Book Review: Blackmoor Foundations

[@barryaloisi7397]

My fondest memory of dear old Miskatonic University was spending hour after hour in the forbidden books section of the library.

[@welovettrpgs]

Cool. Thanks for covering this. I also need to check out "City of the Gods" published in 2008 by Harold Stroh.

[@benstormrider7173]

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.

[@roninwongfilms3605]

Great video! I have a lot of the Blackmoor stuff in my collection and I will be adding this book to it.

[@Eastwood_Ravine]

I got it also as a companion book for the Tonisburg book I got awhile back.

[@griffithmorgan4966]

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.

[@searchforsecretdoors]

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.

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

Well... originally Blackmoor was its own thing. But yeah, bringing it into Greyhawk was from the beginning of the published version.

[@griffithmorgan4966]

@@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.

[@HavardBlackmoor]

Nice review! :)

[@AtomicSnackBar]

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.

[@DeLaMangaShoes]

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!

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

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.

[@troywilliams6694]

another awesome tshirt man

[@hectorforth2671]

I love the history of the game

[@Ouren]

Thanks for always doing videos!!

[@kennetth1389]

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.

[@griffithmorgan4966]

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.

[@Andre99328]

Great video. I have Blackmoor definitely my to do list.

[@weray7605]

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.

[@griffithmorgan4966]

There is a flip through video by upturned table on youtube - Griff

[@alpot4065]

There is a flip through of the book at the Fellowship of the Thing website accessible via the links in video description.

[@jasonjacobson1157]

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.

[@williammeek7218]

The ruins of Blackmoor are in Greyhawk aren’t they Grognard?

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

Literally half the video talks about this very thing. 🙂

[@Satori2046]

A bit pricy but damn will consider it. There's no epub version of it right ?

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

Not that I'm aware of.

[@composedreamgames1919]

There's at least one member of The Fellowship of the Thing who is rather anti-pdf / epub. So rather unlikely.

[@SteveBonario]

Sold out. :-( But found some for sale on Amazon.

[@cycloneranger]

Shows as "In Stock" when I just checked. They must have noticed an error on their website :)

[@MoragTong_]

Just bought one...

[@griffithmorgan4966]

@@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

[@BenjaminMarra]

Very curious about this book. Thanks for reviewing it! Does it include any information about Arneson's system or mechanics for running Blackmoor?

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

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?

[@BenjaminMarra]

@@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.

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

@@BenjaminMarra One of them is "Dragons at Dawn".

[@composedreamgames1919]

@@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.

[@GreyhawkGrognard]

@@composedreamgames1919 Yes, that's the other one I was thinking of. Thanks!

[@karlbolt7159]

Thanks Grognard! Bought The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons, can’t wait to read the Blackmoor supplement.

[@sebbonxxsebbon6824]

Blackmoor should have been fully developed.

[@griffithmorgan4966]

It was though. Arneson simply never wrote it all down. It was never fully created as a product is all.

[@russellharrell2747]

@@griffithmorgan4966so never published in a playable format.

[@geofftottenperthcoys9944]

May have to cough up the $60AUD for this.

[@anthonyhargis6855]

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.

[@sebbonxxsebbon6824]

I don't care for science fiction in my d&d either.

[@anthonyhargis6855]

@@sebbonxxsebbon6824 I don't subscribe to the "primitives would mistake science for magic" argument.

[@sebbonxxsebbon6824]

@@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.

[@griffithmorgan4966]

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.

[@weray7605]

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.

[@stevestumpy6873]

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