Hidden in Shadows

 Today detailed reports from game sessions are common. Until recently, some of the oldest I knew of were to be found in Alarums & Excursions, but only rarely do these go into the sort of detail we might like.

Often I had wished someone, anyone, had written down a Blackmoor "after action report", but that seemed too much to hope for, or nearly so. We did have a couple of accounts by Greg Svenson, created from memory decades after he played the game, but nothing from the time of play. And then came along Ken Fletcher with his little trove of documents... 

The "THE DUNGEONS OF BLACK MOORE CASTLE" document typed apparently by Arneson as a detailed session report, probably with the intention of publishing in CoTT, is from the FIRST EVER multi-player adventure party dungeon crawl in RPG history - more or less. 

The significance of this discovery cannot be overstated.

The "more or less" above comes from two details given in the introduction to the adventure story itself. First, we are told of a Wizard who lives in the dungeon, and of an apprentice and a minstrel who disappeared. This backstory could possibly have been a played adventure if the apprentice and minstrel were player characters, but it is more likely to just be back story given that the minstrel and apprentice later show up while no player is playing them (NPCs). 

The second reason to hedge with "more of less" is because the account also tells us that lord Jenkins, the PC played by Duane Jenkins, too has been in the dungeon on a solo adventure. It could be another back story, but this is a "real" player and we do have a second hand account from Bill Hoyt, that Dwayne told him about a "test" solo adventure Arneson ran with him after a Napoleonics game one night, prior to the evening where Arneson introduced the dungeon to the rest of the group.

Thus in all likelihood, the typed account represents the second actual dungeon crawl and the first with a group of players participating. 

So for everyone but Dwayne Jenkins this is the account of their very first foray into the dungeon. Looking at the list, these players make up the core of the Blackmoor Bunch minus two key figures: David Megarry and Greg Svenson.

Megarry's absence can be explained by Megarry himself. While he says he was at the first dungeon adventure, he explained that he came in late, apparently well after the game was underway and likely just observed or took on a limited role.

But where is that stalwart of the game, Greg Svenson, one wonders. His apparent absence cast doubt on the idea that this might be a record of the first group dungeon adventure.

However, as I read and re-read the narrative, I noticed something odd, something I'm sure that has jumped out to everyone. The narrative, as typed by Arneson, is in the first person. This is weird, since Arneson is clearly the person running the game. Did he somehow participate as a player too?

 Actually, he does the same thing in Return to Black Moors, again oddly, both when talking about himself and when telling the story from Dan Nicholson's point of view. In other words, he pretends to be Dan Nicholson at one point in the narrative.

Is Arneson pretending to be one of the players again? If so, who? There are several clues in the text - he says, for example he is a mercenary soldier.

The biggest clue however comes from elsewhere. If you have read much Blackmoor material, some of the events in Dungeons might jog a few memories. Here I would encourage you to pause a moment and go read this: The First Dungeon Adventure

Greg recalls some of the details differently (a couple of the players, some events, the presence of a balrog) but it is close enough for there to be little doubt he recalls the same adventure as that recounted in The Dungeons of Castle Black Moore.

Here is a quick breakdown of things that line up:

• Begins with a wizard doing something
• "Among the 30 men-at-arms there were six players"
• "we picked a door leading northwest"
• "We were carrying torches for light"
• "We ...found a staircase going down"
• "a sudden wind had blown out our torches"
• "a black blob ...killed one of the NPCs who ran into it"
• They found a statue
• "We found a magic sword on the ground"
• Bill Heaton takes the magic sword and becomes the leader (Heaton did become the leader for a bit, but it was Johnson who took the sword)
• On the 4th level they find "a fountain with a small statue of a devil in it."
• "...we were all getting tired, so we stopped and set up camp in a large room and bedded down for the "night"
• Guards were posted at the entrances to the room.
• "During the night a beautiful woman came to our camp. She successfully seduced Bill. While they were embracing she turned into a serpent and killed him. We fought and eventually killed it..." (It was actually Mel Johnson who was killed)
• "The balrog's body became a flaming torch as he tore into us." (actually an unknown monster with a floating jewel)
• "We fought valiantly; ...After a while I realized that I was the last man standing"
• Ends with Svenson, the sole survivor, reporting to Baron Fant.

Honestly, its fairly remarkable how well Greg's memory fits the events of the play report given the time gap and the scores of Blackmoor dungeon dives he's been on. Other things found in Greg's story, like fighting the spiders or Soukup's balrog can be assumed to be "bleed" from later adventures.

Greg has repeatedly claimed that this adventure was the first dungeon adventure they all experienced and the introduction for himself and most of the others to the Blackmoor setting. The story itself as found in Arneson's original account has numerous unmistakable clues supporting this conclusion. Here is a short, non-exhaustive list:

• Aside from Jenkins, the player characters are all low rank soldiers. For example, Krey is still one of the good guys and only a sergeant - not yet promoted to captain, and certainly not yet turned traitor - an event that happened in the Second Coot invasion Circa April 1972. Krey stopped playing altogether later that year.
• Aside from Jenkins, none of the characters has been in the dungeon and clearly have no idea what to expect.
• After finding treasure,  The players want to "find a way back up, so that we could tell of all the gold that could be found in the dungeons. Then we could lead a large expedition down on a treasure hunt." 

These players are total noobs to the dungeon, not the seasoned adventurers of later years.

There is one other area that also points to The Dungeons of Black Moore Castle as a record of the very first dungeon adventure - the maps.

Its possible, as we will see when I complete the post on the subsequent "May 25th" adventure, to map the path the adventurers follow, because both these reports contain detailed descriptions of the rooms and passages. For example, we are told at one point: "We walked twenty feet to a point where the corridor continued north, another corridor went off to the northwest..." These sort of instructions can be mapped onto the existing Blackmoor maps. Here the path taken on level 1 is indicated in red stars:

And here is the path taken on the second level:

We can be sure this is correct and you can follow along with the maps as you read the account if you like. However, even on the first level, certain details don't match. For example, where the party turns north and heads to the stairs, the east-west passage is supposed to end there, not continue west.  However, there is supposed to be a west passage across from the corridor where room 3 is instead.

Further, once the characters go to level 3, the maps change radically. The chapel of the undead and Mels room (4) are more or less as they should be, but other passages and rooms are described in ways that don't match anything on our current maps, at all.

This is in direct contrast to the May 25th adventure "INTO THE DEPTHS OF BLACKMOOR DUNGEON AND BACK", which seems to be a follow on adventure report from not too long after the first one, but which describes the dungeon layout as we know it today and presents no mapping challenges.

The most likely explanation for this discrepancy is that at the time of the first group dungeon adventure the maps were still a work in progress, and the deeper the adventurers got the less finalized they were.

Take Mels room for example. In the adventure, the room sinks, elevator like - at least one level down, but on our current maps, there are tunnels and rooms directly below that would prevent a sinking room. There is also an up stairwell leading to a circular room, neither of these features are on any map we have.

"THE DUNGEONS OF BLACK MOORE CASTLE" is a time capsule, providing a glimpse at the first dungeon crawler as it was still developing. The details found therein are a revelation of Arneson's gaming ideas and much more remains to be said about this and the other documents in the Blackmoor Foundations book.

 If you want to find the details for one of the characters that Gary Gygax made and played as a PC, perhaps to use as an NPC in your own game, it isn't terribly difficult. Likewise for the characters of Rob Kuntz, David Megarry Greg Svenson  and others among the early developers and players of D&D.

Perhaps surprisingly though, finding a player character sheet by D&D's co-creator Dave Arneson is not an easy exercise. Sure you can find NPC's and pre-gens Mr Arneson rolled up, but that's about it.

I'm not saying there aren't any which have yet to see the light of day, but at present none are publicly available or even privately circulated to my knowledge. Except maybe one.

 Boot Hill has a list of Fictional Non-Player Characters and their stats. In the second edition (1979) the character creators are anonymous, but by the third edition player names had been attributed to each, and the character of Ben Cartwheel, Rancher is attributed to Arneson.

 Here are the stats:

  Ben Cartwheel (Dave Arneson)

Now I want to point out that we have no way of knowing, as far as I know, if Arneson actually rolled up this character or if someone else did. We also don't know if he actually played the character. I asked David Megarry, who also has a character attributed to him in Boot Hill, and he said that, at least in his case, he didn't remember making the character and thought maybe Brian Blume had made it for him.

All I can say for certain is that this Ben Cartwheel character was attributed to Arneson and may or may not have been made by him. The name is certainly right in Arneson's wheelhouse, so I think the odds are good that it really was Arneson's player character. In any case, unless you are familiar with Boot Hill the stats probably don't mean much to you, but if you are like me, you immediately wonder if they will convert to D&D. Luckily there is a conversion guide published in the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. 

Most of the stats don't in fact convert to anythin in D&D because they are derived from Speed (spd) and Bravery. Per the AD&D conversion guide we are told the Strength score stays the same and a method is given for converting Speed (spd) into Dexterity. We also are told to determine the character level by adding 2 to the EXP score and that Rancher would translate to a Fighter. The DMG suggests the Bravery scores can be derived from the wisdom score when converting an AD&D character to Boot Hill but not the reverse - there is no D&D Bravery equivalent. However Arneson's Bravery score is quite high in Boot Hill - the near equivalent of rolling a 17 on 3d6 - and I think we should convert the Bravery score to something, but Wisdom is probably not the best choice - perhaps Constitution or maybe Charisma. Lets go with Constitution for now and see what we have so far for Ben Cartwheel D&D Fighter:

That leaves Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. AD&D suggests the player simply roll for these. That’s a bit of a problem now, but we could potentially steal these score from an NPC Arneson had already created, preferably of similar class and level. Such an NPC can be found in the Pregens he rolled up for the Origins convention in 1977. In fact there is a character that lines up well  - #5, a tenth level lord with the following Stats: Str: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 13 Con: 16  Dex: 12 Chr: 17

Conveniently, this character matches exactly Ben Cartwheel's Strength and Dexterity scores, so this is a good match to fill in the blanks. We could translate the Bravery score of 17 to Charisma, but I like the idea of swapping the stats and giving Ben a 16 Charisma and 17 Constitution so Ben is a little less of a clone of character #5. Also, one of the roles of Bravery in Boot Hill is giving the character a "steady hand" in a gunfight, and that seems more in line with Constitution to me. Here is the result:

Ben Cartwheel                                                                       Level  12 Fighter, Hit Points 60                                                    Str: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 13 Con: 17  Dex: 12 Chr: 16                   

People love character sheets.  It occurred to me that it might be fun to make a blank, pre-D&D Blackmoor character sheet with nothing more on it than the sort of information seen on the original character records we have.  It's nothing fancy, but have a gander:

Here is me having a little fun - don't take any of this as gospel, but rather as a speculative investigation.  I'm about to spin a "Just So" story that sounds good, but should only be seen as a possibility.

Arneson told his own story of the birth of his Blackmoor castle, dungeon, and it's immediate surroundings a hundred times.  Always this story involved the same 3 elements: popcorn, horror movies, and Conan.  Here is one early example:

"Some months after Mr. Wesley left, a local TV station had on several old monster movies, which I watched while eating popcorn and reading old Conan novels. It was then that Blackmoor
Dungeon was first conceived."  Wargaming #4 1978, p47

It's a fun story, but hard to pin down.  When asked about the dating of Blackmoor, Arneson almost always offered up 1971 as the year it started.  Here is one more example, this time with a slightly more specific date:

"I was sitting around... with nothing going on except the monster movie,... reading Conan and conceived of the idea for the dungeon. I populated it and the next time the boys showed up for a battle, they had a castle sitting in the middle of the board. That was the spring of 1971."  Game News #5, July 1985. p9

Sometimes he leaves us other little dating clues which might even be more reliable, for example:

"After Don't Give up the Ship I started in on Blackmoor" Knights of the Dinner Table #34, 1994.

Dave Arneson's version of DGutS was finished in the spring of 1971 and published in the IFW Summer of 71.

Here's another general clue:

"We were doing a historical campaign in Holland so my map ended up with a lot of water." Kobold Quaterly 9, Spring 2009 p31.

In Vol. 3 #5 of the Corner of the Table newsletter (the May 1971 issue), we read: 

"From June 11 to June 21, 1971 there will be a series of Napoleonic battles involving the Dutch for the spring of 1802 of the Napoleonic War Simulation.  The exact time and place have not been determined but contact Dave Megarry if you are interested in taking part as a Dutch or a non Dutch sub commander."  

Interestingly, this is the same COTT which, in the previous paragraph, announces "On Saturday May 22, 1971 a Brown Stein-type game set in the Middle ages will be held at Dave Arneson's home after the Napoleonic Campaign meeting is completed.  All those attending the Napoleonic meeting are invited to stay for this game."  This is the same meeting where Dan Nicholoson received his "Spanish Royals" character sheet I 'blogged about previously.

There's more circumstantial evidence for this general time too, coming in the form of Duane Jenkins Old West Brownstone campaign.  All the Twin Cities players - including Arneson - who mention Jenkins Brownstone, point to it being just prior to Blackmoor, and pioneering the novel idea of characters who survive and continue from game to game. 

In the same Vol 3 #5 of the Corner of the Table newsletter quoted above, Arneson relates the glorious and brief career of his "El Pauncho" character in Jenkins Brownstone.  El Pauncho's short life of banditry ran from late June to early August in the game's calendar - just over a month - before he was captured and Jailed by Sheriff Fant.  In real time, it is hard to say how many game sessions were involved - my guess would be anywhere from one to half a dozen, but probably not more.    In fairness, more adventures from El Pauncho were promised for the next COTT: "There will also be the continuing saga of El Pauncho and the start of the "Black Moors" battle reports..."  Presumably an escape was planned, but it isn't clear what this statement is really telling us about the state of these games.  Both of these promised reports could well be referring to things that may not have happened yet but are expected to, and will be reported on as they occur.  As it happened in fact, El Pauncho was never heard from again, but Black Moor certainly was. 

So it appears all these data points fit rather nicely and the signals from Arneson seem to direct us to the same general timeframe for the development of fantasy gaming in Blackmoor and the placement of the Castle/dungeon game - that timeframe being late spring of 1971.  However, there is one sort-of exception. One of the oldest references from Arneson is found in his First Fantasy Campaign publication where he said "The Dungeon was first established in the Winter and Spring of 1970-71."  If we presume he was being general and off-the-cuff, and that he meant "Sometime during" the Winter and Spring of 1970-71, then there really is no contradiction with a late spring date.  Hard to say.

Now here we run into a more significant problem.  Ross Maker, Dave Wesely, and Dan Nicholson have all said two things: First, they were introduced to Blackmoor in a scenario involving a Plane Crash in Iceland where they played versions of themselves, and second, that this game occurred after Arneson's trip to Europe in June/July of 1971.   

There are two ways around this problem.  The simplest is to just assume they are misremembering the timing.  It would be easy enough to be confused on whether you played the game just before or just after Arneson's European Vacation(TM).  

The other possibility is that we are simply looking at different participants in different games.  Dave Megarry says he was not at the May 22nd game.  He also says he was not at the Icelandic Plane Crash game, but that he was at Arneson's first Castle/Dungeon game, to which he arrived late. (Pers Comm 2017)

If Megarry is right, that would rule out the May 22nd date for Arneson's Castle/Dungeon game, but leave open the possibility that it was the date of the Icleandic Plane Crash scenario.  

So, in a couple places, I previously speculated that this May 22nd meeting is a good candidate for Arneson's Castle Dungeon game, one week after a weekend fueled with popcorn, Conan and monster movies.  However, as you can see, that would contradict Megarry, and seemingly be problematic in relation to the Icelandic Plane Crash scenario which appears to be earlier in character and timing.

In fact, if I may spin another Just-so story, placing the Icelandic Plane Crash game as the game played on May 22nd instead fits in a couple or three different ways.  

First, we could easily imagine Arneson being both a bit excited and a bit anxious about an upcoming flight to Europe.  

Second, Perhaps more interestingly, are the anecdotes about combat. The first reported "Black Moors" game isn't the May 22nd game, but an April 17th game with a troll at a troll bridge as found in the previous COTT Vol 3 #4.  This game seems to have had less participants, but Bob Meyer says he was one of them.  Bob Meyer's account of his encounter with the troll leaves little doubt about his disdain for the newly released CHAINMAIL combat system Arneson used for that session, which laid low Bob's hero with a single blow - the first to die in Blackmoor, according to Meyer.  Arneson had repeatedly indicated that the, um, lets say discontent, of the players at their characters easy demise is what led him to create his own combat system.

In David Wesely's account of the Icelandic Plane Crash scenario, he opined that combat consisted of only "arbitrary story telling" made up by the referee, and because they were playing themselves, "that they really can not die"  Wesely suggested that, like Fight in Skies, you take on a personality who gains experience and can be killed. (Pers Comm 2011).

Regardless of exactly when it was, the Icelandic Plane crash scenario seems most likely to fall sometime between the Troll Bridge game and the Castle Dungeon game.  If we accept that the Castle Dungeon game took place in "spring" 1971, and we accept that the Icelandic Plane crash is earlier, then it must also have been in the spring, prior to Arnesons trip.  If that sequence is correct and the Bob Meyer, David Wesely, and Dave Arnesons accounts are roughly accurate, we may be seeing an evolution in combat where Arneson begins with CHAINMAIL Fantasy, scraps that system because it is too deadly, tries (or resorts to) just arbitrary storytelling, scraps that because it is not deadly enough, and then comes up with a Hit Point based combat method. 

Like I said, it is a pretty good "Just So" story, but it does conflict with the report that the Icelandic Cave game came after Arneson's trip, so we will simply suggest that it may have been earlier, perhaps on May 22nd.

Let's consider Arnesons' European Vacation for a moment.  The exact dates for this trip have been elusive.  Generally it is said to be in June-July 1971.   No doubt you are wondering what difference it makes.   The main reason is that we (well I, anyway) generally haven't looked closely at what was going on in June because we assumed Arneson was overseas.  That includes the monster movies that were playing that month.  However, if he was home for most or all of June it means we can look for evidence that Arnesons castle/dungeon game took place in June, preferably on or before the end of Spring on June 21st, as we established above.

Arneson does have a few things to say about his plans for the trip in COTT Vol 3 #5 (May '71).  Right after the paragraph quoted above regading David Megarry's Dutch battles, Arneson writes:

"As the bulk of are officers are making trips to Europe about the middle of June, the time and place of the June Meeting will be difficult to arrange and there is a very good chance that it will be cancelled altoghether."

There is also this:
"The full rules committee will met June 12, 1971 at (fill in the blank) Hrs at (fill in the blank) Home.  Arneson wasn't on the rules committee, but as club Secretary and head referee of the Napoleonic campaign it seems somewhat unlikely he would fail to attend any of these meetings.

And Lastly this:
"The next issue of the paper will be prepared prior to my trip to Europe as well as they July issue so that if I do stay away from this nuthouse for two months there will still be a paper.  This is especially necessary since election results and ballots must be sent out to all the voting members."

My take-away from the above is that Arneson really had no idea exactly when his trip would be or exactly how long it would last when the May issue of COTT was prepared.

We (at least I) have been assuming that Arneson left on his European tour circa June 15 and returned a month or maybe 6 weeks later circa July 20ish.  Maybe that's about right, but maybe not.  Perhaps that information will come to light.  Meanwhile...

If Arneson's parents hadn't solidified their plans by April/May, it is not unreasonable to suppose they may have actually left a little later than "the middle of June".  The end of June or even early July seems at least as likely for their departure, if not more so.

There's tentative support for this idea coming from David Megarry.  I asked him about the Dutch campaign reported above.  He said:

"I seem to recall that very few people (if any) took Arneson up on the offer and I see myself and him being the only players. I think I attacked his forces but Arneson's more experience prevailed (though by 1971, I was getting better..;). I spent most of my time trying (and I think I was successful) to disengage from the battle. Arneson then Table T'd the campaign based on the outcome. Whether these memories were of the Dutch campaign or some other battles I am not sure. I would have just finished being a Junior at the University of Minnesota on those dates."

Arneson himself may have unknowingly provided us a corroborating clue both to his participation in the Dutch game with Megarry, and the creation of Blackmoor generally.  He said " We were doing a historical campaign in Holland so my map ended up with a lot of water." Arneson Kobold Quaterly 9, Spring 2009 p31.
He's talking here about the land map of Blackmoor, with all it's rivers, lakes and bays, as seen in the FFC.  

Nevertheless, and very importantly, this participation in a Dutch campaign (presumably Megarry's) appears to peg Arneson in the Twin Cites up to the 21st of June, working on Blackmoor material.

So, provisionally, lets presume that Arneson didn't go to Europe until no earlier than the last week of June.  Let's also presume that the monster/popcorn/Conan Saturday when Blackmoor dungeon was born was some Spring date after May 22nd as discussed above.  Lastly, let's presume that one of the movies Arneson watched that fateful weekend was inspirational in some way to the Castle and Dungeon mileu.

Before we cull through the candidate movies, lets consider what influences we might actually be looking for.  What are some of the outstanding characteristics of Blackmoor castle?  Here is a partial list:

The Castle:
• Sits high atop a rocky hill
• Overlooks the sea
• Is creepy/haunted
• Has at least one sealed/bricked up room
• Has underground passages/tunnels with monsters
• Has a passage leading to the cliffs above the sea
• Has secret doors/hidden passages
• Has a torture chamber
• Has a laboratory/wizards workshop
• Has a library
• Lies next to a walled village
• Has a graveyard positioned between the castle and village
• Has secret tunnels that lead to various buildings in town and elsewhere

According to The Horror Incorporated Project(TM) website, these are the afternoon movies playing on channel 5 KSTP Minneapolis/Saint Paul:

Saturday May 29, 1971 - Werewolf of London (1935), The Black Room (1935)

Saturday June 5, 1971 - House of Frankenstein(1944), The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)

Saturday June 12, 1971 - House of Dracula (1945), The Man with Nine Lives

Saturday June 19, 1971 - The Raven (1935),  The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)

Saturday June 26, 1971 - Murders In the Rue Morgue (1932), Behind the Mask (1932)


We can quickly dismiss most of these movies as no castle is involved.  We are left with three candidates:

Saturday May 29, 1971 - The Black Room (1935)

Saturday June 5, 1971 - House of Frankenstein (1944)

Saturday June 12, 1971 - House of Dracula (1945)

Taking each in turn:

The Black Room involves a castle in the Alps ruled by an evil baron with a good twin brother.  This movie has several interesting features:

There is castle, set high on the hill, near to a graveyard:

David Megarry's Dungeon! is fascinating on many levels.  We can trace the origin of this game with an exactness that is rare in game archaeology, to an early weekend in the month of October, 1972.

Dungeon!, or The Dungeons of Pasha Cada, as it was first officially named in early 1973, came about as an attempt to make a referee-less, family version of the Blackmoor game. As Dave Megarry put it, "Playing in Blackmoor is where I get my inspiration" (pers comm., Feb 2017).  

It is tempting to wonder then what rules and methods in Dungeon! were inspired by Blackmoor specifically, or perhaps Twin Cities play in general, including to what extent combat in Dungeon! may have been inspired by the use of Strategos, and CHAINMAIL(TM) in Blackmoor as experienced by Megarry..  

As it was with Blackmoor, CHAINMAIL certainly served as a primary source for Megarry when it came to adding to his list of monsters.  Slightly over half (51%) of his original monster cards are CHAINMAIL monsters while the rest are either leader types (Chieftans) of Blackmoor originals (Green Slime, Grey Pudding and so on).  It is natural then to also look for CHAINMAIL influences in the combat rules. 

In the 1975 printing of the Dungeon rules we are told "...the adventurer rolls two dice.  If the dice roll is equal to or greater than the number listed on the Monster Card, then the monster has been defeated...:  That's the same basic technique as used in the Fantasy Combat table in CM, and although rolling 2d6 verses a target number was common practice in gaming, we can say it was at least consistent with the CM method and perhaps derivative.

However, what is interesting to me, as discussed in previous posts, is the notion in Dungeon! of non-equal combat methods, like we see in D&D but not in CHAINMAIL.  By that I mean, there is one table for players, and a different table for monsters.   Likewise, in Dungeon!, there are two concurrent systems.  The monsters simply die when you beat their "to hit" score, but something much different is done for players.  "If the dice roll is less than the number shown on the Monster card, then the monster has defeated the adventurer.  In such a case, the player must immediately roll 2 dice and refer to the Combat Losing Table"