Dave Arneson, Blackmoor and Me! (1 Viewer)

[Spinachcat]

Two weeks ago was the ConQuest San Francisco convention and this is an email I sent a buddy on Saturday night. I was planning on posting something more coherent on RPG.net, but tough shit, you get this instead.

I just got home after playing Blackmoor D&D with Dave Arneson for five hours.

It was sweet and EXTREMELY educational. My inner gamer archeologist is about to explode. I picked his brain both in and out of game. FASCINATING.

It also cost me $80 bucks. It was worth every cent. Best money I've spent in years.

Here's a fun story. Dave tells us he was gaming with "a certain well known game designer" for the first time in his Blackmoor campaign and this guy backstabbed his own son's character for no reason. Dave says that in retrospect he should have paid more attention to that event.

Here's his thoughts on GMs. "If the players don't amuse the GM, then the GM will amuse himself at their expense."

Dave runs Blackmoor...not just the setting, but the game system he designed sans Gygax. It was proto-D&D but quite different.

1) THAC0 is about rolling UNDER not equal or over. So if you had a THAC0 13, you needed to roll 13 or less to hit. 1s are crits and 20s are fumbles. Attacking corresponded to your other ability / skill rolls.

2) Saving Throws did not exist. Instead of rolling the die, you had to defend to the other player via a short story WHY your character would survive what was coming at him. The player's voted and the DM was the tie-breaker.

3) SciFi / Fantasy blending was the genre. As one player put it, it was D&D meets Naked Lunch.

4) It was SO not Tolkein and not the pseudo-medieval Greyhawk. The world was odd and tweaked where magic was used to emulate technology in many aspects, but unlike the "logic" of steampunk science, this was a world were you could just cast spells to do stuff where nobody really understands the magic they wield.

5) Alignments changed DURING play based on actions. It was Lawful, Chaotic or Neutral which Dave called Selfish...

6) The +X on a magic sword represents the amount of positive magical energy in that weapon. When you meet a AC -3 creature, you need to make your THAC0 roll and you must have a +3 weapon because you need that much "positive" magic to counter the "negative" magic that protects that creature - thereby allowing your physical weapon to hurt things like ghosts and stuff. Part of going into dungeons was to retreive these things and most monsters would not weild magic items because they were "positive" magic.

7) Here's XP. If you survive an adventure, you gain a level. BAM. The world is strange, random and dangerous so power was there for those who dared, but so was death.

8) Roleplaying was just that. You were judged based how well you played your role of elf, dwarf, cleric, mage, fighter or thief. It was like, we all know about Hamlet so show us your Hamlet interpretation. The goal was to work within the cliche.

9) Everyone has Cleave. If you kill a monster, you get a free attack. And this was Melee or Ranged as long as you had the ammo.

10) We had a Caller / Leader. Yeah, we had a Leader who made large scale party decisions / story decisions and sometimes even allowed us to vote on stuff. It was ODD, but Dave says this is our character's leader regardless of our player thoughts.

It was based on Charisma...so we followed a Wis 8, Int 10, Cha 14 Thief. Talk about NOT a dump stat.

BTW, Dave gives out "roleplaying points" in game that you can trade in for re-rolls.

As someone who has played D&D since October 1979, this was an awesome experience to game with the dude who made D&D. There were 8 players at the game and seats were won through a silent auction. All proceeds went to the Paralyzed Veterans of America so it was a good cause.

As for the actual adventure, we went to investigate a town abandoned 30 years ago due to goblin raids where there were rumors of gigantic bugs. Fun stuff and I was the only character who died. But I died by breaking a Staff of Power while surrounded by 200 orcs, vampires and a giant so I was more than thrilled!

BTW, here's a hint if you ever play with Dave. Dave lets the players pick a mission for their adventure. When you complete the mission by returning back to town, the adventure is over. Therefore, if you want to keep playing with Dave, all you gotta do is delay going back to town...

 

[komradebob]

I don't think I could possibly be more jealous right now.

 

[Melkor]

Cool stuff. Thanks for the recap.

What did he say about the D20 version of Blackmoor ?

 

[TristanH]

What's that thread? Opening scene that would hook you from the beginning?

"Dave Arenson's running Blackmoor" Yeah, that'll do it.

Really. I'm green at the moment. Good stuff, thanks for the notes and recap!

 

[Spinachcat]

What did he say about the D20 version of Blackmoor ?

We talked about the Blackmoor MMRPG which is a huge RPGA-style living campaign using the D20 rules. They have the rules for character creation and a bunch of scenarios at ww.dablackmoor.com

Also, he talked about the new Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor book based on his original hand-written notes from the ancient day. Here's the blurb.

The Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor
(Item# ZTG4505)

Revisit the most classic dungeon crawl of all time! The Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor will take adventurers on a journey through the dungeon that started the roleplaying game genre! The Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor details the 20 known levels of the dungeon including the first 10 levels as originally created by Dave Arneson himself. Designed to scale with varying party sizes and power levels, this incredible dungeon includes adventure material for characters level 1-20. Classic styled maps and artwork make this book a great nostalgia piece and an excellent tie in for new adventurers to Blackmoor! Take your party back to the birthplace of RPGs for an incredible adventure through The Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor! 304 Pages, Softcover

 

[Akrasia]

Congrats on the experience!

I have to say that I'm rather intrigued by the 'Blackmoor' FRPG system you mention. I wish it had been published, or more details were available somewhere.

 

[Madeline]

My friend was in that game, too! I think I heard afterwards about your character's impressive death, Spinachcat. Way to go!

I wandered by on break from Pulp Hero to get dinner at the stand, and took a photo because I knew my friend would want one. Lemme guess... You're the guy where we can only see the back of your head, but your hair is less than an inch long?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/69989283@N00/243640197/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/88/243640197_85efbeed2f.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Dave Arneson GMing Blackmoor at ConQuest 2006" /></a>

The original is 2592x1944, and I'll email it to you if you want. I don't know why Flickr maxes out at 1024x768... Ahwell, probably big enough to see if you want it.

 

[Anatosuchus]

The original is 2592x1944, and I'll email it to you if you want. I don't know why Flickr maxes out at 1024x768...

OT I know, but I think you need a pro (i.e. paid for) account to get flickr to manage your images at full size.

 

[MonsterMash]

I envy you so much now Spinachcat! Need a green with envy emoticon.

 

[Slushie Mandrake]

Cool report, espicially that bit about saving throws was particulary interesting, flexible rules based on storytelling where not what I expected to hear from the other grandad of RPG's.