the original characters, lore and situations.

Many of the Rogues, Regents, and Rascals from DA1 made it into  Act III, scene i of my Last Days of Blackmoor play -by-post, as defensive subroutines of the Blackmoor University's datacore network. The Comeback Inn was the construct-appearance of the system's aether-casting virus quarantine, holding demonically-tainted 'programs' captive for study and/or elimination.

The PCs' consciousnesses were accidentally shunted there while their bodies were being put back together after a particularly bad crash-landing aboard er... into one of Blackmoor's orbital defense satellite/observatories.

[Rafael]

Have any of you incorporated some of the original characters and monsters from the original Blackmoor campaign?

More on this below, but, yeah, two steady companions of the party in my Blackmoor games have been different versions of the Blue Rider, and a "Brother Richard", who I think is a fusion of several characters as I played him - a medieval, "Brother Tuck"-like monk with a jetpack and a lasergun, who mostly serves as some sort of comic relief. There's also an evil jester who has accompanied the party on several occasions, but I think that is a character from the works of Rob Kuntz. I think I named that one Cicero, at some point, after the Skyrim character, but that obviously wasn't his original name.

Is King Uther the reigning King of Blackmoor, ruling from Blackmoor Castle, and is there an orc King Funk?

No orc king for me, but Uther has a residence in town, and rules from there. In the online game, he isn't king any more towards the end, but in my tabletop games, when we played in the DA series era, Uther was generally a pretty run-of-the-mill "Lord British", and, of course, baron or king of Blackmoor.

Or is Blackmoor Castle an abandoned fortification, waiting for the PCs to explore the dungeon below?

I've mostly portrayed castle BM as a ruin, or as a threshold occupied by the enemy. - Especially younger players, they seem to appreciate a high degree of realism/internal logic with their games. So, the idea of selling them that the castle - as depicted in the FFC - is inhabited, that has never quite worked.

Now, most of my takes on BM dungeon have been games that focused on the immediate environment of the outbreak around 995 NC. Blackmoor's Baleborn Orcs are a new thing to the Northerners, and nobody knows what the Egg of Coot is yet. I've occasionally borrowed from Robert J. Kuntz' "Maze of Zayenne" series to fill some of the gaps. Also, in order to give the players a scenario they could win without having to get too deep into the dungeon, Fang the vampire was often the primary antagonist. Did two big, and a few smaller games in that environment; seemed to work, in principle, and the players were cool with the adventures.

Is The Great Svenny in your campaign?

Apart from a few cameos, I've intentionally never included Greg's most famous character anywhere in the online games - seemed silly, to force him to treat his own character as an NPC. However, Svenny has made a few cameos in the Blackmoor Dungeon games, which all take place when he is still a very young man. In the first of the two bigger games, the party - who was in on the context - met him when they exited the dungeon, and in the second bigger adventure, he was one of the captains of BM Town's city guard, making his way up through the ranks. 

There was this idea of making "Young Svenny" and a younger version of the Blue Rider the guardians to "Kid Uther", who in my version of Blackmoor is still a child when the Egg of Coot first attacks the town. (In 995 NC.) - Something probably a bit inspired by The Last Legion. I don't think this idea ever went anywhere, since we chose to play other scenarios instead. Like, I think one or two players moved too far out of town, or something, and the next game we tried with those guys was with a different system - "DragonMech", I believe.