OSR Action With Merry Old School Campaign Commentary & DA3 City Of the Gods By Dave Arneson & Guy Richie

Today is Dave Arneson Day! So I wanted to take some time in this installment of my on going OSR commentary to describe the campaign mash up that we did back in '87 when our party of adventurers entered 'D3 The City of the Gods' in a mash up version of  Blackmoor & Greyhawk. Which was way more Blackmoor then Greyhawk.We had already gone through the 'S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks'.

But now a different & far more dangerous adversary was threatening our world, the cult of the Sleeper of N'kai, also known as Zhothaqquah's cult had reared its head from the swamps! We had encountered its priests, the mutant frog horrors, & its machinations. The party had barely survived! My wizard was fried along with a good number of hirelings, bearers, & our cleric of Zeus was gone. Mr. Anseson has a lot to answer for let me you!


"Green Death... That's what old hands call the Great Dismal Swamp. For centuries, this tangled maze of sluggish watercourses, stagnant ponds, and festering marshes has defended Blackmoor's southwestern frontier. Large armies and smaller parties have disappeared altogether inside its vast, dripping, claustrophobic corridors.
Among those who have dropped from sigh in this arboreal hell is young Rissa Aleford, one of Blackmoor's most important leaders. Carried off to the sinister City of the Fron, she is now being held by the eccentric Monks of the Swamp. By making the baroness captive, the deranged monks have seriously weakened Blackmoor at a time when enemies already threaten it from all sides." We had survived all of the horrors & gathered the experience points but now there were new challenges awaiting our little party of heroes.  And then my uncle got his hands on D3 City of the Gods! Sweet old ones were we in deep trouble! Sure I've talked about D3 City Of The Gods before but what I haven't told you was that I was the cause of all of this.



"New Magic?
That's what the flying egg has. New magic unlike any ever encountered in Blackmoor. New magic of a type that could give the fledgling kingdom an important edge in the wars that are brewing on its borders.

There are only a few minor problems. Like the fact that the magician who piloted the metal egg to one of Blackmoor's sworn enemies, the monks of evil and eccentric Order of the Frog, are also interested in the magic represented by the egg. And, most important, the fact that the egg came from the distant and dangerous City of the Gods.

Set amist the blistered salt flats of the Valley or the Ancients, the City of the Gods is a strange and deadly metal metropolis whose powerful guardians do not welcome intruders. Yet it is to this place of deadly menace that Blackmoor's leaders now send a daring expedition? to bargain for aid in the coming wars? or to steal the magic of the gods" That's the back of the module blurb and it sort of still haunts me. I had gotten my uncle three things for his birthday a collection of Clark Ashton Smith stories, a copy of D3 City of the Gods, and a full run of   Creatures on the Loose #16–21 (March 1972 – January 1973).
Creatures on the Loose was a Marvel adaptation of  Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation by by writer Roy Thomas and the art team of Gil Kane and Bill Everett, and later written by Gerry Conway. Now your going to have to see if you can follow this chain my uncle had the Warden of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks as part of a deep space mission that went very wrong. This fleet was a part of the same space fleet that created the crash landing of the ships from the DA1 Blackmoor & events from DA2 Temple of The Frog. We did these events as real time campaign events. The shadowy Egg's credo was in full effect. It goes something like;"the Egg of Coot's 'philosophy' or credo which goes something along these lines;" Might is Right. Might is Right. Don't Give a Sucker an even break. Winning _is_ everything. Get what you want by Hook or by Crook, but get it. The Ends always justify the means used to achieve it. The meek may inherit the Earth but that means the strongest will rule everything."You can find more secrets on the Comeback Inn's entry on the Egg of Coot.

So what happened aboard those ships that created the events of Blackmoor? Well as near as the party could piece together the corruption of Tsathoggua had infected various members of the crew & officers. Things went from bad to worse as the insanity spread. We had encountered some of the horror of this during our short run through Robert Kuntz's machine level .

But this twist of the campaign was very different. There was always crossover between Greyhawk's Blackmoor, Mystara, & the original Blackmoor. The FTL drives of the ships had turned the dimensional barriers to Swiss Cheese. Our parties were always between the machinations of Tsathoggua & The Egg of Coot.  We found ourselves rescuing red & yellow savage Martian princes &  princesses who were hypersleep aboard the remains of one of the remaining wrecks of this fleet. For years there was fall out from this space fleet. Martian monsters would occasionally wake up & ravage the countryside. But where did they come from? They were more invasive monsters from the pages of   Creatures on the Loose #16–21 (March 1972 – January 1973). Creatures on the Loose was a Marvel adaptation of  Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation by by writer Roy Thomas and the art team of Gil Kane and Bill Everett, and later written by Gerry Conway. 

The crew had collected specimens & now they'd awaken very grumpy, pissed off and itching for a meal. Eventually we had several species of invasive Martian monster running around our campaign via the Marvel series. If you want the real story of Marvel's Gulliver of Mars check out this article of ERBzine.


More old school comic book & campaign commentary coming up! Keep em rolling folks.

This blog post is not an attempt to violate the trade marks or copyrights of Wizards of the Coast or Marvel comics. All commentary and opinions are here in are copyrighted to Dark Corner Productions@2017.

OSR Commentary On - DA3 City Of The Gods By Dave L. Arneson and David J. Ritchie For Your Old School Campaigns

"Set amidst the blistered salt flats of the Valley of the Ancients, the City of the Gods is a strange and deadly metal metropolis whose powerful guardians do not welcome intruders. Yet it is to this place of deadly menace that Blackmoor's leaders now send a daring expedition - to bargain for aid in the coming wars - or to steal the magic of the gods."

So the eclipse came down today & I've seen picture after picture of the event on social media. I kept thinking about some of the odd ball stuff that I've run in the past. The second event that ended this past weekend was Gencon 50. I haven't seen the plethora of mega table top gaming announcements that seem to pour out of the tap when it comes with such an event.
I was quietly thinking about the infection that is the Egg of Coot today & the old school Blackmoor DA3 City of The Gods adventure. DA3 sets up another of my favorite mixes science fantasy, super science technology, & high level B/X Dungeons & Dragons. This is a module for PC's levels 10 to 14 or beyond. This isn't a light weight module, the plot is one of those twists on the usual Blackmoor stuff;
"In this scenario, the player characters (PCs) are sent to the City of the Gods by the leaders of Blackmoor to acquire divine magic, either by bargaining or by stealing.^[3] The PCs journey 4,000 years into the past to the land of Blackmoor. There, they are hired by The Fetch, previously seen in the adventure Temple of the Frog, because the Froggies, a cult introduced in the same adventure, have become active once more.^[1] The cult is using the futuristic technology of the City of the Gods to achieve their ends, and the player characters must attempt to contact the inhabitants of the city to turn them against the Froggies, and possibly form an alliance with the Kingdom of Blackmoor."

This isn't light weight stuff this is high level your PC's might not survive the experience adventure stuff. I ran this in 'Eighty Seven' because of the connections with the Blackmoor setting. Mystara has always been one of my special setting points because it wasn't as well known as the Forgotten Realms. Forgotten Realms is so well known that there are guides to its Underdark. Blackmoor always seemed like a lived in universe where adventure was  always in the offering. The Froggies were a nasty bunch of cultists who had more then a few tricks up their twisted sleeves. Anyhow this module fit the bill for dealing with the events after the events in Temple of the Frog.

I ran this one with my uncle John and his crew after our Ragnarok B/X event. Things were heating up in Mystara. I ran Temple of the Frog & then the events of the module introduced me to the Egg of Coot. Recently I was watching Alien Covenant & the black goo reminded me of the Egg & its power. The Egg of Coot is one nasty customer capable of being encountered almost anywhere. After the events of Temple of the Frog it began to stir! Make no mistake the Egg of Coot is a deadly thing. You can find some of its back story on this Dragon Foot thread.

This campaign arch claimed a lot of PC's from my uncle's family. There wasn't a player that at one time or another didn't lose a PC. I had access to a copy of Judge's Guild's First Fantasy campaign so I had some pretty good insights into the Egg of Coot's 'philosophy' or credo which goes something along these lines;" Might is Right. Might is Right. Don't Give a Sucker an even break. Winning _is_ everything. Get what you want by Hook or by Crook, but get it. The Ends always justify the means used to achieve it. The meek may inherit the Earth but that means the strongest will rule everything." You can find more secrets on the Comeback Inn's entry on the Egg of Coot. 

Once the Froggies showed up things got very complicated for the PC's. I played this module like a mix of Jack Kirby's Marvel Eternals series & bits of pulp weirdness that my uncle had by that time introduced me too. The PC's acquired a few alien devices off of the higher echelon Frog cultists whose stats for B/X or OD&D are still available
This was our Fall campaign & it lead to some very interesting crossover points. DA3 City of the Gods is not an easy module to play through unless your familiar with Blackmoor & you love the old school weirdness  of  it. My uncle had introduced me to Robert Kuntz's machine level 

Today to run this module I'd take at the Blackmoor Archives & save some of the maps for Blackmoor then get them printed and laminated. Did the players survive? Well that gets into some very interesting weirdness for another blog entry.

Review and Commentary On The Release Of OD&D Supplement II: Blackmoor (0e) By Dave Arneson And DA2 Temple of the Frog By Dave L. Arneson and David J. Ritchie From From Wizards of the Coast

Welcome back dear readers, apparently while I was shoveling Hell apparently froze over again. To say that I was skeptical today when Wizards of the Coast released Blackmoor from 1975 by Dave Arneson is an understatement.Alright so there are now two different source books and modules for Blackmoor on Drivethrurpg. This basically means you've got almost a complete mini campaign set in the campaign right at your DM's finger tips. To say I've got history with Blackmoor is an understatement, Blackmoor has been my go to campaign for longer then I can remember. It connects with my earliest memories of gaming. My connection with Temple of the Frog started when I got a copy from a friend back in the early 90's. DA2 Temple of The Frog is an odd and very entertaining module on many levels containing some great D&D adventure elements mixed into an odd blend of science fantasy mayhem as part of its background DNA.


Blackmoor from 1975 is partially an OD&D source book and partly a snap shot into the early halcyon days of OD&D. According to Wiki;"The original Blackmoor product was published by Tactical 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.^[5] It added rules, monsters, treasure, and the first published role-playing game adventure, the "Temple of the Frog," a scenario from the Loch Gloomen section of the Blackmoor campaign.^[6] Other than the "Temple of the Frog," however, Blackmoor did not include any information on the Blackmoor setting itself."  This the book that was released today and it reflects a snap shot in time and one of the early incarnations of the Temple of the Frog. The infamous temple deep in the Dismal Swamp where deviltry awaits the PC's. The third incarnation of the Temple of the Frog comes in the form DA2. This is a module that combines science fantasy elements and D&D in dire and deadly ways. The temple in its incarnation as Supplement II contains scores of guards, incredibly dangerous forces and a whole lot of horror awaiting the PC's. DA2 represents a different set of challenges and some of the deadliest high level science fantasy action seen in a module.
"Green Death...

That's what old hands call the Great Dismal Swamp. For centuries, this tangled maze of sluggish watercourses, stagnant ponds, and festering marshes has defended Blackmoor's southwestern frontier. Large armies and smaller parties have disappeared altogether inside its vast, dripping, claustrophobic corridors.

Among those who have dropped from sigh in this arboral hell is young Rissa Aleford, one of Blackmoor's most important leaders. Carried off to the sinister City of the Fron, she is now being held by the eccentric Monks of the Swamp. By making the baroness captive, the deranged monks have serioulsy weakened Blackmoor at a time when enemies already threaten it from all sides.

Yet, even as the Froggies gloat, the king of Blackmoor dispatches a small band of bold adventures to the rescue. Deep into the Great Dismal Swamp they must go - far from sunlight and sanity - there to seek and save the swamp, there to find the Temple of the Frog."

The PC's must recauce a baroness from the Temple of the Frog deep within the dismal swamp. The action in this module is fast, deadly, and could easily be converted over to AD&D 1st edition or OSRIC with no issue at all. DA2 Temple of the Frog was published by TSR in 1986 as a 48-page booklet with an outer folder and is keyed for working with the Expert Rules set. There are certain science fantasy elements that are central to the background of all incarnations of the temple and the Blackmoor setting material. Blackmoor came from a far more woolly time in table top role playing and D&D. TSR later reigned this in a bit;"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 that shifted the planet's axis."
So where does DA2 Temple of the Frog fall within the publication time line of the campaign; "ts influence was now central to at least one of TSR's published worlds, but 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."

Supplement II: Blackmoor (0e) By Dave Arneson is a throw back to the early wargaming roots of original Dungeons and Dragons with its Chainmail numbers of monks, the temple's forces, the contents of the temple, etc. I still think its worth having for the reference material and the ideas it happens to present. Couple this with DA2 Temple of the Frog and you've got yourselves a mini campaign that could take months to take your PC's through. All in all I think that this was a good move on Wizards of the Coast but how it will play out will depend fully on sales over the next couple of months.



 All of this begs the question will we see the release of  more Blackmoor and Mystara  material? I think so as the Dungeon Master's Guild plays it's part for Wizard's of the Coast and how this chapter of  the latest's release of AD&D and OD&D pdf materials.