My fondest memory of dear old Miskatonic University was spending hour after hour in the forbidden books section of the library.
@welovettrpgsАй бұрын
Cool. Thanks for covering this. I also need to check out "City of the Gods" published in 2008 by Harold Stroh.
@benstormrider7173Ай бұрын
Much thanks for putting this book on my radar! I've read the weird enclave and consider it on par with some of the better written living greyhawk regional guides. Bissel for example also gets very well developed and makes a great starting area for all PCs of the standard races and classes that way... I'm planning a Blackmoor in Greyhawk CY 380 with many NPCs from other Greyhawk areas, like the Company of Seven or some defectors from Keoland who don't wanna fight against other good aligned realms. So this book would be just the right one for me to read.
@roninwongfilms3605Ай бұрын
Great video! I have a lot of the Blackmoor stuff in my collection and I will be adding this book to it.
@Eastwood_RavineАй бұрын
I got it also as a companion book for the Tonisburg book I got awhile back.
@griffithmorgan4966Ай бұрын
I use the maps in Blackmoor Foundations to run my own Blackmoor Campaign. It's nice to finally publish it all so people can use those tools for their own games too.
@searchforsecretdoorsАй бұрын
I love this early history of D&D. I got to play a one-shot in the original Blackmoor castle at GaryCon this year. I have thought about running it for my table, but I've been assuming I would have to set it in Mystara. I like seeing it filled out for Greyhawk, like they originally intended.
@GreyhawkGrognardАй бұрын
Well... originally Blackmoor was its own thing. But yeah, bringing it into Greyhawk was from the beginning of the published version.
@griffithmorgan4966Ай бұрын
@@GreyhawkGrognard It's just so complicated because Gary had his Great Kingdom map first. He asked Arneson to think about where he wanted to put his domain and he chose the Northern Marches, meaning the northern frontier.
@HavardBlackmoorАй бұрын
Nice review! :)
@AtomicSnackBarАй бұрын
I must say, hats off to you, good sir. This was a nice mix of product review and history. And you're right, "City of the Gods" does sound quite a bit like "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks." I would be interested to know the story there and that timeline.
@DeLaMangaShoesАй бұрын
Have you addressed the "Dutchy of tehn being in both places? Was there a player in both games, who brought so much to the table? I have looked through old videos and came up blank. Great information as usual!
@GreyhawkGrognardАй бұрын
I mention the fact that there's a Ten/Tenh in both campaigns, but I don't go into the why of it. Gygax did say at one point that he just liked the name.
@troywilliams6694Ай бұрын
another awesome tshirt man
@hectorforth2671Ай бұрын
I love the history of the game
@OurenАй бұрын
Thanks for always doing videos!!
@kennetth1389Ай бұрын
For those interested in the very early roots of both Blackmoor and Greyhawk. 'Daddy rolled a 1' is a very, very good YT creator that goes into the beginnings of our hobby. Lots of information about the early days covering late '60s to mid ''80s.
@griffithmorgan4966Ай бұрын
He is good. I like him and enjoy chatting with him. His sources for his videos are Secrets of Blackmoor and the book being reviewed here. These are my movie and book which you can find at the tfott site.
@Andre99328Ай бұрын
Great video. I have Blackmoor definitely my to do list.
@weray7605Ай бұрын
Ugh, my LGS isn't carrying them and I want to peruse it before I buy. (Of course, if I buy it and don't really want to add it to my own library I can always give it to my friend for christmas!) .... Regarding "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks": My guess is that the letter reprinted in this book is more referring to St Stephen's ship crashing in Blackmoor. That seemed to be a trope, almost a cliche, in the early 70s in their Homegames, and when Gygax introduced it to the larger world in 1980, it seemed fresh and novel and even exotic -- but the original Homegames had done it to death in their own games. *!# But again, I'm just guessing, this.
@griffithmorgan4966Ай бұрын
There is a flip through video by upturned table on youtube - Griff
@alpot4065Ай бұрын
There is a flip through of the book at the Fellowship of the Thing website accessible via the links in video description.
@jasonjacobson1157Ай бұрын
There seem to have been 2 versions of the City of the Gods. In '76, Arneson ran Gygax's Mordenkainen & Kuntz's Robilar through it. It was a futuristic city populated with balrogs & robots in the tundra north of Blackmoor. Kuntz & Arneson wrote an account of that session in the Oerth Journal. The crashed spaceship version was published as a module by TSR in '86. It was statted for BECMI & set in the Known World because AD&D & Greyhawk were Gygax's children.
@williammeek7218Ай бұрын
The ruins of Blackmoor are in Greyhawk aren’t they Grognard?
@GreyhawkGrognardАй бұрын
Literally half the video talks about this very thing. 🙂
@Satori2046Ай бұрын
A bit pricy but damn will consider it. There's no epub version of it right ?
@GreyhawkGrognardАй бұрын
Not that I'm aware of.
@composedreamgames1919Ай бұрын
There's at least one member of The Fellowship of the Thing who is rather anti-pdf / epub. So rather unlikely.
@SteveBonarioАй бұрын
Sold out. :-( But found some for sale on Amazon.
@cyclonerangerАй бұрын
Shows as "In Stock" when I just checked. They must have noticed an error on their website :)
@MoragTong_Ай бұрын
Just bought one...
@griffithmorgan4966Ай бұрын
@@cycloneranger I've been getting trolled by people online saying our book is sold out. I have no idea where they think it is sold out. Griff
@BenjaminMarraАй бұрын
Very curious about this book. Thanks for reviewing it! Does it include any information about Arneson's system or mechanics for running Blackmoor?
@GreyhawkGrognardАй бұрын
No, it's mostly setting background. There are a couple of fine analyses of his rules out there, though. The names escape me at the moment, but I know I own two of them, somewhere on the shelf behind me. Maybe one of our more Blackmoor-savvy folks can help?
@BenjaminMarraАй бұрын
@@GreyhawkGrognard Cool. I'd love to know the names of those publications on his rules. I got the impression the Blackmoor Foundations book was more of a campaign setting book. Glad they took the time to put all of that material into one volume.
@GreyhawkGrognardАй бұрын
@@BenjaminMarra One of them is "Dragons at Dawn".
@composedreamgames1919Ай бұрын
@@GreyhawkGrognard You might be thinking of "Champions of Zed"? This takes the approach of a neutral editor taking both Gygax and Arneson's notes and carefully working up a synthesis. This is also by D.H. Boggs. ZED is Zero Edition Dungeoneering. There's a sort of version of this included in Tonisborg, but I found it much less interesting.
@GreyhawkGrognardАй бұрын
@@composedreamgames1919 Yes, that's the other one I was thinking of. Thanks!
@karlbolt7159Ай бұрын
Thanks Grognard! Bought The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons, can’t wait to read the Blackmoor supplement.
@sebbonxxsebbon6824Ай бұрын
Blackmoor should have been fully developed.
@griffithmorgan4966Ай бұрын
It was though. Arneson simply never wrote it all down. It was never fully created as a product is all.
@russellharrell274727 күн бұрын
@@griffithmorgan4966so never published in a playable format.
@geofftottenperthcoys9944Ай бұрын
May have to cough up the $60AUD for this.
@anthonyhargis6855Ай бұрын
To be honest, Blackmoor and Barrier Peaks are my least favorite. I'm not about SciFi, or Clockworks, being mixed in with my Sword & Sorcery. I kind of just pretend that those things don't exist in my Greyhawk. Not Blackmoor, mind you, just the clockworks aspect.
@sebbonxxsebbon6824Ай бұрын
I don't care for science fiction in my d&d either.
@anthonyhargis6855Ай бұрын
@@sebbonxxsebbon6824 I don't subscribe to the "primitives would mistake science for magic" argument.
@sebbonxxsebbon6824Ай бұрын
@@anthonyhargis6855 A Magic User character with an intelligence of 18 is a supergenius, hardly anything would escape them and the science would be known after a study period. It should be extremely difficult to play a character with 18 in intelligence or an 18 wisdom (or more!). They would be several steps ahead of most opponents.
@griffithmorgan4966Ай бұрын
I used to not want sci fi in my games. Then I tried it and described the sci fi like a medieval person would understand it. It made my games even cooler. i.e. a robot was a magic statue, etc.
@weray7605Ай бұрын
I always hated it, too. However.... At some point I just changed out SciFi with Spelljammer. Those Spelljammer ships, that Spelljammer Flavor -- it really is much more Fantasy than SciFi, and it works. .... One more note: Our Greyhawk Grognard host has shown some shade against Planescape because he feels there's a SciFi element. But it's 'critical' to point out that Planescape goes out of its way to say there should be NO overt elements of SciFi in Sigil. I think if you are diligent in making sure that the few Spelljammer elements that 'may' be interpreted as SciFi by your players are described accurately, it will have only the Flavor of Fantasy and not SciFi.