It was the worst of combat systems; it was the best of combat systems. Discerning Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor Combat System - Part 2

When I first wrote Midwest Fantasy Wargame: The Primeval RPG . . . I was only looking at the Spanish Royals character sheet and the H.W. Dumbo character sheet from David Megarry. I discarded Dumbo’s weapon table as some kind of oddity or one off. Unfortunately, that led me down the wrong path. What is doubly irritating about this is that there is a blog post from D.H. Boggs, and the character sheet for the Wizard of the Woods played by Pete Gaylord in Playing at the World (p. 367) by Jon Peterson. It is only when analyzing both of these character sheets side by side that it seems clear what Arneson may have been up to when devising his combat system.

Discerning Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor Combat System - Part 1

Warning! Warning! We are entering on an area of speculation driven by an urgent need to understand the combat system Dave Arneson used in early Blackmoor. It was not Chainmail, but it had aspects borrowed from Chainmail. It was most assuredly not derived from the complex Kriegspiel —> Totten Strategos —> Strategos A(ncients) lineage, though it borrowed concepts from there as well. It also borrowed from the Fletcher Pratt naval wargame —> unnamed ACW game —> ?“Damn the Torpedoes!”? lineage. It is an amalgamation. This 4 part series will give you my best guess at how it operated. It seems quite simple in retrospect. But I’ve been at this for a while.

Yes, work continues in the background

The catalog of things that I have published for Dragons Beyond is considerable. No print on demand yet though. If any of you have any feedback, please leave a review, join the community and post, or hop on my discord. I am likely to publish The Usual Monsters soon which will cover all of the monsters referenced in OD&D (plus its supplements). The Usual Monsters also has some additional magic items, combat options, and fully revised wilderness and underground encounter tables. I’ve recently used both Dragons Beyond and The Usual Monsters to help prep for a solo campaign for a game called Aketon.

All the good news around this wargame

Men in Metal is a restatement of the Wargames Research Group miniature wargaming rules from 1969 - 1970 (plus their Medieval Supplement). Men in Metal is available on WargameVault, DriveThruRPG, and Amazon.

The catalog of things that I have published, am in the process of getting polished or playtested, and my social media usage around Men in Metal is considerable. If any of you have any feedback, please leave a review, join the community and post, or hop on my discord. I am likely to publish army lists soon based on the WRG version 6 sets for the dark ages / medieval period. Click here for a flip through of this book of army lists.

Etsy has what you need. Don’t reward Bezos.

Look at these beautiful dice. The black and red twenty-siders are actually 0 - 9 twice over (once with filled in numbers and once open). The original percentile dice rolled in the Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns were likely of this type. I prefer the way these roll compared to the standard d10 which is not a platonic solid. Much like I prefer rolling a twelve-sided die that is actually numbered I, II, III, IV thrice over.

Naval gazing at naval warfare in D&D. Also, the fastest way to mop up excess liquidity in your campaign.

Introduction

In August 2022 I went down quite a rabbit hole trying to reconcile the OSE, Cook Expert, 1st edition DMG + PHB, 2nd edition DMG + PHB, CHAINMAIL, and original Dungeons & Dragons descriptions and pricing for all of the various ships, land transport types, and troop types….then boil it down to something simple, usable, and somewhat tied to historical references. I did make good progress, but then stopped developing this product (Heroes in Hulks) as other projects caught my interest.

Monday was the birthday of prolific fantasy writer Edgar Rice Burroughs (b. 1875). Let’s talk about Barsoom (Mars) and D&D shall we?

According to the 1st version of the wikipedia article on Edgar Rice Burroughs, his stories about Mars “inspired the boyhood dreams of American scientists who sent the first robot spacecraft to the planet, and a crater there is named in his honor.” (activists on wikipedia have been smearing him since 12 September 2020). I am currently reading his novels. The first one I read was The Master Mind of Mars which is the 6th book in the series but does well as a standalone sci-fi adventure. I circled back and read A Princess of Mars and am currently reading The Gods of Mars. I am very fond of the John Carter movie by Disney which has an excellent soundtrack by Michael Giacchino. There is another movie entitled Princess of Mars released in 2009 that stars Traci Lords (yes that one) as Dejah Thoris. Some portions of the plot are correct, but Traci is well past her prime and the modernized John Carter intro is pretty poor.

On August 16th we staged a jousting tournament using Chainmail 3rd edition. We also tried out my 1 page jousting rules from Midwest Fantasy Wargame (based on Don Featherstone’s Solo Wargaming rules)

Prelude

When I announced this tournament on Discord, I had these miniatures half completed. With some touch ups, some flock, and a bit of patience I was able to put them in enough order to ensure some pageantry.

Death in a remote corner of Gila County in the Summer of 1875

In a previous Boot Hill gaming session, I had hidden the map from the players as they made their way from Copper Creek (a mining town) on the western edge of the map to Dead End Junction, the railhead at the eastern edge of the map. The map for this Boot Hill campaign was simply Outdoor Survival with a couple of head nods to some terrain feature names in the border area between the Arizona and New Mexico Territories circa August 1875 (present day Gila County).

Question on Discord: Does anyone have any good rules for black powder firearms in D&D? I know LOTFP has some, I’m not sure I like those though. I’m considering using the rules in Dragons Beyond . . .

Dragons Beyond is straight up Chainmail with a minor tweak to the Musket deadliness at short range. Prices are from Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign though he also gives a 15 gp price for an Arquebus earlier in the text.