Blackmoor
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Role playing
Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting originally created in the early 1970s by Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. Blackmoor is the longest continuously played fantasy role-playing campaign in existence. It is a mysterious land filled with relics of the past in the form of highly advanced technology mingled with sword and sorcery
Original
The original Blackmoor was published by Tactical Studies Rules (TSR) in 1975 in booklet form. As the second supplement to D&D (the first being Greyhawk) it added rules, monsters, treasure, and the "Temple of the Frog" scenario.
Additional character classes:
- Assassin - thief sub-class
- Monk - "Monastic Martial Arts", cleric sub-class, attributes of thief and fighter classes
Blackmoor added a hit location system whereby regions of a character's body were assigned their own hit points (HP). If any of the specific regions 'died', the character would be crippled or killed. Therefore, vulnerable areas such as the head had fewer HP and less critical ones such as the legs might have as many HP as the character itself. These rules covered a wide variety of creatures, from humanoids to fish.
Characters had a greater chance to hit another character's upper-body than the head or lower-body. This chance was adjusted based on the character's height and weapon reach.
Blackmoor featured underwater adventures. The supplement described rules for swimming (such as equipment weight restrictions, having free hands, etc.) and weapons use (few missile weapons, electrical attacks, no fire, etc.). Blackmoor provided numerous water-dwelling monsters and useful equipment to populate these adventures.
Lastly, Blackmoor added guidelines for handling of character diseases.
Expansion Modules
In the 1980's the Blackmoor setting was expanded through the DA series of modules, which were officially set in the Mystara campaign world. The modules featured a party of adventurers travelling into the past to visit Blackmoor. Later Mystara products made further references to Blackmoor, making it an integral part of the setting.
| Code | Title | Sample Cover |
|---|---|---|
| DA1 | Adventures in Blackmoor |  |
| DA2 | Temple of the Frog | |
| DA3 | City of the Gods | |
| DA4 | Duchy of Ten |
d20 System
Zeitgeist Games, where Arneson works, is producing an updated d20 System version of Blackmoor to be published by Goodman Games. It will again be a standalone setting.
External links
- Dave Arneson's homepage (http://www.jovianclouds.com/blackmoor/)
- Zeitgeist Games (http://www.zeitgeistgames.com)
- Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The MMRPG (http://www.dablackmoor.com)
Goldfish
Blackmoor is also a kind of goldfish, usually black with large telescopic eyes. They are considered "fancy fish" in that they are not as hard and strong as the usual goldfish. They can grow to be just as large as normal goldfish but are more rounded and less stock.