Retrospective: Adventures in Blackmoor

I'm not ashamed to admit that, when I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons, I barely recognized the name of Dave Arneson. Certainly, his name appeared prominently on the inside front page of the Basic Set I first owned, but, for some reason, it never really registered with me. That probably has something to do with the fact that, in the pages of Dragon and elsewhere, Gary Gygax was the spokesman and face of all things D&D. Arneson was relegated to little mentions here and there, if at all. 

Consequently, I was somewhat surprised when I saw an advertisement for the Origins Game Fair in 1983 that announced that the convention's guest of honor was Dave Arneson, "co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons games." After my initial bafflement wore off – after all, Gary Gygax was the creator of D&D, right? – I recalled seeing Arneson's name and started asking some of the older guys I knew about this mysterious Arneson fellow and why I'd never noticed his name before. 

This being before the Internet, precise information was hard to come by. Instead, I got hearsay and innuendo about a falling out between Arneson and Gygax, former friends and colleagues, a lawsuit, and more. It was all vague and unclear but it was my first sense that the history of D&D was a lot more complicated than I had believed. The game had not sprung fully-formed from the head of Gary Gygax but may have, in fact, involved others, such as this Dave Arneson fellow. I had to content myself with such fragmentary evidence for years. It was only when I obtained a copy of Supplement II: Blackmoor that I gained some confirmation of the story. Reading Gygax's effusive praise of Arneson in the foreword to that work made it clear that, at one time, the two men had indeed been friends and collaborators. Exactly what had sundered their relationship, I did not yet know – and wouldn't for many years – but I now knew it was true.

Around the same time, TSR began to publish the "DA" series of adventure modules for the Dungeons & Dragons line, the first of which was entitled Adventures in Blackmoor. I, of course, knew the name Blackmoor already, both from the OD&D supplement I had acquired just previously but also from the World of Greyhawk setting, which featured a Barony of Blackmoor in the far northwest of the Flanaess. This new module didn't seem to have any connection to Greyhawk, but the cover, depicting some frightful retro-tech machine with the face of a bull, intrigued me and I bought a copy. 

I was immediately enthralled. Though the 64-page module did include an adventure intended to introduce the characters to Blackmoor (here depicted as having existed 3000 years in the past of TSR's Known World setting), it was the gazetteer and sourcebook of the Northlands that was vastly more interesting to me. Here was, I had just learned, the first setting for fantasy roleplaying, and it was quite different from any of the D&D settings I'd previously seen. I already knew from Supplement II that Blackmoor included science fictional elements, much like Gygax's own Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Arneson's "Temple of the Frog" adventure from that book included an alien being – Stephen the Rock – genetic engineering, high-tech weapons and armor, and more. So, seeing that weird Jeff Easley cover piqued my interest mightily.

The appearance of Adventures in Blackmoor seemed to coincide with the departure of Gary Gygax from TSR and I doubt that was coincidental. That said, the module is fascinating in its own right, in that we get we get a decent amount of information about the Kingdom of Blackmoor, its history, present political situation, and notable personages, albeit through the lens of Frank Mentzer's D&D revision and the burgeoning Known World setting (later to be redubbed Mystara). The map by Tom Darden, depicting the Northlands, was, for me, the crown jewel of this module and I pored over it for many hours, pondering its many evocative place names (as well as noticing commonalities with names from Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk, such as the Duchy of Ten(h)). 

What Adventures in Blackmoor did was make me much more aware of and interested in the early history of Dungeons & Dragons and of the RPG hobby in general. Consequently, I have very fond feelings about this module and keep it within arm's length of my writing desk. It and two of its three sequels – I never owned The Duchy of Ten, alas – are among my favorite TSR products from the the late 1980s. If anything, my warm feelings toward them have only grown.