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Post by Finarvyn on Oct 29, 2009 14:50:00 GMT -6
NOTE: I almost didn't start this thread, because I know that John Norman's Counter-Earth (Gor) series is controversial and some folks find it quite offensive. Please play nice and treat this from an adult and academic view.
I made this connection years ago, but when reading Havard's "Unique Monsters in the FFC" thread, I was reminded that Tarns are listed as some of the monsters found in Blackmoor.
Part of what I found to be interesting is that Rocs are mentioned in D&D but Tarns are not. While Rocs are large birds of mythology that are large enough for human riders, Tarns in the real world are (I believe) tiny birds not large enough to carry passengers. The only Tarn I can recall from literature or mythology is the Tarn ridden by Tarl Cabot in Norman's Counter-Earth books.
Then, while reading through one of the cost-chart pages I notice that slaves were for sale in "white silk" and "red silk" varieties, clearly also a nod to the Counter-Earth series. Made me wonder if there are other hidden things in Blackmoor which are based on these books. (Of course, back in "the day" things weren't so PC....)
Does this give us any clues or insight as to some of feel of the original campaign, or are these isolated references?
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Post by havard on Oct 30, 2009 3:39:58 GMT -6
Does this give us any clues or insight as to some of feel of the original campaign, or are these isolated references? Interesting topic Marv, well worthy of its own thread! Greg Svenson has mentioned elsewhere that Tarns come from Norman's novels. Good observation about the slaves though! Greg also mentioned that Tarns were used frequently, and that the group used Tarns to travel from Blackmoor to Greyhawk, when the players were visiting Gygax for a weekend. I don't have much more to add, as my knowledge of the Gor series is limited, but as I mentioned elsewhere, I am wondering if the Duchy of the Peaks might not have alot in common with some of the cultures of Counter Earth. I find it interesting that Marfeldt's journeys in those lands lead to the Barbarian slaughtering large chunks of that population though  -Havard |
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Post by snorri on Oct 30, 2009 3:59:25 GMT -6
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Post by Finarvyn on Oct 30, 2009 9:28:37 GMT -6
Another point to ponder is that when I read the first few Gor books (I did not finish the series) I got the impression that the cultures on Counter-Earth were somewhat Greco-Roman, much like the helmeted figure on Havard's avatar. I guess I have this mental image of the Clive Owen & Kiera Knightly version of the King Arthur movie, with Roman legions stomping around as soldiers of the Great Kingdom. This would seem to back up Snorri's assumption that Blackmoor was more of an ancient world rather than medieval. EDIT: Fixed spelling of "Balkmoor"  |
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Post by snorri on Oct 30, 2009 13:07:52 GMT -6
Blackmoor mix freely several periods as inspirations :
- an antique mood, as stated, that should be reeveluated
- middle-ages elements, the first being castles and titles (string Chainmail inspiration behind, along else)
- muskeets, canons and powder weapons (as in Chainmail, too).
- sci-fis elements.
In Gor, only the first and the last seems to appear clearly, but I could be wrong as I did read only the two or three first volumes yet.
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Post by aldarron on Oct 30, 2009 16:27:54 GMT -6
Ha. Funny thing Marv is that I was thinking of broaching this topic myself - but more along the lines of comparing the Gorean vs. Middle Earth degree of influence. I got as far as trying to count up Gor vs ME references in the cost lists you mentioned but dropped it after there was clearly a lot more Tolkien creatures etc. than Gor ones. Nevertheless, I think its clear that the Gor books - at least the first couple - influenced the formation of Blackmoor. Tarns (also listed in FFC as war eagles) seem, understandably, to have been a big deal to the early characters. The FFC lists them numerous times and lists costs for feeding stabling and so forth. Svenson mentions flying around on them too. Slavery - specifically the red silk and white silk slaves was woven into the fabric of Blackmoor society. Interesting how none of that made its way into D&D.
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Post by Finarvyn on Oct 30, 2009 20:48:55 GMT -6
And, aldarron, I don't think that any of us is trying to make a "Blackmoor = Gor" (or even "Blackmoor = Middle-earth") but I agree that the influence is clearly there.
Gary put together his list of inspirational reading for Greyhawk (and by default it is sort of considered to be "the" list for D&D) but it's interesting that Dave never to my knowledge published such a list.
It would be interesting to get a peek at his bookshelves, to see what kinds of reading material might have had the largest influence on his Blackmoor campaign.
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Post by tavis on Oct 30, 2009 20:52:32 GMT -6
"Tarnsman of Gor" is currently unavailable at paperbackswap.com, so I am unable to contribute yet to this thread except to say that I find it very interesting, want to encourage folks to press on in the spirit Fin mentions, and had put "tarns" into my campaign based on the price and picture in FFC some months before I saw a Blackmoor-participant recollection that told me they came from Gor.
(In my interpretation, a "tarn" wasn't the bird - since that'd be a giant eagle or roc, which I figured already had names - but rather the transportation system formed by putting four giant eagles at the corners of a big net, in which the PCs could and have paid 100-600 gp to sit and be flown around.)
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Post by chgowiz on Oct 31, 2009 8:34:30 GMT -6
Interesting how none of that made its way into D&D. Having read numerous John Norman books, I can say that his writing style probably offended Gary a great deal. ;D John's style is ... an acquired taste. I haven't played Blackmoor to the degree you gentlemen have, but I find this conversation fascinating. I think the previous mention that "It would have been interesting to look at (Arneson's) bookshelf" is a really interesting statement - is there anyway we could contact one of the Arneson family members and ask if Dave had a preferred fantasy/sci-fi reading list? |
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Post by aldarron on Oct 31, 2009 20:43:50 GMT -6
Tavis, there are new reprints available now cheaply through Amazon etc. Norman has a quirky but interesting writing style and I really appreciate the lengths he goes to create cultures and describe technologies (four pages to describe how a Gorean mill works, for example), but the characters are one dimensional and sometimes wierdly psychological, the combats predictable and unbelievable and the bondage/dominance fantasies of the books after number four becomes increasingly tediously repetitious, whether one finds it offensive or not. Tarns are definetly cool however as is the game he calls Kaissa (its like chess). Basically what I'm saying is Norman is a mixed bag.
Regarding Daves bookshelf and the influences on Blackmoor, one he mentioned wasn't a book at all. I mean the Horror movie marathon he watched as he was putting Blackmoor together for the first time. If you look at early Blackmoor you find a medieval castle with a monster filled dungeon. Those monsters included vampires, and that setting feels a whole lot more like old horror movies than either Gor or Tolkien, niether of which have castles with dungeons or vampires - but that's a different topic.
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akiyama
Level 4 Theurgist
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Post by akiyama on Nov 1, 2009 3:14:31 GMT -6
I'm halfway through Tarsman of Gor at the moment, which I found in a second-hand bookshop a few weeks ago. Personally, I am enjoying it, but I would have to describe Norman's style as eccentric and I can see it would not be to everyone's taste.
In Tarnsman of Gor tarns are trained and controlled by using tarn-goads, basically electric cattle-prods. So would the existance of tarns in Blackmoor imply the existance of tarn-goads? Gor is a world where military technology and transport technology is kept at a medieval level by the mysterious Priest Kings, but there are some high-tech items - as well as tarn-goads the hero has come across a speech-translator that can translate sentences between four different languages, and a combination compass-chronometer. Since there is a scribe caste I guess there are no printing presses. I get the impression that all the really useful technologies are suppressed by the Priest Kings so the only high-tech items are quirky gadgets, rather like magic items.
I too would love to know what books Dave Arneson was inspired by. Didn't anyone ask him?
This thread got me thinking about what books would have been popular in the 1960s, just before D&D was invented. Tolkien, of course. The Howard/de Camp Conan paperbacks. Other books by L. Sprague de Camp. The Lankhmar books by Fritz Lieber. Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon Books. The earlier books in the Darkover, Earthsea, Pern and Witch World series. Dune.
I was also thinking about which books feel most Blackmoorish. I think The Dying Earth by Jack Vance (I mean the book, not the setting) with its mixture of magic and technology. Also, Howard's Conan stories. But I haven't read a lot of fantasy, and I'm not that familiar with Blackmoor, so I'm probably not the best person to say.
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Post by Finarvyn on Nov 1, 2009 6:51:39 GMT -6
Having read numerous John Norman books, I can say that his writing style probably offended Gary a great deal. ;D John's style is ... an acquired taste. I think that his writing style offended a lot of people, which is why I kind of wish there were "Expurgated" editions published the way Carcosa was done. Take out a lot of the longwinded "ecology of a tree I happened to walk past" passages, remove the most offensive gender slavery passages, trim it down to a book roughly 50% of its current size. What you would be left with is a series of fun S&S novellas or short stories that I think lots of mainstream readers would enjoy. There is a Priest-Kings arc, and a Kurii arc, and probably others that I never got to. By the time I gave up on the series, I was reduced to: 1. Skipping over any paragraph a half page or longer in length, because I knew it would be boring detail stuff. 2. Skipping over any lengthy conversation between male and female characters because I knew it would be psychological "males rule society" stuff. If you can look past those things there are some clever and interesting stories hidden in the Gor books. And I suspect that some of those elements are what snuck into Dave's Blackmoor setting. Just my two coppers. |
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Post by tavis on Nov 1, 2009 7:05:29 GMT -6
I asked Dave about the literary antecedents of dungeons at his "My Amazing Gaming Group" seminar at Gen Con '08, but not about books in general. (He said dungeons grew out of needing to offer players a finite number of choices, in an easily-constrained environment: play seemed to take precedence over emulating fiction).
I've heard David Hartwell (an editor at Tor) say that 1970 was the first year when more SF books were published in a year than a fan could read. Before that you didn't have the luxury of picking and choosing: you'd read whatever there was that could scratch that itch. Reading the intros to the Heroic Fantasy anthologies etc. suggests that it was even more so for fantasy fans - you'd read SF (which most people saw as the same thing), mythology, historical fiction, etc.
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Post by aldarron on Nov 1, 2009 19:41:23 GMT -6
I think that his writing style offended a lot of people, which is why I kind of wish there were "Expurgated" editions published the way Carcosa was done. Take out a lot of the longwinded "ecology of a tree I happened to walk past" ..... By the time I gave up on the series, I was reduced to: 1. Skipping over any paragraph a half page or longer in length, because I knew it would be boring detail stuff. Heh. Now that's actually some of the stuff I like best about Norman. Normally I do skip the "boring parts" of novels - but the "ecology of a tree" stuff in the Gor books is really some of Normans best work because of the intricate and often historically accurate detail, or, if not historically based, the inventiveness of Norman. Details like that could provide a great deal of campaign inspiration. It takes the generic sword and planet nature of the Gor books and gives them a level of depth, sometimes teaches something about how something might work or makes you think about the ecology and technology behind society. IMHO. I'm with ya on the rest of it though |
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Post by havard on Nov 2, 2009 4:20:02 GMT -6
Nevertheless, I think its clear that the Gor books - at least the first couple - influenced the formation of Blackmoor. Tarns (also listed in FFC as war eagles) seem, understandably, to have been a big deal to the early characters. The FFC lists them numerous times and lists costs for feeding stabling and so forth. Svenson mentions flying around on them too. Slavery - specifically the red silk and white silk slaves was woven into the fabric of Blackmoor society. Interesting how none of that made its way into D&D. Good analysis Aldarron. It seems like Tarns and Slaves are the two main elements borrowed from Norman. In the case of slavery, I will assume that it is widely practised in most of the world, but is possibly something that Uther has been trying to purge from Blackmoor. It seems to be something more widespread in that country when the Fant was a Thonian Baron (FFC era), than under the reign of King Uther and his companions. Thralls are still used by the Skandaharians ofcourse, and the Afridhi use slaves as does the Great Kingdom/Thonian Empire. The country where slavery is most widespread is ofcourse the Duchy of the Peaks. David Ross hypothesized the existance of the so-called Land of Thralls, a realm beyond the Supersition Mountains from whence the Peaks got their slaves. Perhaps this realm is a Gorean-style kingdom where slavery is seen as a sort of virtue? Not sure how far I would like to take this, but there isnt all that much to work with in the first place. I see Marfeldt's response to the lifestyle of the Peaks as an appropriate Blackmoorian commentary to Norman's ideas. Looking at the price of slaves, which seem comparable to historical slavery, it is clear that slaves are too expensive for commoners to own. Even fairly wealthy merchants will not have many slaves. Given how expensive they are, it is likely that buying a slave will be seen as an investment, meaning the slave will usually be taken well care of. Owning slaves primarily for sexual enjoyment seems unlikely for anyone but the wealthiest of nobles. In the case of Tarns (I like the term War Eagles which avoids copyright infringement), how common should these be? I think they are visually awesome, but too easy access to flight will endanger the fun in exploration adventures, especially in such a localize setting as Blackmoor... Havard |
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Post by Finarvyn on Nov 2, 2009 9:25:56 GMT -6
Heh. Now that's actually some of the stuff I like best about Norman. Normally I do skip the "boring parts" of novels - but the "ecology of a tree" stuff in the Gor books is really some of Normans best work because of the intricate and often historically accurate detail, or, if not historically based, the inventiveness of Norman. Details like that could provide a great deal of campaign inspiration. It takes the generic sword and planet nature of the Gor books and gives them a level of depth, sometimes teaches something about how something might work or makes you think about the ecology and technology behind society. IMHO. I'm with ya on the rest of it though And I don't entirely disagree on the "ecology" part, either. I think that Tolkien does a wonderful job of blending in the historical aspect of his world with the modern adventure of the characters. In the same vein, Norman does add a wonderful layer of depth to his world. I just found as the series progressed that these tangential "aside" topics got longer and longer ... A paragraph or two is neat, but I don't really want pages and pages of non-adventure stuff in my adventure books. Maybe he should have written a "Guide to Gor" book with a lot of this stuff in it, but maybe no one but gamers would have bought it. ;D |
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Post by snorri on Nov 2, 2009 18:50:29 GMT -6
I may be wrong, but it seems FFC is the only D&D supp. where slaves prices appears and characters can buy them freely, without any trouble. In the lbb, I think the only mention of slave is with Nixies enslaving people - and the 'common people' are mostly free men (nomads, derviches, peasants,...).
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Post by aldarron on Nov 2, 2009 20:57:20 GMT -6
It seems like Tarns and Slaves are the two main elements borrowed from Norman. True, but some of the landscape of Blackmoor seems suspiciously similar to some of the settings on Gor. That may be coincidence, in that Norman made a Gorean equivalent for nearly every major culture on earth, but the Peshwah horse nomads do remind me of the Gorean Tuchuck from nomads of Gor. There may be other things like that in Blackmoor that were inspired by the settings Norman developed. In the case of Tarns (I like the term War Eagles which avoids copyright infringement), how common should these be? I think they are visually awesome, but too easy access to flight will endanger the fun in exploration adventures, especially in such a localize setting as Blackmoor... Havard War Tarns in Gor are about as common as trained war horses in medieval europe - meaning every city or Lord had a troop of them, but your average bloke had nothing of the sort. I imagine that is an appropriate model for Blackmoor. |
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akiyama
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 103
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Post by akiyama on Nov 3, 2009 8:21:59 GMT -6
In the case of Tarns (I like the term War Eagles which avoids copyright infringement), how common should these be? I think they are visually awesome, but too easy access to flight will endanger the fun in exploration adventures, especially in such a localize setting as Blackmoor... From Tarnsman of Gor: "The Goreans believe, incredibly enough, that the capacity to master a tarn is innate, and that some men possess this characteristic and that some do not. One does not learn to master a tarn. It is a matter of blood and spirit, of beast and man, of a relation between two beings which must be immediate, intuitive, spontaneous. It is said that a tarn knows who is a tarnsman and who is not, and that those who are not die in the attempt." Perhaps the first time a PC attempts to control a tarn, they should make some sort of saving throw to see whether the tarn regards them as a suitable master, or as a potential meal. Although it seems that tarns can carry one passenger as well as a rider, and that tarns are not inclined to attack passengers as long as there is a rider present. Tarns are described as resembling hawks, but with a jay-like crest, and greenish-brown feathers. Black tarns, white tarns and multicoloured tarns also exist. |
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Post by snorri on Nov 3, 2009 9:35:44 GMT -6
The mixture of various earth historical people is a common feature of the sword & sorcery litterature, so this is difficult to use it in this quest without very specific reasons. Blackmoor peoples could first be compared to the various units of Chainmail. I guess it could be interesting too.
But the City of the God, from where Sci-fi people exerts their power on less civilized cultures, is another Gor trait - the king-priests. But it's also a common place of such littrature (think to Philip Jose Farmer Riverland).
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Post by snorri on Nov 4, 2009 7:16:28 GMT -6
Well, searching for an information in the expert set, I noticed the name of the Threshold's castle : Tarnskeep....
Looks like a Blackmoor clue.
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Post by havard on Nov 4, 2009 9:11:45 GMT -6
Well, searching for an information in the expert set, I noticed the name of the Threshold's castle : Tarnskeep.... Looks like a Blackmoor clue. Certainly a possibility, that did cross my mind. However, it could also be referring to the other type of tarn: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarn_(lake)Havard |
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Post by dekelia on Nov 23, 2009 12:33:17 GMT -6
In the case of Tarns (I like the term War Eagles which avoids copyright infringement), how common should these be? I think they are visually awesome, but too easy access to flight will endanger the fun in exploration adventures, especially in such a localize setting as Blackmoor... Most of the city states in Gor have a stable of Tarns and Tarnsmen. The Tarnsmen are an elite part of the warrior caste though, so still relatively uncommon. They are difficult, expensive, and dangerous to keep and train. I've always really liked the idea warriors riding giant birds. It must come from some combination of Joust, He-Man, and Gor. I believe OD&D actually has Tarns though they aren't called that. Look at the entry for Rocs in Monsters and Treasure. They are 6HD creatures. It says they represent any large bird. It also says the ones shown are the smaller kind that might be ridden (larger are double or triple HD btb). Rocs in AD&D are 12HD and clearly the larger kind. If you look in the random castle charts, Super Heroes can have 1-4 "Rocs" ridden by heroes. Compare that to the 1-20 hippogriffs that a lord might have. My take on them, is that they are prohibitively expensive and dangerous for most. Even if you could get one, you wouldn't necessarily have the skill to train it or care for it. You also can't just leave them hanging out outside a dungeon or something, giving them limited use to a PC. The PCs might also not have the training needed to ride them. I would say a city state might have a stable of around 20 Tarns and riders. An individual lord of a castle *might* have 1-4 (per OD&D rules - seems to fit). I think it would be a great prize for a PC to gain, but they'd have to maintain it (employ a trainer, have a castle to keep it in, etc). I don't see a party of adventures each having one. I might make it Fighter only and I think I'd say no armor greater than leather while riding (might make an exception for magic chain). |
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Post by aldarron on Nov 26, 2009 12:18:49 GMT -6
Nice analysis Dekalia, have an exalt! Recently I noticed that virually the last page of the FFC has a short entry for Tarns:
Same as Rocs but larger in some cases (War Tarn 10·60 points, Cargo 5- 30 pts. Racing Tarn 2 . 12 points).
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