Hey, wanna catch up on past posts about Fantasy Commander, my attempt at a Blackmoore-esque game with a terrible title? Find them here.
Going into this project, I have a few definitive sources that have inspired it – some of which will be quite obvious.
While my goal is not to slavishly recreate a game of the past, I do think that Blackmoore is a niche of game that doesn’t currently have a successor. This might be ignorance on my part, but I think it’s a play space that is currently largely unexplored.
I do want to catch the spirit of the game, however, in a similar way that OSR games catch the spirit of their predecessor. It isn’t the game it’s based on, but it is a love letter to it and an exploration of a different path of it’s evolution.
In other words, we all know that Blackmoore became D&D, but what if it didn’t? What if it became something else?
These are the sources I’ll mainly be drawing from. If you have ideas of other things I should look into, please hit reply and let me know!
Yes, this is the obvious one. The First Fantasy Campaign was published my Judges Guild and are a compilation of Dave Arneson’s notes about Blackmoore. I am coming into this work with a bias from reading accounts of the actual playing of the game, which I believe will be an asset, not a detriment.
This book is out of print and expensive. There isn’t a way to buy a PDF of it. I’ve only ever seen it on Ebay.
I want to go on record saying I did not find a pirated copy on the internet and send it off to be printed at my local Staples.
Blackmoore likely would never have happened without Chainmail. Chainmail was Gary Gygax’s rules for fantasy wargaming. If you look though The First Fantasy Campaign, you’ll notice there’s no rules for battle resolution. That’s because that was all in Chainmail.
As the game is not focused on Tactics in mass battles, I imagine it won’t be used as much, but it seems important to include in the source material, as it was instrumental in the creation of Blackmoore and D&D.
Cataphract reignited my interest in this project and gave me some answers. Created by Sam Sorenson, Cataphract is a wargame he created to be played in Discord with a focus on operations as opposed to tactics. He has a series of design diaries that explains a lot of the process and theory behind it.
Cataphract plays heavily with the fog of war, making that the exciting part of the game.
This one is very much a maybe. Fantastic Fantasy Campaigns was (written? Compiled? Created?) by Traverse Fantasy. it is a retelling of the original published version of DnD along with chainmail.
Admittedly, this is a game that came after Blackmoore, so it’s influence will likely be minimal, but it might offer some insight into how chainmail connected with that early version of the game. I’ll keep it on my desk in case I need it.
This is my own work that was meant to be a massive hexcrawl/ dungeon crawl on a frozen island. There are numerous PC factions, all of which colonizers to some degree.
When I stepped away form it, there were 260 dungeon rooms and a like amount of hexes. The goal is for this system to host this campaign world. In turn, Ice Caves will need a lot of rearranging and rewriting as well to fit this new format. In some ways, however, I think this was the game I was trying to make it back then.
I bet some of you out there have ideas about what else should be included here. I may be forgetting some seminal works, but it’s also possible that I just don’t know about them. Leave me a comment below.
Talk soon,
-James
TAGS: Game Theory, GM Tips, Dungeons, Fantasy Commander
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Four new sets of wooden minis are here!
Click below to get to the campaign. We’re giving away a bunch of minis and other things to our backers!
A light-hearted, demonic portal crawl between worlds for low level characters.
Grab the coolest wooden minis, dripping with old school cool. Live on Kickstarter!
Bones. So many bones. How many people have been buried here?
You find a rusty long sword and a small, golden vulture head worth 250 gp.
The sand here on the edge of the sacrificial ground is loose and looks recently churned.
The Vulture Priests are the enemy of knowledge and enlightenment. They seek to bring the eternal silence, the end of all things. Decay and obedience is their only god.
Armor Class 6 [13]
Hit Dice 1 (4hp)
Attacks 1 × Beak (1d4 or by weapon)
THAC0 19 [0]
Movement 120’ (40’)
Saving Throws D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (1)
Morale 8 (11 when at their temple)
Alignment Lawful
XP 10
Number Appearing 2d4 (1d6 × 10)
Treasure Type D
Immune to the Divine: The spells and powers of clerics and paladins have no effect on them.
Weapons: They frequently use wickedly curved daggers, which they use for sacrificial purposes.
Soul Clouders: There is a 10% chance that any Vulture Priest can use the sleep spell once per day. The targets are still awake, but they are beset by such a deep depression that it has the same effect as sleep. They may only watch what unfurls around them.
