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What if everything you know about the history of Dungeons & Dragons is wrong?
6 Years, 12 Cities, 200 Hours of Interviews, 20,000 Documents and Photos: An unprecedented investigation into the history of D&D - the game that spurred a multi-billion dollar industry. Be among the first to know the Secrets of Blackmoor. |
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Blackmoor is the name of a fictional world created by David Arneson in 1971. It is also the prototype for Dungeons & Dragons, the first published role playing game. Unlike other fantasy worlds, such as J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, Blackmoor is a living world that is being explored to this day.
Secrets of Blackmoor investigates the origins of the role playing game through candid interviews, archival footage, and newly discovered artifacts. In 1963, David Wesely becomes a founding member of a club that includes history buffs, model makers, and miniature collectors. Hiding within the group, however, are a bunch of college students who are interested in war gaming. Within a year, the gamers meet a high school kid named Dave Arneson who is playing war games with friends in his parents's basement. These gamers have no idea that they will change the face of this hobby forever. Their only concern for now is how to simulate the reality of war, and above all, they just want to have fun. Their voracious hunt for new rules and game design knowledge leads them to the University of Minnesota Library where they discover an old manuscript, Strategos; the American Game of War. Within the dense pages are a few sentences that inspire them to devise a new kinds of war games. The influence of Strategos changes how they play their war games. But are they really following these old rules, or have they stumbled onto something truly unique by misinterpreting what it says? Should a game be constrained by rules and a board, like Monopoly or Chess, or should there be no boundaries at all, like a game of make believe? One thing is very clear--something magical was going on in the Twin Cities. |
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