ARNESON AND BLACKMOOR

The following is a sample from an upcoming Blackmoor setting book. All rights Griffith Morgan and The Fellowship of the Thing, LTD.
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The Essential Blackmoor

Core Concepts for Play in Dave Arneson’s Living World

Griffith M. Morgan III

Chapter IV - The Origin of a Blackmoor Campaign

Any RPG campaign is difficult when it comes to starting points. These days players often expect some kind of background for the setting. Many DM’s bog down in creating histories for a setting. Of course in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons it was possible to design a dungeon and players were so fascinated by the experience of underground exploration that everything else could remain vague and not codified in any detail at all. Many games still revolve around gathering at the Inn and then going off to the dungeon where the stories and mayhem happen, then returning to the Inn to recover from injuries and exhaustion and recount the tales of epic struggle.

The campaign is another beast entirely. Launching a campaign requires some understanding of what can possibly happen within an entire world setting. In the case of Arneson, the scope of what he employs even with the first simple adventures he runs, reveals a great deal of sophistication and understanding of what he has created. One can infer this from all the descriptions of play in early Blackmoor, and yet, what is left of Arneson’s own commentary about Blackmoor’s beginning is very vague. As a historian, I find this absence of detail perplexing. I have yet to find a cohesive statement from Arneson in any of his writings, or interviews, as no one would ask him to pause and go back over specifics.

Photo of the Blackmoor Bunch

“From the first excursions into the dark depths of Blackmoor Castle’s Dungeon, it became apparent that these first hardy bands of adventurers would soon seek out new worlds to pillage. From the castle the small town of Blackmoor grew, then the surrounding countryside became filled with new holes to explore and beyond that talk was already spreading about visiting the Egg of Coot. Each of these steps entailed a great deal of work upon a naive judge who felt that there was enough trouble already to satisfy any band of adventurers, a phrase no doubt heard rather frequently since then, in other areas. In general, a fairly loose procedure was set up for the establishment of these new areas, with a great deal of emphasis being placed on the players themselves setting up new Dungeons, with my original Dungeonmaster role evolving more into the job of co-ordinating the various operations that were underway at any given moment. At the height of my participation as chief co-ordinator, there were six Dungeons and over 100 detailed player characters to be kept track of at any one time.”

Dave Arneson
From The First Fantasy Campaign (1977)
Judges Guild Game Company

It is necessary for each historian to piece together what they know and create some kind of cohesive timeline, as well as a narrative, of how Arneson created a new kind of Role Playing Game. Often it becomes too easy to inject what one knows and assumes to be a cascade of events into how one thinks Blackmoor begins.

There is a problem with binary logic. It fails to address the point between sublimation when the form of something is neither a solid nor a vapor.

It is best to tell the story of the genesis of Blackmoor as the participants themselves tell it, with the first dungeon adventure. 

According to Dave Arneson and Greg Svenson, the very first blackmoor game is a dungeon adventure. In a nutshell, the game ran like so, an evil wizard and his companion balrog snuck into the castle and stole something precious from the baron. They then descended into the dungeons below the castle to hide. Greg Svenson along with others of the Blackmoor Bunch are asked by the Baron of Blackmoor Castle, likely Baron Arneson himself at this point, to retrieve what was stolen.

Well, if this is the first Dungeon Adventure, it seems pretty well fleshed out already. We have a reason for the players to go to the dungeon. We have a good idea of who the bad guys are going to be down in the dungeon. And we have a patron who is paying our hapless adventurers to go risk their necks.

Not only is it the very first Dungeon Dive, it is also the first Total Party Kill, or TPK.

All if this sounds fairly standard except for one thing. Arneson hadn’t gotten to the stage of running the entire dungeon as a one sided game, with a Referee who runs the monsters vs the players as we see today. This is three years before D&D is published and something astounding occurs in this game, he will do a mix of styles in this one game.

The evil wizard is being played by Kurt Krey and the balrog is John Soukup. The bad guys waiting in the dungeon are actual players. Arneson has no experience to draw on, or to know any better than to run what most Referees today find really difficult - The Split Party. What is more astounding, is that in this case the divided players are playing against each other. Arneson takes turns playing with both groups of players; Wizard and Balrog vs. Flunkie Adventurers, describing what they experience and then asking them what they are doing and where they are going, “What do you want to do?”

We are told this entire game was done without miniatures and that it was all a verbal exchange, much as one would tell a story or play a game of make-believe. 

From a game perspective this is perhaps drawing on ideas from several games, yet as if to say this is not enough, Arneson takes the game session farther into uncharted territory.

As the players explore the tunnels below Blackmoor Castle he asks them to all go to the laundry room of his parent’s basement and line up in the marching order their characters are in. He then shuts off the lights and lets out a scream. When he turns the light back on he makes note of how everyone reacted and explains that a strong breeze blew out their torches and while standing in the darkness one of the Non Player Characters was attacked by a strange creature that looks like a large grey amoeba, or more precisely The Blob from the 1950’s horror film. The scream they heard was their compatriot being eaten by the creature, which is now known as a grey  pudding.

In a sense, this could be the very first Live Action Role Playing in an RPG.

After dealing with the Grey Pudding the players continue their exploration and discover more wondrous adventure.

Here we come to another significant event. It has to do with the discovery of a magical sword. When picking it up some of them are shocked by a magical force and thrown across the room. It is only Bill Heaton who manages to pick it up without any adverse effects, as he does so his character is immediately promoted to a higher level of ability becoming a superhero.

Yet another milestone happens in this first dungeon adventure - Character Advancement. 

Arneson takes turns with both groups of players, wizard and balrog vs. flunkie adventurers, asking them what they are doing and where they are going. Eventually the groups come together and wizard and balrog demolish the hired swordsmen. Greg Svenson is the fortunate one as he survives and is told to return to the surface and warn everyone not to come down and harass the new rulers of the dungeon. What is more, Greg comes to be known as The Great Svenni.

​In a sense the entire Blackmoor campaign will become the story of The Great Svenni as he is the most notable and heroic of all player characters in Blackmoor. That’s not to say there will not be other famous characters to come out of Blackmoor such as the Wandering Elf, Robert the Bald, The Blue Rider, Mello the Hobbit, The Wizard of the Wood, and Boozero. Their tales have been told around gamer tables for nearly five decades.
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The entire Role Playing Game Industry owes a collective thank you to Dave Arneson for his contribution to the creation of the modern Role Playing Game and the play style that was first implemented in Dave Arneson's basement.

This may seem like no big deal at all to those familiar with how these games are played. Yet, Dave Arneson was merely 23 years old when he decided to tinker with a new kind of game. There was no one there to guide him toward the invention of dungeon games. No one had ever thought to do anything in a game with the expansive scope that Arneson applied to this new home brew campaign game set in the Black Moors.

Strangely enough, I went onto social media last night and searched for posts about Original Dungeons & Dragons as well as Blackmoor, it was surprising to find so few people playing the original D&D game system anymore or even talking about Dave Arneson and his Blackmoor Bunch.

Thanks Dave, Chris and Griff