The First Fantasy Campaign - Playing Aid by Dave Arneson

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Thus starts off The First Fantasy Campaign subtitled Playing Aid by Dave Arneson. IIRC the light background in the above picture is a fire elemental burning up the country side. I will do most of my commentary on the 1980 printing and will come back to the original version with the larger print later on. If you have the following cover image you do not have a first printing. This cover is in color and is virtually unreadable for those like myself who are color blind.



I am using this copy simply because with smaller print and a tighter layout it is easier to use, but I will later on show you the 1st print too. These days with my eyesight declining the 1st print is much easier to read as the print is noticeably larger. This document was first printed in 1977 and the images above are from the 1980 3rd printing.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Here is the Table of Contents and let me say again, how much I wish I had been able to know about and obtain back in 1977 instead of around 2010.



These are the things that I plan to discuss over the next few weeks and I will also dip into Adventures In Fantasy another version of Blackmoor that Dave Arneson and his friend Richard Snider published.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

**Comments made at the blog:

Regarding the cover - does the Acaeum has it wrong, then? www.acaeum.com/jg/Item0037.html. I recall some comments that with each subsequent print the color on the cover got worse. I also recall that black and white image from a title page. Was there indeed an earlier print with a b-w cover only?

Yes, you are correct. Although it does not happen very often, sometimes the Acaeum does get it wrong and the first print is entirely black and white. On a true first print the black and white image that appears on a title page in the later printings was the cover on the first print.

I provided the following information for the Wikipedia page.

"1st Printing (1977): The Cover and entire booklet are Black and White. The Cover says "The First Fantasy Campaign Playing Aid" with Playing Aid as a subtitle. A large mostly circular picture with Trees in the foreground and a Fire Elemental in the background below which it says "by Dave Arneson" and "Judges Guild". There is no other verbiage on the cover and the price does not appear on the cover. The Back Cover has a product list titled "Booty List" with the highest number being 35 and "New Non-Sub Items" listing product numbers 36-39. It comes with the first printing of the First Fantasy Campaign Maps. This book consists of 92 numbered pages plus the cover, inside cover, back cover and Table of Contents for a total of 96 total pages. The dark red cover was used for the reformatted later printings that used a smaller font and fewer pages."

Thanks! I'm back home so I could have a look at my copy. It's exactly what you describe - the number of pages, booty list items and so on - but with the stock cover (large price tag, no "second print" note). it matches what the Acaeum describes as a first printing. So it appears that there might have been something between the first b&w printing and the second printing with an updated booty list and a slightly redesigned cover. Good to know.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Starting off we have the Forward (Foreward) by Bob Bledsaw (Senior).

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Bob, Sr addresses the fact that this work is not some slick highly polished item, calling it an "unpolished gem that preserves the feel and wonder of its unveiling." I agree with him that it is to our benefit that it is unpolished, because polishing would have destroyed its value and ruined it as a source of inspiration. Contrary to the view of many I disagree that polishing RPG products is a virtue. I think it generally is to the detriment of whatever is being published. When you polish these types of products you sanitize them of the good parts where inspiration abides.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

As an example, let us take apple cider vinegar with the "mother". What is the "mother?"

In food or drink recipes though, I always use an organic and unrefined version of apple cider vinegar with “the Mother.” Over the years, my mentions of “vinegar with the mother,” have gotten a lot of questions. Readers ask what “the mother” means and how to find it, so I wanted to fully explain exactly what it is and why it is important.

In short, it is apple cider vinegar that still has the culture of beneficial bacteria that turns regular apple cider into vinegar in the first place. This is similar to the SCOBY (also called a “mother”) in Kombucha making. In ACV particularly, “the mother” is a complex structure of beneficial acids that seem to have health benefits. Unrefined vinegars have a murky appearance and typically still contain the mother culture. Clear and pasteurized vinegars typically do not contain the mother culture and don’t carry the same benefits.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

The First Fantasy Campaign contains the "mother", whereas many or most RPG products are "clear and pasteurized" and have lost the benefits of the raw and unrefined product.

For example we have all of these "clones" and many are quite good, but for some of us, even the best ones (the ones that we recommend) lack something and you cannot quite put your finger on it, but this is what it is, even the best ones are lacking the "mother." They have been polished and pasteurized and sanitized until the "mother" is gone.Whose fault is that? IMO that is a feature of the OGL. Using the OGL is the thing that strips the "mother" out of the item. So the question arises, can you use the OGL and still keep the "mother" in your game?

** A lot has happened with the OGL since I wrote this back in 2020. I am of the opinion that keeping the "mother" is extremely difficult to do without doing something original when it comes to games.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

So IMO Dave Arneson succeeded in keeping the good stuff for this book, he kept the "mother." I think the fact that there is not a lot in the way of mechanics in this book is a good thing. While many would have loved to have seen Dave Arneson's mechanics spelled out in detail (including me), I think he correctly judged that the mechanics are for the most part, irrelevant.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Here Arneson talks about how it began, how it expanded and grew and the heights it reached. Think about this - one setting and six dungeons/six campaigns with six judges/referees all be coordinated by Arneson. Over 100 detailed player characters active. He laments that there is more than enough for the players to do, but they are talking about visiting the Egg of Coot. As a side note, the Egg of Coot is mentioned in the Forwad(sic) of Men & Magic in OD&D published in January 1974 by Gary Gygax which was way before Arneson and Gygax had their following out. That, in and of itself, should have put the urban legend that the "Egg of Coot" was Gygax, to death. But that falsehood stubbornly lingers on and is repeated every now and again. (often by people who should and sometimes do know better)

[The Perilous Dreamer]

If anyone has ever run a shared world with other referees, his statement about having each area mesh with the areas around it should bring up memories. He further says that his experience with running a wargames campaign tipped him off that the shared world would need an Overall Background as a framework for each referee to build off of. He goes on to talk about a master villain - the Evil Egg of Coot and a competitor -the Great Kingdom. This background did not have to be extensive to begin with and grew as the setting grew.

Here in just the first two paragraphs of the Introduction Arneson is giving World Building and Dungeon Building advice and touting the benefits of it. Opportunities arise quickly as a greater variety of monsters and more granularity of the monsters and he says "certainly a a deeper dungeon.' Just two paragraphs in he has already covered a lot of territory.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

So now he continues with how the game is growing, different types of Dragons by Size and other new mythological creatures. He looked at the their hides, scales so forth, how impervious they were according to mythology and so on to determine AC and Hit Points. He talks about the same regarding Giant Insects. Giant Insects and Giant Monsters being a regular trope of the Science Fiction movies that he loved to watch. I remember watching those same movies myself being only a few years younger than Arneson.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

To name just a few of the movies that I watched and that Arneson most likely watched over a period of years leading up to Blackmoor:

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
It Came from Outer Space
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Gojira
Them!
It Came from Beneath the Sea
Forbidden Planet
Attack of the Crab Monsters
The Black Scorpion
The Cyclops
The Deadly Mantis
The Blob
Earth vs. the Spider
The Fly
Frankenstein 1970
Attack of the Giant Leeches
Return of the Fly
Mothra

While I cannot prove that Arneson saw all of these films, I regard it as highly unlikely that he did not. These films and many like them were all over TV during the late 1960s and the early 1970s.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

It struck me as odd, when I first saw his note about Character Motivation and that he solved it by not granting Experience Points until you spent money on your area(s) of interest. That also apparently introducted all kinds of complications for the players. The thing that struck me as odd was that I and those I gamed with in 1975-1979 never needed any help with Movtivation and I was always surprised to read of those that did need help with that and I was a bit shocked that it was a thing from the very beginning. It is still something that is beyond my comprehension that Character Motivation is not an automatic no-brainer for everyone.

But a lot of people struggle with boredom and I have never been bored in my life. I cannot comprehend boredom, I wonder what that must be like for people. With the self-quarantine of the China Virus of 2020, I am here alone in my home and yet I literally do not have time to be bored. I have trouble getting enough sleep, because (as has been the case my entire life) there are just not enough hours in the day. The dialogue in my head runs every waking moment. I accept that all these things apply to most people, I just do not understand it.

The above and most everything in this thread was written in 2020.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

He talks about combat - simple then progressively more complicated as players rolled for their stats. As you went up in levels hit points did not increase, but you got harder to hit. I have toyed around with that idea, but have never implemented it, though I may yet do so. But even if you were Hit during combat, you got a Saving Throw and so might not receive damage from the Hit. Hit Location, height differentiation. Only in man to man combat were all the bells and whistles used, this allowed play to move faster, though to the disadvantage of the monsters.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

He says here "by the end of the fourth year of continuous play Blackmoor covered hundreds of square miles, had a dozen castles, and three separate judges..." He goes on to say by that time it could run itself and keep more than 100 people and a dozen judges busy. Having over 100 people and co-judges/referees in your campaign, must have been an awesome thing. Now eleven years after Dave Arneson passed away, his players still gather and play Blackmoor.

Now 14 years.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Now as Dave Arneson begins with Blackmoor and describes how it grew and refers to other areas on the map that were the various wargames at the time. We find out that he is going to summarize Part A, Scenario III, the write up of the first two having been lost. At this time he is writing about 7 years after the beginning had first happened.

This is the Great Invasion a war between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. So he lays out the disposition of the various factions. Each group has Army Points, an Alignment for each of the four seasons, their quarterly income and the Special Characters that each group had.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

The Evil Forces are comprised of the Egg of Coot, the Duchy of Ten, the Nomads of Ten, the Men of Maus and Monk's Vikings.

The Neutral Forces are comprised of Loch Gloomen, Sage's Tower, Tower of Booh, Blackmoor, Wizard of Mi-Karr and Regent of the Mines.

The Good Forces are comprised of Earl of Vestfold, Northern Lands, Horsemen of Peshwah, Bramwald, Glendower, Boggy Bottom, Wizard of the Wood, Monks of the Swamp and the Great Kingdom.

I hope I am not the only one that was really surprised that Blackmoor was part of the Neutral Forces instead of the Good Forces.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

So following the notes you can see how these forces interacted over the course of the year in each of the four seasons. Of course the invader had a concentration of fources initially and as the year progressed the defender where able to bring forces to bear in relief of those units initially attacked. He summarizes it this way.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Then he lays it out thusly:

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Next he uses a series of tables to explain how each individual force contained within each of the three large groupings above were arrived at. Each individual force had a certain amount of funds available and so he determined how those funds would or could be spent and the armies were created. A few examples out of a larger number follow:

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You can see that there is a lot that is not in OD&D.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Remember this is only a little of the whole that is on several pages here in our document. So virtually all of the "domain" game stuff was created and spelled out by Arneson in Blackmoor. I would hazard a guess that a lot of this was derived from the wargames that were widely played in the Twin Cities in the time leading up to Blackmoor and then tweaked and revised for the various scenarios that we played out in early Blackmoor. Once you get a copy of The First Fantasy Campaign you can really flesh out the domain part of OD&D if your players are interested in that part of the of the game.

Remember that all parts of the game, were present in Blackmoor simultaneously from the beginning. The domain part did not wait till the players were high level, but were part of the game at low level. That is all very appealing to me.

Again as I previously mentioned, I really wish I had known about and obtained this document back in 1977 instead of over 30 years later.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

David A. Wesely made the following comment at the blog.

While I was off in the Army when Dave started Blackmoor, I think I can identify some of the players in this from their "titles": Earl of Vestfold would be Greg Svenson. Horsemen of Peshwah would be Ken Shepro. I was running the India branch of Dave's Napoleonic campaign, at Johns Hopkins. JH is close to Aberdeen Proving Ground, where I was stationed, and on my weekends I was driving down there for gaming. Ken Shepro, one of the JH students was the Peshwa of Poona in that campaign. That connection implies that this Blackmoor campaign was being run sometime in 1972 as I started the India campaign at JH in Fall 71 and was sent to Alaska in Dec 72]. Bramwald would be Duane Jenkins who was a Dark Shadows/Dracula fan. Wizard of the Wood was Peter Gaylord. Monks of the Swamp may have been Steve Rocheford who I remember as the High Priest of the Temple of the Frog. This brings back such memories...

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Above is one of the early expansions of the campaign map. Blackmoor is at the center of the map and is a nexus for travel through the area.

[oldskolgmr]

This is awesome stuff PD. I EXALT you!
Is this an edit of a previous post? I will have to read more carefully, I suppose.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Apr 13, 2023 14:24:13 GMT -5 oldskolgmr said:

This is awesome stuff PD. I EXALT you!
Is this an edit of a previous post? I will have to read more carefully, I suppose.

Thank you!

This is from the series I did on my blog in 2020 during the lockdowns. I may put in slight edits here and there and also add comments now and then. But for the most part it is just the series from the blog.

[The Semi-Retired Gamer]

This is fascinating!