Bob Meyer Running Blackmoor

[Finarvyn]

I suppose this is an old video, as the date given is 2017, but I first got to see it yesterday. Bob Meyer (who posts here sometimes) is the current keeper of Dave Arneson's (who also used to post here) yearly Blackmoor campaign. According to Bob, this has been a yearly event from 1971 to the present. This video has Bob give an introduction to the Blackmoor style of gaming, but cuts off before the actual game began.

Anyway, I took some notes on parts I found most interesting, and may someday go back to produce a full transcript. I have tried to exactly reproduce Bob's words where possible.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmWDM7gM3zg

I seem to have inherited the Blackmoor campaign.

This isn’t exactly Dungeons & Dragons. You won’t be using those rules. You won’t need those rules. As a matter of fact, you aren’t going to be using any rules. This is the way we started. This is the way the game was.

We will have one rule: This is an anger free, bored free zone. Sometimes the dice get the better of you; don’t sweat it, we’ll work it out.

The number one thing about Blackmoor is that it’s the original. Nothing like it had ever existed before, so it was invented as we went along. And that’s how we’ll do this game. We invent it as we go along.

The reason why I’m doing this game is because Arneson ran the Blackmoor game, campaign, whatever you want to call it, since 1971. Every year, even when he moved out of state. He always showed up at the source to run a Blackmoor game.

This is a game to commemorate Blackmoor. What was Blackmoor? It was designed to be different from every other game. [At this point, Meyer discusses early Braunstein in Austria run by David Wesely, then Brown Stone New Mexico run by Dwayne Jenkins. Then back to Blackmoor.] Arneson was watching all this with keen interest. He was thinking, “gee, y’know there’s something here, but I still want to get away from rules. How can I do that?” He had his lightbulb moment when he was watching a movie marathon on television of science fiction and fantasy movies. He said, “ah! No one is going to look up what a dragon can do. Or what a troll can do. Or what an ent can do.[they can do] what I say they can do.” And thus Blackmoor started.

[Meyer then tells a story about characters fighting a troll, using “printed rules.” He attacked the troll and did nothing due to bad die rolls. The troll then killed his character with one blow due to good die rolls.] I told David what I thought of the die rolls. I told him what I thought of the rules. I told him what I thought of the game. And that was the end of that. I didn’t have to tell him because he realized that those rules weren’t going to work. He came up with his own. He wasn’t going to use any printed rules, and there was an advantage to that. The advantage was when we were playing the game … he didn’t give us any rules. He told us, “just be yourselves, guys. Be reasonable. And if you’re not, I’ll let you know.” And letting us know was very, very hard on us, although we learned real quick. We did what was reasonable. And that’s the way it was.

This was “freeform.” This was new. This was so-called “role playing.” This was fantasy adventuring. This was no-rules. This was “invent as you go along.”

Fast forward to 2009. I’m going to run a Blackmoor game. I don’t have any rules. What am I going to do? I’m going to go back to the roots. I’m going to come up with my own set of rules, my own ideas. I’m going to improvise as we go along. I’m going to wing-it with guys who have been playing it for 40 years. And they all had fun. It worked!

[samvandenberg]

I did the same thing when these videos were made available. I transcribed them word for word. Because I think Bob's concepts are that important. I'm a little bewildered why there are so few of us around interested in playing like him. I've tried a handful of times to get a game together, but I never get enough player interest.

[oldskolgmr]

Hello samvandenberg and Finarvyn , I also loved that Youtube. I found more people online who are interested in this, but I don't want to cause a problem for the Board (this is an Awesome board!) by posting any links.
I found them accidently. The usual search term is Free Kriegsspiel Revival, or free Kriegsspiel Revolution (Wikipedia has an entry on this as well). I know there was an episode of Questing Beast where Ben discussed this. Feel free to PM me if you would like a link.

Enjoy !

[Deleted]

Someone told me a while back that Bob's taken a step back from wargaming and refereeing Blackmoor lately. He feels burnt out on it and he's getting older, but he's given a handful of younger referees his blessing to carry on and experiment with Dave's freeform style. Chirine over at his boards also talks a lot about how he never played D&D or EOTPT but rather games called "Blackmoor, Greyhawk and Tekumel".

I've also been involved in those burgeoning FKR groups online, even writing an article in a zine dedicated to it once (in the first Neverending Drachenschwanz issue under a pen name, Cynocephalus). Haven't been as active in that corner of the hobby lately due to some weirdness in the Discord server, but it's a fascinating thought experiment and another take on Old School.

[Starbeard]

I have to admit I feel a little like a grumpy old grog here, which makes me sad. I've argued for years that Arneson never had any rules, he just came up with character sheet values and maybe a basic concept of rolling d% to see if you hit, both possibly drawing on what he experienced in Brownstone, and then almost certainly made most everything up after that, the same way he saw maybe Jenkins but especially Wesely make up the results of player interaction in their games. But always with the presentation to his players that he was developing and leveraging rules behind the curtain (which isn't said cynically, that aspect is actually an important part of the model, as so many testimonies of Blackmoor players and the success of D&D itself show). Now I wonder if maybe I've actually been living under a rock the whole time, and this is old hat news that everyone takes for granted.

Though, I did try on out the FKR Discord server for a bit and dropped out somewhat quickly because it just wasn't doing it for me. Nobody was talking about or seemed to be playing anything resembling an actual Free Kriegspiel as I've played them, it all just seemed to be the same old mostly freeform traditional RPG gaming everyone has always done whenever they play any system, but with the proselytizing zeal of the newly converted and retaining the current OSR's fetish for finding that perfect set of dashing 2-page rules to hold up as a golden cow.

[Finarvyn]

Jun 29, 2022 6:28:53 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

I've argued for years that Arneson never had any rules...

I'm not quite sure what to make of your post. I think Bob's video confirms my way of understanding Arneson's campaign, in that he started with nothing and over time developed the rules. Arneson kept a notebook of rulings and was able to present an 18-ish page packet of stuff to Gary, so I'm not sure if you can say there were "no rules" in his campaign. (Even Erick Wujcik's Amber Diceless, which seems to require no rules, fills up two hefty books with rules.) Even the old Braunstein games had some rules structure. Players couldn't just say, "I'm going to invent nukes and blow up the town."

In the early days, rules were much more limited. When you are the first to do something, and Arneson certainly came into the hobby quite near to its genesis, it's hard to know in advance what guidelines are needed and which ones aren't. I guess if "rules" implies that Arneson sat down in advance and hammered out a 40-page document to establish guidelines for every situation, then by that definition there were no rules. If "rules" implies that certain guidelines were in place and then expanded as required, then by that definition there were rules.

Maybe we're saying the same thing? I'm not sure.

[Starbeard]

Jun 29, 2022 6:52:03 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Jun 29, 2022 6:28:53 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

I've argued for years that Arneson never had any rules...

I'm not quite sure what to make of your post. I think Bob's video confirms my way of understanding Arneson's campaign, in that he started with nothing and over time developed the rules. Arneson kept a notebook of rulings and was able to present an 18-ish page packet of stuff to Gary, so I'm not sure if you can say there were "no rules" in his campaign. (Even Erick Wujcik's Amber Diceless, which seems to require no rules, fills up two hefty books with rules.) Even the old Braunstein games had some rules structure. Players couldn't just say, "I'm going to invent nukes and blow up the town."

In the early days, rules were much more limited. When you are the first to do something, and Arneson certainly came into the hobby quite near to its genesis, it's hard to know in advance what guidelines are needed and which ones aren't. I guess if "rules" implies that Arneson sat down in advance and hammered out a 40-page document to establish guidelines for every situation, then by that definition there were no rules. If "rules" implies that certain guidelines were in place and then expanded as required, then by that definition there were rules.

Maybe we're saying the same thing? I'm not sure.

I think maybe we are, but I admit I wasn't being very nuanced about my statement.

So it seems apparent now that the D&D game itself was developed broadly as we'd expect: Gygax hammered out a bunch of stuff based on what he experienced with Arneson and Megarry, and called that complete document a game; more or less, there were testing and rewrites and expansions along the way.

Arneson clearly started off with no rules of his own, he was just imitating in his own fashion the play style experienced in Wesely's and Jenkins' games, to one degree or another. Combining elements into a third style of game, I guess. Of course, being a rules guy, he also spent lots of time drawing up rules in between sessions, so that eventually there actually would be a set of tangible player-facing rules that everyone recalls, like broadly how combat worked (but not the details), and broadly how character stats worked (but not the details).

I think maybe where we might disagree is that, given the evidence, I believe the most likely explanation by far isn't just that Arneson created the rules as he went, but that he also remained inconsistent with them even after creating them. The sort of thing we've all done where we get excited about our game and start creating for it faster than we can use it or internalize it, and in the game we end up winging it anyway, or something happens to cause our interest to move over to a new idea before the first idea had a chance to play out. Based on Arneson's apparent personality, the conflicting memories of players, his production record in those days, his own written opinions and whatever else, I have a difficult time not being skeptical that Arneson didn't feign consistency at least a good portion of the time, or perhaps that he didn't have at least some rules that he kept but ignored because/whenever they didn't deliver as expected.

Basically, take Gygax's comment about dice just being there to make noise, meaning the most important part of the rules isn't to follow them but to establish a sense of impersonal trust with the players. Then consider that Arneson's Blackmoor game was fundamentally built on this idea right at the core. With a sharp and improvising mind like Arneson's, having the players see you dote on your massive rule notebook is more important than using anything in the notebook, and I can't believe he didn't recognize that immediately.

[aldarron]

Jun 29, 2022 7:30:14 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

...Arneson clearly started off with no rules of his own, he was just imitating in his own fashion the play style experienced in Wesely's and Jenkins' games, to one degree or another. ...

May 30, 2022 4:30:08 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

... Bob Meyer (who posts here sometimes) is the current keeper of Dave Arneson's (who also used to post here) yearly Blackmoor campaign.

... Meyer then tells a story about characters fighting a troll, using “printed rules.”...

Do you see the contradiction here?

Arneson started off with rules, so did Wesely, so did Jenkins. None of those games was entirely freeform the way Bob likes to play.

In the case of Wesely and Jenkins the rules were notes and ideas scribbled on paper, but they were rules nonetheless. We have some of Jenkins notes from Brownstone covering things like costs and point awards. It is entirely true to say these games developed as they went on and more rules accumulated than there were at the start, but they were never entirely without rules.

Arneson began the foray into what would become the world of Blackmoor with a medieval wargame with Braunstein objectives. You can't play a wargame without rules. The first "official" Blackmoor game we know of was Bob's battle with the Troll, using "Printed rules" - the fantasy combat table of CHAINMAIL.

Arneson ditched that (for players at least) after Bobs complaint, (but it was still referenced for monsters and other players used it). Arneson then drew on his nappy materials to develop character sheets, saving throws, methods to hit armored opponents, complex magic weapons and so on., and came up with a magic system based on material components. It was never a rule-free game, but it was a "rules-lite" game evolving through play as guided by the referee, and it is fair to say not everything was written down and certainly not accessible to the players.

[Starbeard]

I feel I should clarify myself again for anyone reading the thread. By "no rules of his own," I don't mean that Arneson was entirely freeform. All I mean is that he couldn't have started his Blackmoor games with a magic Blackmoor document as hard coded as the D&D document was. He might not have even had much of any of the tables or rules that came to be associated with Blackmoor at the very beginning, I don't think we can actually know that.

So yes, rules were used, but the game began quite clearly as him imitating the games he was playing in, therefore almost certainly copying over the procedures of those (which might be very fast and loose), and very quickly quickly grew into a unique beast because Arneson was the sort of guy to keep tinkering and spent lots of time developing new things for the game.

The only things I would ever contest are anyone claiming that Arneson's ideas for Blackmoor were fully formed as a complete game from the moment of inception, or that Arneson never freely altered, momentarily modified, or ignored tables or rules whenever it suited him in this new game style where such was and still is standard practice.

I think @alderron 's last paragraph sums it up well. "Rules light but not rules free" is a good way to put it.

[samvandenberg]

May 12, 2023 6:07:17 GMT -6 aldarron said:

None of those games was entirely freeform the way Bob likes to play.

I've watched videos of Bob's games, transcribed interviews, and read play reports. Even though he himself used the term, he certainly wasn't operating "freeform" in the role-playing game sense. To determine outcomes players rolled dice. He rolled dice. Low was bad, high was good. Each player has a documented "special ability". Each player has listed an inventory on a sheet of paper. In more recent reports he even mentions developing some guidelines about handling wizards and magic use. He plainly says that he uses rules of his own invention. He just keeps the players isolated from his actual mechanics as much as possible.

Bob deserves much more credit than he has received. I am continually amazed that more of us aren't interested in Bob's method, which is basically what Jon Peterson terms "Eisen's Vow."

Imagine . . . D&D without arguments and rules lawyering! Sounds like heaven -- unless someone prefers that sort of thing. 


www.dropbox.com/s/zw0nnaev5ajxbea/clearing-the-castle.pdf?dl=0

[chicagowiz]

May 12, 2023 8:28:57 GMT -6 samvandenberg said:

May 12, 2023 6:07:17 GMT -6 aldarron said:

None of those games was entirely freeform the way Bob likes to play.

I've watched videos of Bob's games, transcribed interviews, and read play reports. Even though he himself used the term, he certainly wasn't operating "freeform" in the role-playing game sense. To determine outcomes players rolled dice. He rolled dice. Low was bad, high was good. Each player has a documented "special ability". Each player has listed an inventory on a sheet of paper. In more recent reports he even mentions developing some guidelines about handling wizards and magic use. He plainly says that he uses rules of his own invention. He just keeps the players isolated from his actual mechanics as much as possible.

Bob deserves much more credit than he has received. I am continually amazed that more of us aren't interested in Bob's method, which is basically what Jon Peterson terms "Eisen's Vow."

Imagine . . . D&D without arguments and rules lawyering! Sounds like heaven -- unless someone prefers that sort of thing. 


www.dropbox.com/s/zw0nnaev5ajxbea/clearing-the-castle.pdf?dl=0

Thanks for sharing this.

[Starbeard]

May 12, 2023 8:28:57 GMT -6 samvandenberg said:

May 12, 2023 6:07:17 GMT -6 aldarron said:

None of those games was entirely freeform the way Bob likes to play.

I've watched videos of Bob's games, transcribed interviews, and read play reports. Even though he himself used the term, he certainly wasn't operating "freeform" in the role-playing game sense. To determine outcomes players rolled dice. He rolled dice. Low was bad, high was good. Each player has a documented "special ability". Each player has listed an inventory on a sheet of paper. In more recent reports he even mentions developing some guidelines about handling wizards and magic use. He plainly says that he uses rules of his own invention. He just keeps the players isolated from his actual mechanics as much as possible.

Bob deserves much more credit than he has received. I am continually amazed that more of us aren't interested in Bob's method, which is basically what Jon Peterson terms "Eisen's Vow."

Imagine . . . D&D without arguments and rules lawyering! Sounds like heaven -- unless someone prefers that sort of thing. 


www.dropbox.com/s/zw0nnaev5ajxbea/clearing-the-castle.pdf?dl=0

I wholeheartedly agree, but also: having played "freeform" style wargames (which you are right in saying is a misnomer in the sense we use it for RPGs), I'm not so sure it would cut back on the arguments! All those argumentative players just start contesting the referee's intelligence and decision making instead.

[Finarvyn]

I think what messes with modern gamers is the concept of an incomplete rules set. My son picks up 5E and it's all done and balanced and playtested and printed in hardback form with a Player's book and a DM's book and a monster book.

Games in Arneson's day were hastily scribbled on a few pieces of paper or maybe typed and mimeographed in little booklets. Heck, OD&D was "finished" in comparison to the games that Arneson and Wesely ran. You could think of Blackmoor as a continual playtest, where rules were constantly being added and adjusted and as players thought of new actions the DM had to come up with a mechanic to resolve those new actions in the campaign.

So, in a sense one could say that Arneson "started with nothing" the way Bob suggests, but it's different now because Bob can use Dave's example as a model. Dave had no such thing, really, as every new thing pioneered a new frontier.

[chirinebakal]

We've gotten an invitation to come down to Lake Geneva to run The One True Blackmoor for the 50th Anniversary of D&D at Gary Con. Watch this space; as I get more information, I'll pass it along.

[havard]

Aug 10, 2023 15:10:05 GMT -6 chirinebakal said:

We've gotten an invitation to come down to Lake Geneva to run The One True Blackmoor for the 50th Anniversary of D&D at Gary Con. Watch this space; as I get more information, I'll pass it along.

VERY INTERESTING!

Who is we? Bob and you? Others?

-Havard

[chirinebakal]

Sept 5, 2023 13:29:27 GMT -6 havard said:

Aug 10, 2023 15:10:05 GMT -6 chirinebakal said:

We've gotten an invitation to come down to Lake Geneva to run The One True Blackmoor for the 50th Anniversary of D&D at Gary Con. Watch this space; as I get more information, I'll pass it along.

VERY INTERESTING!

Who is we? Bob and you? Others?

-Havard

'We' is Bob Meyer and his two apprentice Blackmoor GMs. Bob is very concerned about passing along the Blackmoor he knows and loves to a new generation of people, and he's found two that he's gamed with a lot and really likes - they play like Dave did, he says - and they are very good at running Blackmoor like he does and Dave did. Paul Stormberg has been after Bob to come down to Gary Con to run Blackmoor for years, and Bob agreed to be there in "Legends of Role-playing" for the 50th anniversary of D&D next year. They will be running four game sessions a day, for the first three days of the convention, and then running an 'open day' of games on Sunday where they'll run games and talk to people.

Bob asked me to be his 'chief of staff' to handle the logistics of the trip - which is something I am supposed to be able to do very well - and I'll have a couple of people on the team to keep Bob and his GMs, Chandra and Gillian, fed and hydrated. I'll be there as 'staff', and not gaming as I have to look after Bob and his GMs. Chandra, by the way, used to be the social media manager for Jayson Elliot and 'Gygax Magazine' and knows Luke Gygax.

I think it'll be a great time; they're all good GMs. and they have Blackmoor nailed.