oldkat
Level 6 Magician
Posts: 431
|
Post by oldkat on Jan 18, 2016 12:54:49 GMT -6
Hi, folks--
Being very stupid about FFC and the Blackmoor materials, I have come to find myself wondering, how much of the JG region of Valley of the Ancients, did Dave actually use or incorporate into his material/campaign? Or was his campaign just plopped down there in partnership with JG?
Secondly, for those running a JG or Blackmoor campaign, is your style high-tech, low-tech, or something else?
|
|
|
|
Post by havard on Mar 5, 2016 11:24:48 GMT -6
Hi, folks-- Being very stupid about FFC and the Blackmoor materials, I have come to find myself wondering, how much of the JG region of Valley of the Ancients, did Dave actually use or incorporate into his material/campaign? Or was his campaign just plopped down there in partnership with JG? I believe this was mainly done for the publication for JG. Before that the area of the City of the Gods would simply have been known as the Southern Desert or something like that. The City of the Gods was well established in the Blackmoor Campaign however. Mainly it is a traditional fantasy campaign, but the Valley of the Ancients/City of the Gods is a source of high tech equipment/technology. While the area is extremely dangerous even for high level characters, many items have found their way out of the Valley. Some of them were broken in the process, but the Wizards and Dwarves of Blackmoor have been working together to repair and reconstruct such technology using magic and dwarven craftsmanship. The Dismal Swamps and the Temple of the Frog is another source of such items. Also, the Iron Duke appears to have gotten himself quite a collection of technological weaponry. -Havard |
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Mar 6, 2016 6:35:33 GMT -6
Or was his campaign just plopped down there in partnership with JG? As Havard noted, this was the case. This is part of why so many folks end up dividing Blackmoor into several different piles: the Twin Cities Blackmoor, the JG Blackmoor, the Mystara Blackmoor, and so on. Blackmoor seems to exist in quite a few settings, and each time is a little different from the others.  Secondly, for those running a JG or Blackmoor campaign, is your style high-tech, low-tech, or something else? I'd call mine medium-tech. It's not scifi high-tech, but has the occasional tech artifact that pops up. Dave had phasers, tricorders, med kits, lightsabers, that kind of thing, and I try to keep in the spirit of his campaign where possible. |
|
|
|
Post by jmccann on Mar 6, 2016 14:47:26 GMT -6
Dave had phasers, tricorders, med kits, lightsabers, that kind of thing, and I try to keep in the spirit of his campaign where possible. How late did he run Blackmoor? Star Trek dates to the late 60s and so it was around at the beginning but Star Wars did not come out till 77. Was the campaign still active then? |
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Mar 6, 2016 15:35:12 GMT -6
My error on the lightsabers. I wasn't thinking clearly. The lightsabres were in Rafe's play-by-post game set in Blackmoor, not Dave's original campaign.
|
|
|
|
Post by havard on Mar 12, 2016 10:45:22 GMT -6
Dave had phasers, tricorders, med kits, lightsabers, that kind of thing, and I try to keep in the spirit of his campaign where possible. How late did he run Blackmoor? Star Trek dates to the late 60s and so it was around at the beginning but Star Wars did not come out till 77. Was the campaign still active then? The First Fantasy Campaign details the early Blackmoor campaign from its beginning (date disputed, but 1970-71) to 1975. But Dave Arneson kept running Blackmoor for decades after that. Often with new players, but every now and then some of his old players would join in. Lightsabers are not mentioned in the FFC, but I believe they were included in DA3 City of the Gods. As Finarvyn mentions they also played a central role in Rafe's campaign over at The Comeback Inn Forum. Whether Dave ever used lightsabers in his campaigns (post 1977) I don't know, but I would not be surprised. BTW Star Wars popularized the lightsabers, but did the idea of laser swords exist before that? -Havar |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2016 4:26:09 GMT -6
My error on the lightsabers. I wasn't thinking clearly. The lightsabres were in Rafe's play-by-post game set in Blackmoor, not Dave's original campaign. Actually, the light sabers apparently were part of the "Svenny" campaign. - I can't really recall the source, given that I did my research for the game somewhat around ten years ago, but I remember that I double-checked it, back in the day. Maybe robertthebald may be able to clarify?  (I've come to distinguish between the initial "Svenny campaign", the "City of the Gods" campaign, when Mr Arneson was with TSR, and the later "Afridhi" campaign, after TSR. From what I understand, very few of the original players were involved with at least the "Afridhi" campaign on a regular base - which really makes it two or three games set within the same continuity, not "one" congruent game. As the Svenny game precedes SW, there may be other sources for the use of that specific trope.) Star Wars was not the first sci-fi series to introduce lightsabers, either - from Edmond Hamilton, over Fritz Leiber, to the different series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, lightsabers were apparently pretty common-place genre items. So, considering the tradition, it's not implausible that the sabers were introduced pre-SW. |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2016 4:33:04 GMT -6
How late did he run Blackmoor? Star Trek dates to the late 60s and so it was around at the beginning but Star Wars did not come out till 77. Was the campaign still active then? The First Fantasy Campaign details the early Blackmoor campaign from its beginning (date disputed, but 1970-71) to 1975. But Dave Arneson kept running Blackmoor for decades after that. Often with new players, but every now and then some of his old players would join in. Lightsabers are not mentioned in the FFC, but I believe they were included in DA3 City of the Gods. As Finarvyn mentions they also played a central role in Rafe's campaign over at The Comeback Inn Forum. Whether Dave ever used lightsabers in his campaigns (post 1977) I don't know, but I would not be surprised. BTW Star Wars popularized the lightsabers, but did the idea of laser swords exist before that? -Havar *Lightbulb.* I think I based my treatment of technology in Blackmoor mainly on RJK's accounts of Robilar's and Mordenkainen's expedition to the City of the Gods, as well as on texts by Roger E. Moore, the editor of Dungeon. - How they correlate, etc. I simply don't remember. Now, that would firmly place my sources post-"Svenny"/FFC. |
|
|
|
Post by robertthebald on Mar 27, 2016 21:57:09 GMT -6
Raphael,
There were no light sabers in any adventures that I was in. Having said that, David was deliberately vague about many things in the game. I mention that because he did explain much of the magic and magical items in terms of what you would find in a space game. But again, he refused to be tied down to an exact comparison. An example would be saying that a wand with lightning bolts was a blaster pistol. I suppose a particular magic sword could actually have been a light saber. Since I always thought in terms related to fantasy, I really did not give any thought to anything that might have been from space. I think that the space angle might be overemphasized nowadays. It really did not come up very often. I am sure David also thought in terms of fantasy more than in terms of part of a space game. The last Blackmoor game that he had at the Source game shop, he introduced something new that he wanted to explore for future games. He made us literally sing any spells we cast. He suggested the song (for instance, yellow brick road from Wizard of Oz as we were following a yellow brick road in the adventure). If we did a bad job of singing the song then the spell was not correctly cast. He explained this as coming from Elves, who evidently sang their spells. Any spell from a scroll was written down in Runes. I do not remember how this worked any more. As these were new concepts, he was trying them out with us, and would have developed them further as he went along.
Bob Meyer
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2016 15:31:55 GMT -6
Thank you very much for sharing! Can you elaborate on the overall theme of the games you participated in? I always took that the first two longer BM campaigns were mostly based around the stories we know from the published material. But how did the younger games go? Seems things were becoming more experimental, as Mr Arneson looked more away from D&D, and more towards what would become "Adventures in Fantasy". |
|
|
|
Post by robertthebald on Apr 3, 2016 22:56:49 GMT -6
Most of my gaming later on was with the published D&D books, and was with someone other than David as the gamemaster. The only real exposure to what David was up to was when he ran the annual game, especially after he moved down to Florida. I am sorry I can not be any real help on this. Some of the other players had more exposure to the space angle. David was adding or changing things from the very beginning. Besides the influences of the games we played before Blackmoor, there were other influences that David added in as he went along. An obvious example would be John Snider's Space game. Since we were adventuring in the Space game, it was natural for it to infiltrate into Blackmoor.
Bob Meyer
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2016 7:27:27 GMT -6
Thanks, Bob! Aaah, to be a fly on the wall during those games! What do you think, folks, wouldn't it be interesting to gather some info on those annual bouts? Like, how many of them happened, in total? 25, since 1980? That should be easy to chronicle! (Where is the wise viking when we need him?!) |
|
