First Fantasy Campaign an Overview in several parts

[robertsconley]

History remembers Statesmen, Philosophers, Kings, and Conquerors. Dave Arneson was none of those. He merely figured out a cool way to have fun that wasn't seen before. Yet in the last quarter of the 20th century and continued into the 21st century his legacy has impacted millions and ignited fires of imagination that still burns today. And it started in a place that only existed in Dave's mind, a place called Blackmoor.

Thanks to the good graces of WoTC, the OGL and the d20 market Dave Arneson's Blackmoor has been republished for a new generation. There was an earlier version that player of Mentzer's D&D got to see. But the earliest published record was the First Fantasy Campaign by Judges Guild.

Sadly this work hasn't been released in PDF form. The most recent accounts say that while any rights that Judges Guild had was returned to Dave Arneson, he passed away before it could be properly revised for a release. I am lucky enough to possess a copy. And for those of you who don't have a copy let's take a trip inside.

The book itself is very sturdy for a softcover. It's cover made of parchment and the interior pages are of the heavy newsprint paper that most Judges Guild products. Despite 30 years of use my copy still together in one piece without anything falling out.

The table of contents is on the second page. Looking at you can see that we are going to be reading about a great deal many things. From the Great Invasion, the Egg of Coot, to info on True Trolls and Tarns. My printing has about 64 pages

Then comes a forward by Bod Bledsaw Sr and a Introduction by Dave Arneson. Written three years after the release of the original Boxed set the two show that there was interest in the origins of roleplaying games and D&D.

Dave explains how his campaign grew organically, first the Castle, then the town, and finally the surrounding countryside. Dave then explain how all of this got out of hand him coordinating six Dungeons and a 100 detailed player characters. Sounds like it had many of the element's of today's living campaign from the get go.

The next section is titled Blackmoor the Campaign. From page 4 to 11 in my printing (I think 2nd) are details on what is essentially a wargame/miniatures setup. It starts off with Dave apologizing for having lost the first two scenarios (I, II) and explaining that these are the notes for Scenario III which was a great war between the Good Guys (Law) and the Bad Guys (Chaos)

He then proceeds to give various prices lists, levy schedules, and example lists for the City of Maus, Duchy of Ten, and the Eggo of Coot. We learnd that Female (Red) cost 25 gp to 100gp, Female (White) 35 gp to 250 gp, and rare Female (Special) cost a princely 300 gp to 3500 gp. The poor guys are only worth 10 gp to 50 gp.

Pages 9 to 11 are useful because they list specifics on making internal improvements. What is a vague suggestion in Book III of OD&D is now expanded into specifics. Roads, Bridges, Canals, Inns, Hunting, Religion, Exploration, Ship Building, Farming, Fishing, Trapping, Arrival of New Persons, and even Tourism.

This is section looks a lot like the notes I later developed when I had a campaign phases involving a lot of armies moving around. I forgotten about this in FFC and later when I reread it I was struck at the similarity. If you going to do wargaming in a RPG there definitely some prep work that is the same regardless of time or system.

After this section comes the Campaign Map Notes. He explains that the original map of the Blackmoor Countryside was drawn from some old Dutch maps. (I would love to know which ones). Is probably explains why there are so many swamps as much of Holland is at or below sea level. Then he goes on to explain how he started using the Outdoor Survival Board.

"Later, the game moved south and the used the Outdoor Survival tm map for this phase of the campaign when exiles from Blackmoor set up shop after the bad scene at Lake Gloomy."
This statement is what started me on the path to the publication of Points of Light and the inspiration for the name and the them of Southlands in the first release.

Also it brings back memories of all the "Bad Scenes" my own player caused that required a change in locale.

Then we come across a hand sketch by Dave of countryside around Blackmoor. He also make a note that in redrawing this for the map in First Fantasy Campaign that he redrew it to line up with Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The southwest corner of Blackmoor lines up with the northern border of the Valley of the Ancients.

Note that the map used the Mentzer Basic release of Blackmoor is virtually identical to the map in First Fantasy Campaign. It has color and a few cosmetic changes. I would say you can get the PDF to see the full map but the recent move by Wizards has precluded that.

[robertsconley]

After a cool little illo of a wizard blasting the hell of out of a fortress we start to learn about

Blackmoor's More Infamous Characters

Who makes this fearsome rogue's gallery?

The Egg of Coot, Ran of Ah Fooh, Gin of Salik, Marfeldt the Barbarian, the Duke of the Peaks, The Blue Rider, Mello and the Hobbits, of course the Great Svenny, and finally the Bishop. A Chief of the Nomad is mentioned but little is said other than he is fearsome beyond belief. He also known as THE Nomad.

There are some interesting tidbits in this section Of most interest to me are hints of the magic system Dave used. Which was apparently not Vancian.

From the Egg of Coot
Has a huge Laboratory that turns out spells, for selling, which are (of course) perfection itself (30% chance of failure per level of spell).
From the Ran of Ah Fooh
He also has a Spell Workshop that turns out one Level I spell a week, one Level II spell a month with one Level III spell as Year. These are portable but not reusable with only a 15% failure rate.
Sound like the early spell system was more akin to using scrolls then memorization.

For those of you without Chainmail there were originally 16 spells.

Complexity I
Darkness
Wizard Light

Complexity II
Detection
Levitate
Phantasmal Forces

Complexity III
Concealment
Haste
Protection from Evil (acted a force field against evil)
Slowness

Complexity IV
Confusion
Hallucinatory Terrain
Polymorph

Complexity V
Conjuration of an Elemental
Cloudkill

Complexity VI
Anti-Magic Shell
Moving Terrain

Plus every Wizard could throw a Fireball or Lightning Bolt every round.

Next we start to read about Blackmoor itself. We learn it has about 1,000 peasants, 100 Soldiers and Nobles, 4 Wizards, 1 Dragon, several Trolls, 100 Elves, and assorted Ents, Orcs, Dwarves, Werewolves, etc. We learn about Blackmoor Castle, The Pits, The Ruins, Wolf's Head Pass, and The Comeback Inn. An interesting comment is made about the Super Berry Woods where the Berrium Maximus lives in the next section about the Town of Blackmoor map.

Also there two illustrations; one of the Comeback Inn, and the other of the Main Gate to Blackmoor Castle. The town maps is one of the better early maps I seen. The most unusual feature is that the town plan is drawn 45 degrees to the grid.

Next we start reading about Blackmoor Castle, the Haunted Rooms, the Catacombs, the Tower, and then a more detailed list of the Haunted Rooms. The map shows the castle from the basement to the 5th floor. Again much of it drawn 45 degrees to the grid. This unusual mapping technique persists throughout many of the map shown in FFC.

[robertsconley]

After reading about Castle Blackmoor we wind up on page 23 in my printing. The next section is titled the Into the Great Outdoors.

We first start off with a little tidbit that they started using the Outdoor Survival Board after the first year but it wasn't until the third year of play they moved into it. He is goes on to describe the change to the game that resulted because of increasing wandering outdoors.

Next is a Encounter Matrix for Open, River, Mountain, Desert, Woods, Swamp. You rolled a d20 and a blank entry meant no encounter. This is followed by Avoiding Encounter rules.. a Map Movement Table, Some more travel rules, and a revised price list with a % Failure to Arrive column. Remember those Special Female Slaves you bought well you are facing at 82% chance of them failing to arrive.

Page 25 has two interesting sections. The first "Outdoors in Blackmoor" is detailed discussion of how a referee can judges outdoor travel and encounters. The second is about monster migrating back in after the hex is clear. In MMORPG term how to respawn them.

On the next page comes a section on Drawing your own Map. It somewhat basic but has some good tips in it. Finally on page 27 we get a few charts to help build our own maps including a neat breakdown of a hex into areas so you can roll percentile dice and see where stuff is at.

Finally we get to the Blackmoor Dungeons on Page 28. Now I don't know why it goes Castle, Outdoors, and Dungeons. It just how it is. We learn that the Dungeon was first established in the Winter and Spring of 1970 to 71. The remainder of the page gives some of the background of the dungeon and it's history both in-game and out-of-game. One thing we learn that levels 1 to 6 in FFC are not the original levels but switched over to using D&D because he uses them to run people at conventions. Level 7 to 9 however are original notes.

In quick succession he talks about Sir Fang, the Elves that took over the Castle, and Dungeon Map Notes. We also have a neat drawing by Ken Simpson of a forbidding door into one of the fouler areas of the dungeon.

Next comes a section called "Magic" Protection Point. Now for a long time this section and the sparseness of the following entries didn't make much sense. It wasn't until I was reading the various old school blogs that I finally had a good guess at what happening.

You see the old time referees were just as pressed for time as we are now. Even the more dedicated folks were running out of time because of all the games they were running. The dungeons were not keyed maps we see in commercial products. Near as I can tell basically at lot of the times they drew a map. Only keyed a handful of rooms and for the rest they relied on table or their judgement to stock what in them. This explains why we haven't seen virtually any of the really old dungeon ever published commercially. (Blackmoor, Greyhawk, El Raja Key, etc) because their format is nothing like the commercial dungeons that came later). If you look at the first commercial dungeons they invariably are drawn from tournament modules.

"magic" protection Points describes how Dave randomly stocked the rooms on the various levels. The actual dungeon descriptions from 30 to 33 are quite sparse. Consisting little more than a description of treasure, monsters, and one or two words. For example

3rd Level, Room 4, Mels Room Golden Statue (Boa), Mels Room 30 Zombies AC8, 8 HTK
5th Level, Room 18, 2000 Gp, "Evil" Area, 2 Permanent, 20 Wishes
When you get to levels 7 to 10 the descriptions change to even a sparser format. The format is Room #/Wealth/Protection in Points/(Magic)

7th level Room 10/2000 GP/200/10 Werewolves (Den, Garrows), (75)
9th level Room 29/--/7 Magic Arrows/"Man Easting Sea Weed" (150)

Page 34 has the 10th level , the Tunnel System key, and the key for the Glendower Dungeons. Pages 35 to 43 are maps for the dungeons most of which are drawn at 45 degrees to the grid.

[robertsconley]

The next section after the dungeons is Magic Swords & Matrix. Here Dave Arneson give a pair of tables to generate magic swords. The first 'Magic Swords Personality Matrix "Blackmoor" is a bit confusing. At the beginning there is are a list of entries

Number, Invisibility detection, Magic Detection, etc. Then the entries are labeled A to R, then Red, White, Blue, Purple, Green, Gold, Grey, Black, Maroon, Pink and Yellow.

A entry looks like this
'N' Double Values (4) Orcs, Trolls, Balrogs, Giants; Special values (5) Paralyze, Raise Morale II, Magic Detction II. Strength = +3; Combat=+2; Intelligence=+2; Values:440 GP
Now there could be one of two things going one. Either you draw the card and that the sword. Or you drew a card for each of the entries (Strength, Invisibility Detection, etc) and read the value for that entry from the card. Because of the GP printed on each card I think it is former.

Then we get to the Matrix which generates Magic Swords through a series of tables using percentile dice. Interesting that we have Holy Swords, Fighter's Swords, AND Magician's Sword. I guess we know how Dave dealt with the issue of Gandalf wielding a sword.

Reading this table versus the one in Monster & Treasure you can see the similarities. For example both have a Intelligence scale of 1 to 12. Both have similar percentage chances for alignment. The main difference is that Dave's tables run for two pages and seems to make more varied and powerful swords.

The next section is Gypsy Sayings & Chance Cards. Basically every month Dave would draw one from the deck and it's effect worked into the game. He would draw a year's worth so he can make a logical progression of events out of the random events.

For example #3 was
When three rule the land, the Dark Lord will come.
He notes that this referred to the fact that three players setup a committee to rule Blackmoor and his thought was that the Bad guys would think them too divided to put up effective resistance.

Then he gives a brief legend table and then a more extensive table called chance cards. His notes state that they represent "Strategic Encounters" for the Blackmoor area.

Next he talks about the Original Blackmoor Magic System. He says it was based on the Formula pattern for most magic. That magic-users were limited because they had to prepared the ingredients before entering the dungeons. Some spell had special ingredients that could only be found by adventuring. A magic-user only gained experienced if he casted spells. The magic-user's constitution also played a role in limiting the number of spells cast.

Next is a list of magical items with some whimsical items as a tricoder.

The next section is Special Interests. Basically Special Interests are things that character can spend gold in between adventures. Some of things that are talked about are Wine, Women, Song, Wealth, Fame, Religion, Hobby. He gives some charts and examples to help use the charts. This followed by a sub-section labeled "How to become a bad guy". It starts off about how Dave awarded XP and levels then eventually goes into Alignment changes.

Next are maps and a description of Svenson's Freehold. One of the more successful of Dave's players. After that is a section devoted to Richard Snider's Additions. Richard Snider (of Lords of Creation fame) was another early players and developed house rules for Dragons and misc subjects like Population, Wizardry Apprenticeships and so on.

Next Section is about Loch Gloomen which was of early importance as the players wore out their welcome Blackmoor.

I hate to say this but the last three pages are totally incoherent in organization or theme. I get the feeling that last pages of Dave's notes were being typed up in the order they were found.

The sections are (in order)

Bleakwood (Next to Bramwald) which give the interesting tidbit that some of the regions of Blackmoor were mapped out in a form a scale model suitable for miniature wargames.

Magical Items Summery.
A table involving Dragons and their treasure
(This page has a bad sketch of the city of Father Dragon. It looks like somebody made two circular wall in a sandtable, one inside another. the inner circle is filled with rocks mounted with a ball stuck on rod.)

Then we learn about Orcs, Isengarders, Bandits, Nomads, Trolls, Orges, Wights, True Trolls, Rocs, Tarns, Basiliks, Balrogs, and Giants.

Finally FFC concludes with a sketch made off of a photo of a scale model setup the town of Glendower. It was setup in the local hobby store.

[robertsconley]

My appreciation of the First Fantasy Campaign didn't really strike until a decade after I bought it. While I like the "window" it opened on the early days, as practical product it left a lot to be desired. But then after a few years of GMing I found myself with same collection of jumbled notes for the Majestic Wilderlands. They meander through different topics, most incomplete and sadly holes from lost fragments. After that realization I appreciated the First Fantasy Campaign a lot more.

The First Fantasy Campaign illustrates a theory of mine about why most of the classic dungeons were never published. If you look at the Blackmoor dungeons they appear little more than a sketch with a map. The key to how it worked is in the section on magical protection points which looked to be used by Dave and his co-DMs to "stock" levels. Only a few rooms were actually highlighted in detail. It appears to me that what happened was that as players roamed the map the referee making up the details with help from tables or "Magic Protection Point" guidelines. So Blackmoor is much fuller than it appears in First Fantasy Campaign.

Probably the clearest example of this style is the original Tegal Manor. You simply can't run that module without reading the notes on the map about the various rooms. If you try to run it with just what in the book the result is somewhat bland.

The module as we know it , came out of the need to run AD&D tournaments at conventions. If you look nearly all the oldest modules originated as tournament modules. They also had the advantage of being readily publishable as they already were formatted to be distributed among dozens of referees.

Because of this the layout of tournament modules became the style for nearly all published modules. Keyed maps with all the keys fleshed out in the text by the standards of that RPG. Today that philosophy has led to the encounter style format for 4th edition.

The advantages of the format of Tegal and Blackmoor is that the referee has a lot more creative freedom to interpret the dungeon while still saving him prep time. It is a more compact format which means in theory it can be as expansive as the AEG's World's Largest Dungeon but not be the World's Largest RPG Product. Replay value would be higher as referee rework the rooms after the PC clear them out.

Thinking about this causes me to wonder if the tournament style is the only format the modules could have taken. Certainly the presentation of Tegal Manor and the Blackmoor dungeon leave a lot to desired. But I think it could be vastly improved yet not lose it advantages. When I wrote Points of Light s I had improvements I wanted to add to the Wilderlands format to make more usable to the modern referee. Perhaps the same can be done for the module as well. I think this can cut across editions and apply equally well to OD&D, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.

[havard]

Great review/overview Rob!

Aug 19, 2013 7:23:59 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

Note that the map used the Mentzer Basic release of Blackmoor is virtually identical to the map in First Fantasy Campaign. It has color and a few cosmetic changes. I would say you can get the PDF to see the full map but the recent move by Wizards has precluded that.

Actually, DA2 Temple of the Frog has recently been returned in the PDF format.



-Havard

[jmccann]

Aug 19, 2013 14:31:52 GMT -6 havard said:

Great review/overview Rob!

Aug 19, 2013 7:23:59 GMT -6 robertsconley said:

Note that the map used the Mentzer Basic release of Blackmoor is virtually identical to the map in First Fantasy Campaign. It has color and a few cosmetic changes. I would say you can get the PDF to see the full map but the recent move by Wizards has precluded that.

Actually, DA2 Temple of the Frog has recently been returned in the PDF format.



-Havard

Havard, your link is broken.

It should read www.dndclassics.com/product/17128/DA2-The-Temple-of-the-Frog-%28Basic%29?it=1&filters=0_0_44699

[tec97]

Robert, this is a great summary of FFC. I've had this for a number of years (and scored it at a stupidly low price!), and I've appreciated it from the start. This is one of the most comprehensive breakdowns I've seen of the product. I will absolutely confess, I never thought to look at it through the OD&D lens - I probably should!

[Finarvyn]

A masterful series of posts, Rob. I'm going to copy-paste into a Word doc and add it to my FFC folder on my hard drive. Nice!

[Falconer]

Here is a review of FFC that I wrote, IIRC, back in 2003. Ten years ago — really?? Havard, in what context did we first get into contact? I believe there must have been a Blackmoor Yahoo Group at one time. Anyway, back then I was 90% interested in getting setting detail out of FFC, though the rules intrigued me. I wrote this for Havard and other fans of the DA modules who had never seen FFC before and weren’t aware that it is the mother-cache of Blackmoor goodness. So, it’s a very different (though not better) take than Rob’s above.

[havard]

Aug 20, 2013 10:32:08 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Here is a review of FFC that I wrote, IIRC, back in 2003. Ten years ago — really?? Havard, in what context did we first get into contact? I believe there must have been a Blackmoor Yahoo Group at one time. Anyway, back then I was 90% interested in getting setting detail out of FFC, though the rules intrigued me. I wrote this for Havard and other fans of the DA modules who had never seen FFC before and weren’t aware that it is the mother-cache of Blackmoor goodness. So, it’s a very different (though not better) take than Rob’s above.

There were a couple of mailinglists. Also, there were two versions of the ZGG forum. I don't remember when we first got in touch, but I think I may actually have contacted you through your website because of some interesting material you had up there. That could be the first time.

I did't have the FFC back then, but actually another Blackmoor fan sent me a copy. Blackmoor fans are the best!

-Havard

[Otto Harkaman]

Thanks, this is a great thread! Great breakdown of FFC!
You've given me a better understanding of the JG product plus enhanced my sense of D&D history.