City of the Gods (2008) for the Dave Arneson's Blackmoor d20 Line

 

The oldest published reference to the City of the Gods is in the First Fantasy Campaign. This adventure proved deadly to many of the player characters from Dave Arneson's campaign and was probably played out shortly after the publication of Dungeons & Dragons. Another group of players who realised the dangers of this fabled location were none other than Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz, as chronicled by Rob Kuntz in Oerth Journal #6. It was clear at the time that Gary wanted to explore the idea of combining fantasy and science fiction. In 1980, TSR published the adventure Expedition to Barrier Peaks. Written by Gary Gygax, it was a different, but similar concept. It was the 1987 TSR module DA3 City of the Gods (Dave Arneson & David Ritchie) that would finally make the adventure available to D&D players worldwide. 

In 2008, Dave Arneson's company Zeitgeit Games decided to revisit the adventure. Written by Harley Stroh, the d20 version is not a mere rehash of the 1987 module, but explores other parts of the crashed spaceship that is at the heart of the adventure. It also expands the lands surrounding the City of the Gods greatly. To me this will remain one of the highlights of the d20 Blackmoor line. 

The back cover reads:

Deep in the heart of the harsh landscape of the Valley of the Ancients lies Blackmoors greatest mystery an accursed place the local desert tribes know only as the City of the Gods. One royal expedition to the site has already failed to return and now the heroes must traverse unforgiving wilds and dangers untold in search of truth and if they can survive the journey the glory of a lifetime. Whet your blades and ready your spells heroes for the greatest of trials awaits! Welcome to City of the Gods one of the most infamous and enduring mysteries in the long and storied history of Dave Arnesons Blackmoor. Designed for four to six characters of 9th to 10th level this epic adventure is sure to challenge even the bravest heroes be they peasants or nobles warriors or wizards. Will you succeed where so many others have failed or will you too fall victim to the unearthly perils that lie in wait in the forgotten City of the Gods?

Title: City of the Gods

Author: Harley Stroh 

Executive Producers: Dave Arneson & Dustin Clingman

Editor: C.A. Suleiman

ISBN: N/A

Pages: 108

Publishers: Zeitgeist Games & Code Monkey Press (2008)

Purchase a copy at DrivethruRPG (currently for 3$) - This blog does not use affiliate links.

Do you have a copy of this adventure? Have you adventured near the City of the Gods?

Read more about City of the Gods at The Comeback Inn,

-Havard

The Design Team Behind Blackmoor Age of the Wolf

We are now learning more about the people behind the upcoming Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Age of the Wolf.  As I reported back in March, this 15 years in the making project is finally being released at GenCon 2024 and will become available in a free digital format. An exclusive interview with the lead designer was posted on this blog last month, but we now have more information:

(Illustration taken from lead designer C.A.Suleiman's website)

The credits presented for the book will be the following:

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: Age of the Wolf

Publisher: Studio Ink Bat

Developer and Project Lead: C.A. Suleiman 

Writers: Jamie Chambers, George Holland, Rhiannon Louve, Ari Marmell, Harley Stroh, and C.A. Suleiman 

Art Director: Denise Robinson

That is a pretty talent specked list of people. I am not familiar with all of them, but Jamie Chambers is perhaps best known as former vice president of Sovereign Press and Margaret Weis Press, having done considerable game design on Dragonlance, The Serenity RPG and much more. 

Ari Marmell is a well known fantasy author and game designer and he has worked on multiple projects with C.A. Suleiman. Most notably the two worked on Blackmoor in the time before Zeigtgeist Games (ZGG) lost the license to publish Blackmoor from WotC, right before Age of the Wolf was to be published 15 years ago. 

Harley Stroh is another name that should be familiar to Blackmoor fans, making several contribitions to the d20 Blackmoor line including the ZGG version of City of the Gods. He later went on to become a widely published by companies like Wizards of the Coast and Goodman Games. 

Rhiannon Louve has multiple credits for design and translation work for White Wolf, including the Scarred Lands Setting. 

George Holland is a game desgner who has done game design work for  RPGs such as Overlight, Mothership and Cy_Borg. 

C.A Suleiman, the project lead, is  another well known name in the industry, having done considerable game design work for Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf and many other publishers. He is credited for six d20 Blackmoor books, including the upcoming Age of the Wolf sourcebook. See full credits here.

With this team, I have great hopes for the Age of the Wolf sourcebook finally seeing the light of day after all this time. It is such a shame when completed manuscripts end up never being shared with the fans, like Jeff Grubb's Mystara sourcebook for AD&D 2nd Edition. I am very happy that Age of the Wolf will become available to fans this August. 

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: Age of the Wolf will be published under a lisence from Wizards of the Coast. 

Note: I have written this article, not based on a press release, but on my own research, so I apologise that the information is incomplete. No disrespected intended towards anyone mentioned. I will expand on the article as I learn more about each designer!

Discuss this article on The Comeback Inn

-Havard

Megarry and Carr at Gary Con VI

I just learned from Paul Stromberg that two Original Blackmoor Players will be at Gary Con next month (March 22-25). Dave Megarry will be refreeing his board game Dungeon! and Mike Carr will be refreeing Dawn Patrol and Don't Give Up the Ship.

Other people who will be at the Convention include Frank Mentzer, Tim Kask, Jim Ward, Skip Williams, Tom Wham, Chris Clark, Harley Stroh, Ernie Gygax and quite a few other people that I would love to meet! Sadly I am stuck in Viking-land. If you go, make sure you send me reports and pictures!

More on this topic here.

-Havard

Latest Blackmoor Stuff

So what's been happening in the world of Blackmoor fandom over the last few days? The Piazza is still on its temporary server. Over at the Comeback Inn, I have just uploaded another batch of Season 1 MMRPG episodes. I am trying to get an overview of how many different documents that were released in association with the MMRPG to see if I am missing any.

Harley Stroh just signed up to the forum which is cool, since in addition to him being a great game designer, he did the fiction work for the D20 Era Blackmoor books. I am hoping to get a chance to ask him more questions about his involvement with ZGG over the coming days and weeks.



Another interesting discussion that has come up is that of using Goodman Games' DCCRPG with Blackmoor. This is not something I would have thought of myself, but perhaps I should give this game another look?


-Havard

Fritz Leiber's Blackmoor

Over at the Comeback Inn, my friend Rafael started an interesting discussion about which literary works may have influenced Blackmoor. Dave Arneson himself commented on this in a 2004 interview:

"As far as books go, fantasy books, science fiction/fantasy books that inspired me, we’re talking about Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, and a lot of the other authors, like the author of the Horse Clans series. (Robert Adams) Gary [Gygax] Seems to have listed every book he’s ever read in his bibliography, and I’ll be blunt, I don’t think I’ve read a lot of those books. Although, after having read a few thousand books, I really can’t remember which ones I’ve read anymore… So a lot of it is, Yes, I was inspired by…; but where does the inspiration stop and the game design begin? I mean, you’ve got to make changes. You’ve got to do variations. You can be influenced by something you read and don’t even remember reading, because you want to include “oh here is something neat I can incorporate into my world."

 Fritz Leiber, creator of Fafhrd, the Gray Mouser and Lankhmar, is one of the authors Gygax often credited as an author who influenced him, but did Leiber have any influence on Arneson's game? I had seen no indication of this until I noticed this:

The Sinking Lands and Frogton both have their Blackmoorian equivalents. Furthermore, given their position in the landscape, could the Blackmoorian City of Maus be inspired by Leiber's Lankhmar? Maus could even be a reference to the Grey Mouser. The City of Maus is not unlike Leiber's city. Both are wealthy, corrupt and dominated by thieves guilds. Where Leiber's famous charaters dominate his city, Arneson's version is home to Debelfry, the rogue originally played by Scott Belfry. 

While we may never get any confirmation to these speculations, it seems like it would be a good idea to use the AD&D and (Mongoose) RuneQuest Lankhmar gaming source books to flesh out a game in Maus. Between that material and Harley Stroh's short story "A Night in Maus", you should have a pretty good idea of what the city's atmosphere is like.




-Havard