Hidden in Shadows

The Dungeons of Black Moore Castle (reprinted on pages 63-67 of the Blackmoor Foundations book), is the oldest tabletop RPG fantasy game narrative describing a dungeon adventure in existence. It predates D&D by over 2 years.

Although the poker game under the troll bridge announced for April 17, 1971 in COTT Vol 3 #4 is generally acknowledged as the first known Blackmoor game, the only player known to have participated in that short and deadly foray into the world was Bob Meyer. Researchers have often thought of "The Icelandic cave adventure" remembered by Ross Maker and Dave Weseley as taking place later that summer as the first Blackmoor RPG game with multiple players, and we now have the original narrative Arneson typed up for this adventure. Interestingly, however, he titled it as "Return to Black Moor". (Blackmoor Foundations pp 42-60) Note the spelling of Black Moor is still a word as it often is on those earliest documents.

In telling the story of the creation of Blackmoor in later years, Arneson always began with a popcorn and monster movie fueled weekend, leading to the creation of a dungeon map and dungeon dive adventure. Researchers have since cast doubt on this, suggesting dungeons did not develop until 1972, almost a year after the Blackmoor game began.

We can be certain that the story Arneson relates in Return to Black Moor, took place after his June 1971 trip to Europe, surely within a matter of weeks. Return relates a "wilderness adventure" with overland travel, skirmishes, and even a pitched battle taking place at Black Moor Castle (no e). In this story Dave Weseley, who in real life is in the US Army and only home on leave a few times a year, is introduced to Blackmoor play, along with Dan Nicholson, Ross Maker, Dale Nelson and David Fant. Furthermore, Fant is portrayed as a native of the place, involved in separate incidents from the other four.

Note that these are not the same players mentioned in The Dungeons of Black Moore Castle. Those players are Duane Jenkins, Bill Heaton, Kurt Krey, Scott Belfry Mel Johnson, and an un-named narrator I will have much more to say about later. Arneson is the only common denominator in these two stories.

One of these adventures obviously comes before the other. Some researchers have taken it as a given that Blackmoor Dungeon didn't exist until 1972, when it gets explicitly mentioned in CoTT, and therefore Return must be the oldest narrative we have. But is this correct? Could the unfinished "Return" instead be a follow up to the Dungeons adventure?

I think it is a question worth asking. 

 Arneson tells us in the FFC that "the Weasel" was in charge initially and got replaced by Lord Fant after the Weasel defected to the baddies. Meanwhile Jenkins in the FFC is a bandit leader who was placed in charge of Glendower.

We can take our research a step further back to the March 1971 Northern Marches letter where we find yet a different situation: "The area known as JENKIN’S LAND is ruled by Sir Jenkins while Bill Hoyt rules Williamfort." 

We know from a map Arneson drew (see page 14, Blackmoor Foundations), That Blackmoor Castle was originally called Williamsfort and the name was relocated elsewhere later.

We also know, that Hoyt could not reasonably participate in this campaign in 1971, having moved to Elsworth Wisconsin in late 1970 to take a teaching job.

Are these two or three completely different stories? Is Arneson just changing who the baron is depending on who shows up to games? What the heck is going on? Researchers have guessed that "in world" continuity was not something of much importance early on and whoever showed up to the game made it into the story.  But did the story really flip flop all over the place for the first few months or could there be a simpler explanation?

What if what we are really seeing here is not a jumble of inconsistency, but a linear evolution of Arneson's conception of the world?  

It is important to consider the real time line when we ask these questions. 

• We know "The Northern Marches" exists by March of 1971, with a castle called Williamsfort ruled by Bill Hoyt. 
• Because of Blackmoor Gazette And Rumormonger #1 We know that by October of 1971 this exact same castle is called Black Moor and is ruled by Lard Fant. We also know Lord Jenkins rules Glendower., but has been in Blackmoor Castle since fall.
• From the FFC we know that Fant became lord of Blackmoor after the previous lord, nicknamed "the Weasel" turned traitor in the first Coot Invasion.

Thus the story must have developed in those intervening months.

• We also know that Arneson spent a month or so in Europe from June into July and the Return story takes place as an event on the way back from that trip, but in that story evil Lord Hyde is in charge of a place already named Blackmoor Castle.

The pieces of this puzzle are falling into place, and they break around Arneson's European trip. It appears to go from the "The Weasel" ruling the castle straight to Fant, and the only hint of a successor after Fant is Rob Kuntz, who says Arneson made him lord of the castle around 1973/4 which would have been long after Dave Fant had left the game because of work. 

Bill Hoyt, who I game with and I must says has proven to have a remarkable memory, tells us a story that can be seen in the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary. Sadly Duane Jenkins, who surely knew almost as much as Arneson did about the earliest development of Blackmoor, was suffering from dementia by the time he was interviewed for the film. However, he and Bill discuss a story he had told Bill years before. In summary, as Bill recalled it, Duane had gone on a solo, "test" adventure prior to the rest of the Blackmoor Bunch experiencing the dungeon for the first time.

The Dungeons story begins with a history of Blackmoor dungeon and relates a funny vignette - an adventure in Blackmoor Dungeon in which Jenkins is the only player, along with some guards and amusingly, a stable boy and peasant girl. Griff Morgan suggests this solo adventure vignette and the story Duane told Bill about a test solo adventure are one and the same. I agree. They match up surprisingly well for something half remembered and told second hand.

This being the case, Dungeons would necessarily be a re-counting of the first ever tabletop RPG dungeon game.  

But when?

The Dungeons story makes it clear that the adventurers have never been in the dungeon before, except for Lord Jenkins, who went in once, the day before.

Given all the firsts happening here, it is more likely to be very early in the campaign. If we turn back to the Blackmoor Gazette And Rumormonger #1, we find all the pieces in place for early "Fall" 1971, when Jenkins first comes to stay in the castle - presumably late September or early October.

None of this tells us for certain if Dungeons predates Return, but taken all together it appears not. However, it does appear the two are likely only weeks apart.

The sequence that logically follows is:

1. Arneson creates the fictional lord Hyde to be in charge of Blackmoor after realizing Bill couldn't play and won't be Baron of Blackmoor - presumably this realization occurs after the March 1971 letter to Kuntz. (I hedge here, only because I don't know when the letter was written, only when it was mailed, which was March).
2. June/July 1971 - Arneson flys to Europe
3. Early August 1971 - Upon returning, he comes up with a new story idea/skirmish game to introduce Blackmoor to Weseley, who is briefly on leave from the army, and some other new players including Fant who's gaming has become intermittent due to work. Arneson types these adventures up as Return to Black Moor placing Blackmoor under the leadership of an evil NPC character called Hyde - later to be nicknamed "the Weasel" (possibly a dig at the often absent Dave Wesely). This identification of Hyde with The Weasel is the only leap we have to take. 
4. Mid-Late August 1971 - First Coot Invasion. Fant becomes the Baron of Blackmoor after a game in which he is victorious against the baddies in the castle. This story is the continuation of where Return to Black Moor left off unfinished.
5. September 1971 "Fall" - Lord Jenkins arrives from Glendower and begins exploring Blackmoor Castle where Fant is now Baron. Arneson draws up a dungeon and has a test game with Jenkins, followed by a larger game with a group of players. He types it up as The Dungeons of Castle Black Moore.

I can't claim this sequence is certain. There is some wiggle room in that Lord Jenkins seems to be in charge in the Dungeons story but at the very end we learn the baron's name is Fant. Nevertheless the important details are that this sequence explains the given facts in a sensible way (including some others we will look at in another post). 

Furhtermore, Arneson's story about the invention of Blackmoor dungeon following his monster marathon weekend appears a bit more credible. While we arn't looking at the very start of the Blackmoor setting, the Dungeons adventure appears much closer to that time.

Next we will look at some additional information tying the adventure to those earliest days.

 Arneson's works, like his life, is largely obscure to the D&D community. His best known writing credit is no doubt the TSR DA series starting with Adventures in Blackmoor a series so heavily re-worked from the Blackmoor Chronicles adventures Arneson wrote that his voice is largely lost and replaced by that of Ritchie. No shade on Ritchie, of course, as TSR had their plans and Ritchie's job was to conform the Blackmoor setting to that vision.

I imagine that folks who know a little about Arneson or are familiar with the DA series might expect any other adventures he released to be weird dungeon crawls or perhaps an epic MacGuffin quest.

The Garbage Pits of Despair is neither of these things. It represents a sort of side quest, written during approximately the same period as Blackmoor Chronicles before the Chronicles drafts (or at least the first 3/4 adventures) was reworked by TSR into the DA series. Thus GPoD is a fascinating and unvarnished but all too brief look at Blackmoor as Arneson intended it to be.

The adventure was published in Different Worlds magazine in 2 installments in 1985. Arneson wrote a semi-regular column for DW under the pen name Gigi D'Arn, and served as an editor. GPoD likely was intended as a teaser for Blackmoor Chronicles.

I wont spoil all the details, but the adventure breaks as follows, The PC's randomly come across a caravan under attack by slavers, which leads to a request from a Blackmoor official to chase down the raiders. The PCs end up in a dragon den in the Dragon Hills, and agents of the Temple of the Frog are involved.

It is a bit railroady although allowances are made for differing outcomes of encounters and more than half takes place out-of-doors (or out-of-dungeons, if you prefer).

There is a lot more to say about the content of the adventure, but for this post I want to concentrate on some of its quirks.

Monsters

Arneson introduces three (or more?) new monsters in this adventure.

Watchwings: basically spy birds

Maggotmen: think the Michelin tire guy as an ant colony. It gets weirder though since there is also a zombie form!

Carcass Critter: this is Arneson's version of the Carrion Crawler, basically. That makes me wonder if the carrion crawler was a monster he invented and didn't care for how TSR presented it, or if he just thought it needed some changes. Who knows?

More: so there are known monsters that have some different qualities (more on that below), but the most outstanding to me was the Black Pudding, because it occupies a huge space and gives off a toxic gas.

Unknown Place Names

Walworth (Gary Gygax played the Earl of Walworth in the Castles and Crusades Society)

Stone Brook 

Dinsbury 

Fenstien

Weapons

Although Arneson seems to have been following the BECMI rules, some of the magic weapons have non-standard effects. 

War Hammer +1 against all opponents, additional plus one against undead; permanent spell effect: Deceive.

Pole Axe +3 strength against all non-magical opponents;  permanent spell effect: Defend.

2-handed flaming sword (sword of legend) 25% bonus, 8 Ego, 9 Intelligence. Primary powers – Detect Metal, Find Secret Doors, and Find Traps; Extraordinary power – Teleportation.

Magic Weapons seem to come in three stripes

1) Common with only a normal bonus

2) Rare with a bonus to strength in one case and an extra bonus against specific creatures and one “permanent spell effect”  These seem to come from the Marsh/Cook Expert rules.

3) Extraordinary swords – these swords are the standard swords generated with the D&D sword creation rules except the terminology is a little different.   The one listed is also interesting and unorthodox because it gives an unspecified (?) 25% bonus.

Magic Items

These have custom effects not in the BECMI or B/X rules, including an interesting failure rule I've long used now in my own games.

Staff of Lightning Bolts – effects an area 60 feet long, starting at 0 to 300 feet from user.  Victims must make a saving throw or take 6d6 points of damage.  There is a 5% chance per use of malfunction.  User must roll successfully against intelligence to repair.

Wand of Fireballs – Contains 6 charges.  Recharges in three minutes provided the owner is at rest.  The wand will recharge 5 times total.  The fireballs range 0-100 feet and do 2d6 damage.  Victims who make their saving throws take no damage.  There is a 15% chance per use the wand will malfunction.  The user must forsake all other activity and must roll successfully against intelligence to repair.  

Rules

Peppered throughout GPoD are what one might call general house rules.

Arrow counts for Archers are always noted (10-30), same with slingers (20 stones), and crossbowmen (40 bolts).

Percentile based tracking skill noted for one of the fighters (Long Bill Jordan).

NPC’s always have their ability scores listed.

Armor is described and helmets are noted, including whether or not they have cowls.

The Dragon, like AiF Dragons, has a mixture of animal like features.

Fatigue rule: movement reduced by 1/3, -1 on Strength and Dexterity.

The lead Orc isn’t given stats.  Instead he is described as a level 2 fighter.

Its interesting that Arneson seems to be tracking ammo for shooters, using percentile based skills, rolling against ability scores, and making variant magic items, based on his old standby’s of fireball and lightning bolts. 

Setting Details

Lastly, and perhaps most intriguing of all, are the hints regarding the Blackmoor setting as Arneson saw it. I mentioned placenames above, and we have hardly a clue about them since they are associated with a person, such as Monica of Dinsbury. 

There are some other interesting place clues however, such as the reference to the rulers of Ten as "Sartraps" and the fact that the leadership of Blackmoor is under a King and a council of Co-regents. The wild west of the north vibe also comes through in the prominent role of marshals, appointed by the council to provide some measure of law and protection across Blackmoor. The people from the Temple of the Frog too, reveal something of their organization, from Fins of the Frog to Teeth of the Frog.

Further fascinating details can be gleaned from the random encounter tables and the potential wilderness encounters. Garbage Pits of Despair gives us a glimpse of the Arnesonian Blackmoor we almost had, before TSR put their stamp on the setting in the DA series.

 Back in July of 2022 I made a frivilous post on my thought regarding how many editions of D&D there really were. I came up with 8.

Since then I have entirely re-thought the matter, realizing that I, along with everyone else practically was mixing chocolate with my peanut butter.

More to the point I was counting AD&D as an edition of D&D, because everybody knows its the same game. But I've realized that is not really true. AD&D is a derivative game variant.  D&D was published as D&D side by side with the variant AD&D.

So if we aske the question, "How many editions of just D&D are there?", here is my two cents:

1) Alpha edition - 1974 OD&D - the 3 little brown books.

2) Beta edition - Supplements 1-4.  Supplement 1 significantly changes core rules in OD&D, adds new classes, and creates a more complex game. It wasn't seen as a new edition by the players, but it is a significant change. 

3) Gamma edition - Basic D&D (Holmes, B/X, BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia, Black Box)

The Holmes Bluebook rulebook largely adheres to "Supplement" D&D and it is tempting to lump them together.  However Holmes notably introduces new movement and time rules that are carried into the rest of the Basic line.  While all these editions of Basic continue to grow the rules base, the core rules are in substantial agreement throughout.

4)  Delta edition -  3.0 D&D and 3.5. This edition merged features of AD&D and Basic D&D into one system. Previously I separated 3.0 and 3,5 because the changes between 3.5 and 3.0 were quite substantial. However with 5.5 out now and it being very specifically not a new edition we might as well lump these two together. The changes 3.5 brought are mostly tweeks and fixes to the 3.0 system much like D&D 2024 is to D&D 2014, only maybe more so.

5) Epsilon edition -  4th edition D&D. This thing is so different it isn't D&D IMHO, but the publisher called it that so...

6) Zeta edition - 5th edition and D&D next and now D&D 2024.  I've put these together since "Next" was a free playtest that led to 5th and WotC insists D&D 2024 is also their 5th edition. It's mostly the same so I guess they are one "edition" of the game.

So there you have it IMHO D&D 5th edition is the 6th edition of the game, lol.

BUT WAIT, maybe 5th edition really is the 5th edition.

I break OD&D into two editions, the 3lbbs only and the 3lbbs+supplements becuase Supplement II added so much to the game. However many folks wouldn't do that and nobody at the time considered the supplements to be a new edition.

If you wanted to consider OD&D as one edition, that is that the 3lbb's + Supplements are but a single edition and not two as I have it, then 5th edition really would be the 5th edition. YMMV.

 If you want to find the details for one of the characters that Gary Gygax made and played as a PC, perhaps to use as an NPC in your own game, it isn't terribly difficult. Likewise for the characters of Rob Kuntz, David Megarry Greg Svenson  and others among the early developers and players of D&D.

Perhaps surprisingly though, finding a player character sheet by D&D's co-creator Dave Arneson is not an easy exercise. Sure you can find NPC's and pre-gens Mr Arneson rolled up, but that's about it.

I'm not saying there aren't any which have yet to see the light of day, but at present none are publicly available or even privately circulated to my knowledge. Except maybe one.

 Boot Hill has a list of Fictional Non-Player Characters and their stats. In the second edition (1979) the character creators are anonymous, but by the third edition player names had been attributed to each, and the character of Ben Cartwheel, Rancher is attributed to Arneson.

 Here are the stats:

  Ben Cartwheel (Dave Arneson)

Now I want to point out that we have no way of knowing, as far as I know, if Arneson actually rolled up this character or if someone else did. We also don't know if he actually played the character. I asked David Megarry, who also has a character attributed to him in Boot Hill, and he said that, at least in his case, he didn't remember making the character and thought maybe Brian Blume had made it for him.

All I can say for certain is that this Ben Cartwheel character was attributed to Arneson and may or may not have been made by him. The name is certainly right in Arneson's wheelhouse, so I think the odds are good that it really was Arneson's player character. In any case, unless you are familiar with Boot Hill the stats probably don't mean much to you, but if you are like me, you immediately wonder if they will convert to D&D. Luckily there is a conversion guide published in the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. 

Most of the stats don't in fact convert to anythin in D&D because they are derived from Speed (spd) and Bravery. Per the AD&D conversion guide we are told the Strength score stays the same and a method is given for converting Speed (spd) into Dexterity. We also are told to determine the character level by adding 2 to the EXP score and that Rancher would translate to a Fighter. The DMG suggests the Bravery scores can be derived from the wisdom score when converting an AD&D character to Boot Hill but not the reverse - there is no D&D Bravery equivalent. However Arneson's Bravery score is quite high in Boot Hill - the near equivalent of rolling a 17 on 3d6 - and I think we should convert the Bravery score to something, but Wisdom is probably not the best choice - perhaps Constitution or maybe Charisma. Lets go with Constitution for now and see what we have so far for Ben Cartwheel D&D Fighter:

That leaves Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. AD&D suggests the player simply roll for these. That’s a bit of a problem now, but we could potentially steal these score from an NPC Arneson had already created, preferably of similar class and level. Such an NPC can be found in the Pregens he rolled up for the Origins convention in 1977. In fact there is a character that lines up well  - #5, a tenth level lord with the following Stats: Str: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 13 Con: 16  Dex: 12 Chr: 17

Conveniently, this character matches exactly Ben Cartwheel's Strength and Dexterity scores, so this is a good match to fill in the blanks. We could translate the Bravery score of 17 to Charisma, but I like the idea of swapping the stats and giving Ben a 16 Charisma and 17 Constitution so Ben is a little less of a clone of character #5. Also, one of the roles of Bravery in Boot Hill is giving the character a "steady hand" in a gunfight, and that seems more in line with Constitution to me. Here is the result:

Ben Cartwheel                                                                       Level  12 Fighter, Hit Points 60                                                    Str: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 13 Con: 17  Dex: 12 Chr: 16                   

In a sense Blackmoor "grew like Topsy", that is to say wild and on its own.

Perhaps the first iteration of anything we might call Blackmoor is the well-discussed medieval game designed by Dave Arneson wherein Baron Hoyt of "Keston" defends his lands from Viking raiders.

1a) Nascent Blackmoor (1970) - So if we count it, the medieval wargame Dave Arneson created and ran in the fall of 1970 sets the tone of a medieval-esque land where Vikings mix it up with knights and monks in a place called "Keston". 

1b) Pre-Blackmoor Dutch Map (1970) - for this we only have the map Arneson drew, apparently from a tracing based on Holland. It has no names, but it does show the locations of all the major cities, forests, roads and swamps. Blackmoor foundations shows the eastern half of this map on page 32.

1c) Planned Blackmoor (1971) - For this earliest phase of Blackmoor we primarily have the March '71 letter to Rob Kuntz briefly describing the setting and a couple maps from the Fletcher collection shown on pages 12 and 14 of Blackmoor Foundations.

Altogether this gives us the following places:

 - Region of Keston/Keiston

- Region of Williamsfort (centered on the town we now know as Blackmoor - the name is re-located later)

- Region of Jenkinsland

- Region of Swampland/Swampwood 

- Land/City of the Red Coven (northwest)

 - Land of the Skandaharians (north off map) 

- Region/Forest of the Eraks (east)

- Region of the Picts (west)

- Region of the Palatinate (Great Kingdom?) (southeast)

2) Played Blackmoor (1972 - 1976)

After Arneson sent in the initial letter describing Blackmoor, Gary Gygax became the first person to monkey with Arneson's vision for the setting. He made a single change that greatly impacted the geography and development.

Arneson intended Blackmoor to reflect the geopositioning of the Netherlands, with oceans to the west. As such he located Blackmoor on the Far Ocean (Dramidje) in or near to the area that would become Ekbir on the map of the world of Greyhawk.  However, Gygax decided to move it eastward, closer to the Great Kingdom in an area known as the Great Bay. 

This change flipped the coastline so that the ocean was now in the east. To accommodate this change Arneson drew a new map, frequently known as "the sketch map" of which we now have several similar versions (Foundations: pp 8 - 10).

It was also at this time that the isometric map seems to have been produced, probably to accompany the Return to Black Moors story. (Foundations 24 - 29)

From these sources we can add the following places and features.

- City of Maus

- Town of Blackmoor

- Town of Glendower

- Great Swamp of Mil

- Black Marsh

- Loch Gloomen/Lake Gloomey

-  Frog town/island

- Forest of the Elves (formerly Eraks)

- Bramwald

- Regent of the Mines 

- Wizard Mountains

- Witchwood Mountains

- Glomma River

- Arafasta gorge

- Lake of the Heavens

- Peshwan

- Region of Hyth

- North Watch Tower

- Wizards Wood

- Temple of Id

- Tower of Tears/Booh

- City of Tonisborg

- Sage's Tower

- Black Hills

- Dragon Hills

- Town of Tillburgh

- Duchy of Ten Heroes

- Duchy of the Peaks

- City of the Gods

- City of Father Dragon

- Desert (southwest)

3) Wilderlands Blackmoor (1977)

When Arneson left TSR he struck a deal with Bob Bledsaw to pull Blackmoor into Beldsaw's Wilderlands setting.

For this Arneson scrapped the "Sketch Map" version of Blackmoor and went back to his original, Holland based map, with one exception: he kept the orientation of the ocean to the east. Bledsaw then produced a new version of the map which formed the basis of every map since.

Only a few geographic features were added at this point. These are:

- Barrier Swamp

- The Stormkiller Mountains (as yet un-named however)

- The Peaks of Booh (as yet un-named however)

- The Haven Peaks (as yet un-named however)

- The Valley of the Ancients 

This last place is a location on the Wilderlands Map, not a Blackmoor place per se, but it is where Blackmoor was tacked on to the Wilderlands map and served as a replacement for the "Desert" area of Blackmoor where the City of the Gods was located.

4) Blackmoor Chronicles Blackmoor

The Blackmoor Chronicles materials refers to the maps and manuscript prepared by Arneson and his Adventure Games Inc. staff for planned publication initially, then later for publication by Mayfair games, then later again for TSR. This also includes Garbage Pits of Despair  published in Different worlds magazine.

Unfortunately, our resources from this era have serious gaps. For example we have a writeup Arneson prepared for the character of Robert the Bald which formed the basis - much altered - of what is seen in DA1. Arneson wrote an unknown number of these, but I have only seen this one, because Robert Meyer saved the letter Arneson sent him with the write-up in it. Anyway from the Blackmoor Chronicles material we have:

- Powers Pass

- Keep of Robert the Bald

- Desert of the Gods

- Stonebrook

- Feinstein

- Dinsbury

I'd also bet that Kenville was in some of this material, but I haven't seen any proof. I'm betting it was because it shows up as a location on earlier maps but has no name, and I presume it to have been named for artist Ken Fletcher. The same might be true of the city of Eraks, and a few other places like Starmorgan and Starport - maybe.

5) TSR Blackmoor (1986 - 1989)

Now we come to the shocker. Notice that up until this point I have provided a few short lists, but I'm not even going to try to make a list for this iteration of Blackmoor. That's because it would consist of a hundred or more entries. David Ritchie was given the job of fleshing out the setting and that is exactly what he did. It is not an exaggeration to say the Ritchie added hundreds of names. Not only did he provide names for every and any geographic feature, but many places were given new "improved" names too.

These arn't just little villages or mountains either.  Many of the familiar and iconic places in Blackmoor show up in TSR material for the first time ever and appear to have been invented by Ritchie, including Jackport, Octagern, Kerman Peaks, Thonia, Karsh, Misauga river, Boggy Bottom, the Redwood Forest, Ringlo Hall, etc. 

In fact by far the majority of places on the map were named and added during this era. Truthfully the TSR version of Blackmoor was its own setting, quite distinct from the Twin Cities Blackmoor. 

6) Zeitgeist Blackmoor

Arneson certainly had the opportunity to make changes to the setting when He and Dustin Klingman published Blackmoor setting books again under Zeitgeist. However the decision was made to not throw out the established TSR material, but rather to tweak it at the edges so as not to divide the fan base. As such Zeitgeist added nothing of consequence to the map. A few new locations, such as Croc's Nest, do show up, but these are generally minor towns, etc. A dozen or so more places are also mentioned in the semi-canon MMRPG material, but again, these are not mapped locations.

So there you have it. Geographically and politically as it is known by most people today, Blackmoor is largely a creation of TSR, but several others have had their hand in it too, over the years and eras.

 In this POST from a few years ago, I was concerned with the issue of scale and distance in Blackmoor in the course of which I attempted to determine the intended scale of the "original Northern Marches" - the March 1971 map of Blackmoor - by fitting it onto a map of the Netherlands. For those unaware, the reason for doing so is that in the FFC, Arneson said his Blackmoor map was modeled on a map of Holland. Of course, there have been several attempts by different folks over the years, trying to figure out how Blackmoor might fit on a map of the Netherlands. For the most part it was assumed, by me certainly and I think others, that Arneson's "old Dutch map" on which he based his map of Blackmoor was a 19th or 18th century one.

It was purely on a whim, mostly because I wanted an accurate scalebar, that I choose to look for an older 20th century example to use instead, and so I settled on a colorful Rand McNally Atlas map of the Netherlands from the 1930's.

I now think this map I had more or less stumbled on is the very map that Arneson actually used, and I have come to this conclusion in the light of new material from the Fletcher collection.

There were several outstanding maps among the material Ken Fletcher had collected and handed over to Griff Morgan at last years Arnecon, now published in the Blackmoor Foundations book.

Two of these in particular caught my eye, as being truly Foundational.  I wasn't sure if these two maps on separate sheets, one vertical and one landscape in orientation, were part of the same drawing or would go together but shortly after I mentioned they might be related (and that one of the maps had been scanned upside down, the other sideways) Michael Calleia   http://chanceand.com/  demonstrated not only were they related but they fit together seamlessly, like this:

What you are looking at is, almost certainly, the original "proto Blackmoor" map. For the rest of this post I will refer to this map as the "Ur" map for convenience. Of course, this isn't a Blackmoor map at all, but a map of central Holland, drawn by Arneson, most likely on a light table or using a projector or some such.  You would be forgiven if you don't see an immediate resemblance to Blackmoor as you know it, especially considering how "busy" the Arneson map is.  However if you look closely you can clearly see Glendower peninsula with it's funny little finger of land at the northern tip, and that curving western coastline noticeable in Arneson's March of 1971 Blackmoor map but turned to dry land in all later versions. To show you what I mean, here is the same map superimposed on the Rand McNally Netherlands map.

And here it is again ghosted:

And here it is with the March 1971 "Northern Marches" map of Blackmoor, that heretofore was our oldest know map (note I colored in the water on this version to add clarity):

I don't know why the "Ur" map was created. Arneson's Corner of the Table Top newsletter does mention a planned Napoleonics campaign in the Netherlands and it seems quite possible that is what the map was originally made for, before becoming repurposed as a basis for Blackmoor, but at this point I'm only speculating. If that were the case it seems a bit odd to use a twentieth century map for an early nineteenth century campaign, but maybe that was all Arneson had access to and perhaps the inaccuracies seen here and there, the occasional odd line, and the non-matching settlements are a result of imperfect tracing conditions compensated for with creative license. In any case, what this series of map images hopefully demonstrates is that the "Ur map" was traced off of the Rand McNally map, and the 1971 Northern Marches map was then traced off of a portion of that. The Rand McNally map is sure to be the model as can be seen most clearly in the Markermeer/Ljssemeer / Blackmoor Bay region of the Ur map.

Note in particular the red outlined areas with red diagonal lines marked NE, and NW in what is now the Ljssemeer lake region of the Netherlands. These lined areas only appear on Rand McNally maps and I have only found it on maps in atlases with print dates ranging from 1936 to 1941. The one I used was dated 1937.  The red slashed areas represent a land reclamation project begun in 1932, never fully completed and later changed, so you won't see these areas marked on earlier maps at all or in the same shape on later maps of the Netherlands.

However, looking at the Ur map, we see that Arneson traced the red diagonal area marked NE nearly exactly as if it were land:

Identifying these maps is a breakthrough, but only a start.  I notice for example, that many of the roads, rivers and borders in the Rand McNally map line up with lines on the Ur map that could be roads or rivers, but many of the other features such as lakes, forests, mountains and swamp seem to be filled in by Arneson without much regard for the real topography of the Netherlands. Settlements also seem to have been placed by Arneson without regard to the location of actual Ducth towns.

One humorous exception I noted is that there is a city marked on Blackmoor maps at the corresponding location of Amsterdam on the Netherlands map, and that city is none other than the Coots Nest of the Egg of Coot! 

We are only scratching the surface here, but for this post I want to bring in one more observation of particular interest to Greyhawk fans. One the many fascinating bits of information Jon Peterson related in the Dungeons & Dragons - the Making of Original D&D 1970-1977 book sprang to mind as I looked at this map of Blackmoor on Holland. On page 18 Jon offhandedly mentioned that "Arneson was allocated the Northern Marches; he originally planned for this realm to occupy the northwest corner of the map below the Far Ocean, but Gygax placed it at the innermost cove of the Great Bay instead." 

According to Rob Kuntz, who was in charge of the newsletter at the time, Arneson was involved with preparing the images due to Gary Gygax having lost access to the necessary equipment. In this case he would have had the opportunity to pick his spot before the map was published. If one looks at the Great Kingdom map and at the Blackmoor map it is easy to see what Arneson was thinking.  Here is the "official" map as it appeared in the Domesday book Newsletter in 1971:

In fact, we can drop the Netherlands map right into that section like so.

 ARNECON 2  - Tickets are now live!

Arnecon is the game convention promoted by the Arneson Estate held in the Twin Cities, now going into its second year, featuring many of the original Blackmoor players and other known personalities, like me, (I guess?).

To be honest, there are so many great gaming opportunities I found myself struggling to pick a schedule and wishing I didn't sign up to run two sessions myself so I could attend some of the other great events going on!

Saturday morning I'm going to be running a dungeon dive into Greg Svenson's Tonisborg dungeon using characters created by Dave Arneson and original Blackmoor characters.  This will be a high level OD&D adventure building on events that transpired in last years session.

Saturday evening I will be holding a tell-all seminar on Blackmoor dungeon.  I'll talk about the meta history of the dungeon, but also reveal many of the dungeons deepest secrets. If you are at all interested in Blackmoor you are not going to want to miss it.

See you there.