The First Fantasy Campaign - Playing Aid by Dave Arneson

[The Perilous Dreamer]

This is a handy way to do it, if you want to randomly generate your map although I prefer to just decide what goes where myself.

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Now under item four is a long detailed section of excellent advice and inspiration for making your map. Here a much abbreviated look at it:

Heavily Wooded - how to generate the percent wooded, the number of hills along with size and shape. Check for water and for human habitation.

Very Hilly - generate the number, size and shape of the hills, check for water, check for wooded, check for human habitation.

Wooded and Hilly - how to combine the previous two items.

Open Area - goes into all the different features as to what is present.

Swamp - check for presence of various features.

Rivers and Streams - flow towards coast or away, lake, swamp, larger lakes, lake outlets, spring fed, and other things.

You can of course work up similar things for Mountains, Desert, Tundra, High Plains, etc.

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Cities are surrounded by farms, out a little way will be walled cities and more farms and then villages (some Castles with Villages) and farms, then Hamlets and farms IMO all farms will be within range of a market where they can sell and buy or they can trade for items they need, but will be mostly self-sufficient.

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He talks about how to decide when there are ruins, and info about roads

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Summary of Population location.

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What to do when an encounter is indicated.

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The above chart has a lot of great information to help get you started.Wish I had had this when I started out.. Fortunately I had read a lot and had ideas from that and a ton of old movies, but still this would have given me a quick start.

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A blog comment made was

When I stumbled across it I found the chart on how to divide a hexagon into 100 subregions mind-blowing.

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Let us take a look at what Dave Arneson has to say about the:


He tells us that the Dungeon was established in the Winter and Spring of 1970-71 and these map cover the first five years. He says there have been many changes to the Dungeon.

Arneson himself said that Blackmoor was started during the Christmas Break 1970. At least two or three of his original players said the same thing, yet people want to pretend that it did not start until April 17th, 1971. I guess these people are just really invested in making the first day of Blackmoor my birthday April 17th.

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He then mentions that this map was specially marked to show the secret passages and a note about the stairways. Not all stairway connect tach level of the Dungeon.

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He then discusses two areas marked on the map. The "Fire Pits" and "Devil Fountains" and specific details about them.

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An explanation about why the Castle is shown as a blank. The Castle was destroyed and rebuilt twice. Sounds like nothing is off limits and "breaking" the game world is not a problem for Arneson.

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Here we learn that the first six levels as shown here are along "Official" D&D lines, but the last four levels are the originals. Which makes you want to study them to discern the differences. He mentions crazy characters, the "Orcian Way" and Sir Fang the Vampire. For some reason this bit "two Balrogs, six Wraiths, 200 Ghouls, 50 Ogres and 750 Orcs" cries out to be sung. Yeah, I know I am a bit strange. These are the remnants of King Funk's Orcs' Grand Army. Also noted are the features and hazards of the "Orcian Way."

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If the players ascend the stairway, the "Orcian Way," they find some really odd things and perhaps encounter the Great Kraken of the Bay. When I read this section I feel a great deal of appreciation for Dave's sense of humor which has so many parallels to my own. That room at the top of the stairs, I do things like that.

I am reminded of a descending stairway in a secret passage where the stairway disappears behind you as you descend and at the bottom is a small platform suspended over a bottomless chasm. Fifteen (15) feet away is another platform, beyond which is a door. All you have to do is get across the chasm to exit through
the door. While the platform you are standing on could disappear at any moment as the rear edge starts to fade out of existence.

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I am fond of doing things like this with plaques and runes craved into stone walls and such.

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It still claims its victims, yeah, the players keep going back to until they can claim victory.

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I love the way he interprets vampires, "his "traditional" Slavic Vampire (not Hollywood)." I also like the summon rats by the thousand thing too. "He travels at will through the numerous cracks and crevices in the Dungeon."

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Next up is all about the Elves running the care and protection of Castle Blackmoor and its defense.
1. Test of Purity to get past the barricade at the foot of the hill leading up to the Castle.
2. What is pretty much a tourist trap for the characters to empty their pockets, as well as, confuse them.

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3. Turnstyles to the Dungeon for a 1 GP admission fee. An Elven Tour that has since been canceled. You can sign the Adventurers Book.
4. The heavily guarded exit/entrances from the Dungeon. Holy Water Hoses.
(We need to secret of mass producing Holy Water. Pressurized Holy Water)

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Notes about the Dungeon Map.

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Here the map keys of two of the levels as a sample. see next post also

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Then here below are the maps of the two levels that correspond to the above keys.

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A lot people seem to find the diagonals to be odd and debate about why Dave Arneson used them. To that question I say why not? I used diagonals from the start myself. I also used spirals which is something that Dave Hargrave used in his Arduin campaign. I also used areas that were bigger on the inside, than they were on the outside. Sometimes two corridors occupied the same space without intersecting.

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One of the most striking things to me is how small the dungeons are. Prior to seeing them I assumed that it would be massive and it was a surprise when it was not. I was very surprised when I learned that many people limit the size of a level of a dungeon to one 8.5 x 11.0 sheet of paper. Limiting anything to one sheet of paper never occurred to me. My dungeon levels may occupy 40-50 sheets of paper per level. IIRC my smallest dungeon level is 9 sheets of paper. I like them massive, it well behooves the players to have a plan for exploring dungeons. Player should learn, at least IMC, to size rooms and areas up and spend time where is it warranted and cruise where it is not warranted.

Of course Greyhawk is also described as a mega dungeon and clearly, at least IMO, it is not.

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Gypsy Sayings and Chance Cards

Arneson writes:

To allow for Crystal Ball Gazing and the like, a set of Chance Cards was set up. Each month, one was drawn from the deck and it's affect was worked into the game. As Judge, I drew the cards one game year iin advance to allow for a logical progression of events.

As with most of the Blackmoor rules, it grew from a local need (Gypsy Sayings was first used in the 2nd year of the game) to Legends, most of which were self-explanatory, and the rest made up as I went along (and now, unfortunately, forgotten), and finally the Chance Cards.

It was the Chance Cards that allowed the Great Peasant Revolt and the Duchy of Ten Raid I mentioned earlier. These cards were only used after the 3rd year and generally only in the Outdoor Survival section of the campaign.

Perhaps you have heard of a living campaign? These things are part of a living campaign. In a living campaign things happen all the time, regardless of whether or not the players are present or involved. Although the players may choose to become involved, the event flow on regardless.