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This article is about the fantasy campaign setting. For the goldfish type, see Moor. For other uses of the term Blackmoor/Blackmore, see (disambiguation).
Blackmoor is a fantasy game setting generally associated with the game & Dragons. It originally evolved in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature wargames, then as an early testing ground for what would become D&D. Blackmoor is the longest continuously played fantasy role-playing campaign in existence. It is a mysterious land of and sorcery mixed with relics of highly advanced technology.
Original publication
thumb|The original //Blackmoor// supplement ([[TSR|Inc., 1975)]] <!– FAIR USE of ArnesonBlackmoorSupplementIICover.jpg: see image description page at ArnesonBlackmoorSupplementIICover.jpg for rationale –> The original Blackmoor product was published by Studies Rules (TSR) in 1975, as the second supplement to D&D (the first being Greyhawk). The booklet was named for the original role-playing campaign world by Dave Arneson, who also wrote this booklet. The new concepts it added to the game demonstrated how much work had been done on the world and gave a hint of what the world was like.<ref>Thumbnail Analysis - Blackmoor, Lowry, Panzerfaust and Campaign #72 (Panzerfaust Publications, 1976)</ref>
The original name of Dungeons and Dragons was Blackmoor, but after Dave Arneson and Gygax teamed up they decided to name it Dungeons and Dragons after a quip from Gygax's then wife.
It added rules, monsters, treasure, and the first ever published role-playing game scenario, "Temple of the Frog". Despite the name, however, it did not include any information on the setting itself.
The Blackmoor supplement introduced the following options to the D&D game:
Additional character classes
Blackmoor added two new classes:
Hit location system
Regions of a character's body were assigned their own 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.
Underwater adventures
Added rules for swimming, equipment weight restrictions, weapons use (few missile weapons, electrical attacks, no fire, etc.) plus numerous new water-dwelling monsters and useful equipment to populate these adventures.
Expansion modules
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Though Arneson left TSR in the early 1980s, Blackmoor remained a part of D&D lore and was referred to in many later supplements. In a subsequent re-release of the world of Greyhawk for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) game, an Arctic region of mysterious black ice in the northwestern area of the map was called Blackmoor. However, Blackmoor would become integral to a different setting and rules-system, those of the Basic Dungeons & Dragons game.
For various reasons, TSR published two different versions of their flagship game line. Over the course of several supplements, the Basic Dungeons & Dragons developed its own campaign setting, referred to at first simply as the Known World and later as Mystara. When the history of Mystara was codified, it was established that Arneson's Blackmoor had existed in the world's distant past, achieved a technologically advanced civilization and then destroyed itself in a global catastrophe which shifted the planet's axis.
Though its influence was now central to at least one of TSR's published worlds, the actual setting of Blackmoor as Arneson described it had yet to be presented. This was finally remedied in the mid-1980s through the DA series of expansion modules, which carried a party of adventurers into Mystara's past to visit Blackmoor. The first of these, DA1 "Adventures in Blackmoor", described in general the geography and politics of Blackmoor and the means by which the characters travel there. DA2 "Temple of the Frog" expanded the scenario that had appeared in the original Blackmoor supplement. DA3 "City of the Gods" explored the starship crashed near the Kingdom of Blackmoor, from which the setting's intentional anachronisms derived. DA4 "The Duchy of Ten" dealt with a horde of invading barbarians, but was the only work not derived from Dave Arneson's original campaign notes. A fifth installment, DA5 "City of Blackmoor", was announced but was never written or published.
Though there were no further direct explorations of Blackmoor, later Mystara products continued to make reference to it. For instance, "The Wrath of the Immortals", an epic adventure which described a massive war involving both heaven and earth, climaxes with the discovery of the preserved control room from the starship which had crashed near Blackmoor millennia ago.
d20 System
After the Basic D&D game and its Mystara setting were discontinued, Games, where Arneson now works, produced an updated System version of Blackmoor, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Campaign Setting, published by Games, www. goodman-games.com, in 2004. Goodman and Zeitgeist also produced a Blackmoor d20 adventure module, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The Redwood Scar (2004) and sourcebook, Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: The Wizards Cabal (2005). In 2006 Zeigteist Games started publishing new books on their own. The 2006 release calendar includes a softcover reprint (with added content) of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Campaign Setting, a hardcover version of the Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor, Player's Guide to Blackmoor, and the new adventure Temple of the Frog (which will have a sneak preview event at Con).
There is also an ongoing Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMRPG) campaign, mmrpg.zeitgeistgames.com, organized by Zeitgeist games, which is similar in form to the Campaigns organized by the RPGA.
A List of their released adventures can be found here. The episodes for the MMRPG are available for play at home and at conventions such as Con and Megacon.
Megacon is Blackmoor's home convention, where the new season is kicked off each year.