Supplement II: Blackmoor

Ah, Blackmoor - a strange beast of a supplement if there ever was one.  Released in September of 1975, the supplement continues the format of Greyhawk in separating its content into additions and clarifications to the three books of the original boxed set: Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and Underworld and Wilderness Adventures.  What sets this book apart though is the devotion of almost entirely the third section (and nearly half of the book) to a thorough detailing of a section of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign.  It's fascinating because Blackmoor was the first and oldest D&D campaign in existence, so we get to see a glimpse of what one of the creators of D&D thought the game should look like.  It does make for a somewhat odd supplement, however, being half rules and half adventure module.

This supplement introduces the infamous monk and assassin classes.  These classes always seemed especially polarizing to me - people either loathed them or missed them terribly in 2nd edition.  When I started up my own 2nd edition D&D campaign one of my players tried to convince me to allow him to roll a monk under the 1st edition rules (I declined).  Seeing them in their original context, the monk seems to me to be another quadratic character like wizards - feeble at low levels, but increasing exponentially in power as they level up and attain their special abilities: ridiculous attacks and damage with unarmed strikes, a fighter-like AC, and a ludicrous number of immunities.  As for the assassin, I'm not really sure what the thought process was for them - they're basically weaker thieves who can undertake assassination missions for gold and XP.

This supplement tries to introduce a hit location system to the rules, which obviously never had a lasting impact.  Now I admit I am a simulationist and like my RPGs to be as realistic as possible, so I like this sort of thing - in theory.  In reality, I and most other people never play with it because it just requires too much bookkeeping and causes combat to grind to a halt.

The section for new monsters and treasures is bizarrely focused exclusively on an undersea theme with no explanation as to why.  I guess Arneson's campaign had a lot of undersea excursions?  Nevertheless, we do get some more classic D&D monsters like the sahuagin and the ixitxachitl (and on a side note, if you can spell either of those words without looking them up, you know you've been playing D&D too long).

Finally, we get to a lengthy description of the Temple of the Frog, a location in Arneson's Blackmoor campaign.  It's really a prototype for the first modules TSR would release.  It gives a brief backstory for the location, then proceeds into multiple keyed maps describing it in minute detail for exploration purposes.  There's no "adventure" per se - unlike modern modules which have an unfolding story, this just gives a static description of the location.  It's only purpose is to be systematically explored and looted, which fits with the hack-and-slash philosophy of the game we've been discussing.

This was a slightly offbeat supplement to be sure.  We're at an odd point here in the history of TSR - only one product was released every few months or so as the company got going, as opposed to later years in which multiple products would be released every month.  So join me next time as we dive back into some issues of The Strategic Review.