Proper order to play Blackmoor's adventures?

[CawmeKrazee]

hi! It's been a minute since i was active on here! Life got busy! 

Anyways, while i try to get back into DMing TTRPGs again, with Shadowdark,  I want to start writing up and planning for the campaign that will follow in Blackmoor.

I have every bit of released Blackmoor content. 
From the DA series, to the FFC, to the ZTG books and MMRPG, as well as the Age of the Wolf (However i hear that might not be totally accurate or useful anymore). So with that i want to start planning for a Blackmoor campaign and would like to use as much of the material that i can use as possible. So my question is. What order should the adventures of all this material be played and used in?

[Havard]

hi! It's been a minute since i was active on here! Life got busy! 

Anyways, while i try to get back into DMing TTRPGs again, with Shadowdark,  I want to start writing up and planning for the campaign that will follow in Blackmoor.

I have every bit of released Blackmoor content. 
From the DA series, to the FFC, to the ZTG books and MMRPG, as well as the Age of the Wolf (However i hear that might not be totally accurate or useful anymore). So with that i want to start planning for a Blackmoor campaign and would like to use as much of the material that i can use as possible. So my question is. What order should the adventures of all this material be played and used in?

Finding an order in which to play everything is an interesting prospect!

The d20 line does make a few changes as compared to the DA modules so some tweaking would be required. 

I will ponder this some more

-Havard

[aldarron]

Oh, what a provocatively intriguing question...

Well, lets put to bed the word "proper" and go with "a recommended"

You could look at the MMRPG paths and follow one of those, also.

I would start in Blackmoor town and do a quick dungeon dive - maybe into the tunnels, or Vestfold/Tonisborg

Redwood Scar maybe next.

Then maybe swampflies or a couple other of the MMRPGs till the characters level up a bit.

Then maybe Garbage pits, leading to Temple of the Frog.

From there I might go to Raiders of the Black Ice.

and on to City of the Gods.

The PC's prolly won't survive any further than that. lol.

[CawmeKrazee]

Finding an order in which to play everything is an interesting prospect!

The d20 line does make a few changes as compared to the DA modules so some tweaking would be required. 

I will ponder this some more

-Havard

I'm curious on what you ponder. As there are plenty of things to consider i feel when accounting for all the information given in the series of books given. Even the timeline itself if I wanted to try and be as lore accurate as possible.

---

Oh, what a provocatively intriguing question...

Well, lets put to bed the word "proper" and go with "a recommended"

You could look at the MMRPG paths and follow one of those, also.

I would start in Blackmoor town and do a quick dungeon dive - maybe into the tunnels, or Vestfold/Tonisborg

Redwood Scar maybe next.

Then maybe swampflies or a couple other of the MMRPGs till the characters level up a bit.

Then maybe Garbage pits, leading to Temple of the Frog.

From there I might go to Raiders of the Black Ice.

and on to City of the Gods.

The PC's prolly won't survive any further than that. lol.

do you feel like this would be close to the timeline of the world of blackmoor on events? 

And if you're familiar with Shadowdark how well do you think those adventures discussed would you feel run in the system?

[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.

[CawmeKrazee]

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.

it's less im looking for a linear story and more im wondering how and when the events of each adventure supposedly takes place in the timeline of events in the overarching blackmoor timeline.

[aldarron]

...

---

Oh, what a provocatively intriguing question...

do you feel like this would be close to the timeline of the world of blackmoor on events? 

And if you're familiar with Shadowdark how well do you think those adventures discussed would you feel run in the system?

No. Tha’ts not a historic order, it is a mish-mash of available things. If you want to know the order of adventures played out by the original players then you will need to look at my timeline. Its in the back of my Weird Enclave of Blackmoor book and I think there is an older version on my blog somewheres.
 
Using published adventures to mimic the experience of someone like Greg Svenson in 1975, you would get something like:
 
Blackmoor Dungeon
Garbage Pits of Despair
Temple of the Frog
City of the Gods
 
I would throw in some linking adventures from the MMORPG and prolly I’m forgetting something so I might update. There is a good bit missing from that list because no published adventures exist. For example, the great vampire hunt should follow next.
 
Shadowdark – yes I was a backer. Thing is Kelsey Dione has fooled the internet into thinking Shadowdark is something new and a fusion of 5e and the OSR. The truth is that Shadowdark is 3lbb OD&D with some house rules for the magic system and a couple other things. Lol! So yes, I’m very familiar with “Shadowdark” and I think it’s a great choice for running any of those adventures.
 
The one thing you have to keep in mind though is that 3.5 – 5e adventures have much higher HP monsters of the same level so you’ll need to shave them back a bit or make sure your player characters are at the higher end of the recommended levels.

[finarvyn]

Regarding the "Weird Enclave of Blackmoor" book, I have the PDF but is there any place to buy it in paperback?