The Dragonsfoot Forum is 9 years old. Founded in 2002, Dragonsfoot is probably the best known forum for discussion of TSR era D&D rules. During the time when Edition Wars were raging all across the the Internet, Dragonsfoot became the shelter for people who did not want to move into WotC's (then) brand new version of the game. While sometimes being accused of being a haven of paranoid grognards, it is an amazing source of information about the early days of gaming and the older rulesets. You might have to develop tough skin to participate in the most heated discussions there, but all in all I am glad that a place like that exists! :)

For one this is where I met some of the key people involved with the Comeback Inn!


-Havard

The MMRPG Forum over at ZGG's Website is gone and has been so, it seems since mid October. I have yet to get confirmation that this is a permanent removal of the forum, but at this point I would be very surprised if we ever get to see it back up. So what, you ask? The forum has not seen much activity for years, true. Unfortunately, many of the threads at that forum were pure gold. They had loads of setting ideas and tales from the original campaign. Many posts were made by the original Blackmoor players and contained unique information. Fortunately, most of this information has been saved at the Wood of the Revenant over at our Comeback Inn Forum. Still it is sad to see the Forum disappear. This is was a worry that I discussed with a few hard core Blackmoor fans, already when we first learned that the lisence would come to an end, and this was one of the reasons why we set up our own Blackmoor Forum.



Second Time Around
Sadly, this is not the first time for the ZGG forum to be removed. When the original ZGG Forum was "merged" with the MMRPG Forum, the original threads from the ZGG forum were lost. The lessons learned then allowed us to make the backups I mentioned above. I particularly miss the discussions with poster Ecthelion at the original Forum back in 2004. Unfortunately forum threads are not archived through the Wayback Machine, reminding us that Internet information is indeed temporary in nature.

Get Your Downloads While You Can
While I don't want to sound too alarming, I would not be surprised if we will see a complete removal of Blackmoor Content from the ZGG site in the near future. ZGG have not had the lisence to use Blackmoor since the beginning of this year, so there is no reason why they should keep all the freebies occupying their hard drives. Better safe than sorry. Download what you can now.

-Havard

 Mike Carr is a game designer perhaps best known for his game Fight in the Skies (1968, later renamed Dawn Patrol) and for writing the legendary adventure B1 In Search of the Unknown (1978). He also worked as an editor for TSR in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As most Blackmoor fans will know, Mike Carr was one of the original players in Dave Arneson's original Campaign, playing the role of Bishop Carr, one of the characters who were immortalized in Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign published by Judges Guild.

Earlier this year, I contacted Mike Carr asking him about his memories from those early days of gaming with Dave Arneson, which he kindly agreed to answer and share with the fans of the Comeback Inn Forum. 

You can now read the Carr's response here. 

Picture Source

-Havard 

A few days ago, I wrote about Frank Mentzer's Aquaria Campaign, and how this setting was getting more attention, opening up to the possibility of getting the setting published. Thanks to the wonderful and hardworking Ashtagon, Aquaria now has its own forum on the Piazza. On this forum you can find Frank Mentzer himself talking about his setting and download free gaming material including a Player's Kit by Mentzer and Dave L's rendering of the Aquaria map. Later, I will reveal how I intend to steal this whole setting and place it within my own Blackmoor/Mystara campaign... :)




-Havard

The Comeback Inn, our forum for Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, has gotten an overhaul thanks to our hard working admin, Angelo. Here's the result:


I am gradually adjusting to the new look of the forum and getting to know all the new features. Hopefully the new forum will be smoother and easier to manage. This work is still in progress and new stuff is added as we speak. I hope everyone will enjoy the final result!. :)

You can visit the forum here.


-Havard

Here's the big announcement I've been dying to share with you: 

Quote:

Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. It originally evolved in the early 1970s as the personal setting of Dave Arneson, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, first as a setting for Arneson's miniature wargames, then as an early testing ground for what would become D&D. Blackmoor is the longest continuously played fantasy role-playing campaign in existence.

Yeah, Blackmoor is arguably the mother of all D&D settings, and in great part responsible for the birth of the original (White Box) D&D game!


So, that's all pretty nice, but why should YOU go there and register?!

The idea of the "Regency Council" is to give Blackmoor what it has lacked all the way through its forty-year long history:
A place for the community to grow and to exchange ideas, and a place to discuss the many aspects and elements of the setting,
while staying accessible and open to n00bs.

In short, if you are or ever were interested in Dave Arneson's World of Blackmoor, this is the place to go!


Hoping to see you soon over at the Comeback Inn,


Rafael, speaking for the Regency Council






-Havard

In May 2008, someone at Wizards of the Coast decided they wanted to reorganize their forums. An unfortunate consequence of this was the decision to merge all of the "Other Worlds" forums, that is forums dedicated to settings no longer supported by WotC. Some of these forums were quite dead, but several including Dark Sun, Dragonlance and Mystara were highly active. Others, like the Spelljammer Forum had their small group of loyal fans. The forums were focal points for fan communities of varying sizes. A merger of the forums would result in everything being thrown into one big pot, it would be difficult to find topics you were interested in etc etc. Furthermore, the fans were not warned of this, but a few days in advance and there was seemingly no way of reversing the process either. Frustration lead to action. Fans of different settings, all now found themselves without a "home". Joining forces, these fans set up a forum of their own, which they named The Piazza.

There were other D&D fan forums out there, most dedicated to one setting or to specific editions of D&D. The Piazza's focus was on multiple settings independent of preferred ruleset. It was a huge success! Roughly a year and a half later, the community now has over 500 members and extremely active forums. Moreover, the site is characterized by a highly friendly atmosphere. This might be surprising since the group might have reason to feel bitter about their treatment by WotC. However, the focus has not been complaining about the past, but rather about building somthing new. Lately, the forum has also attracted several prominent game designers, such as Monte Cook, Tim Beach, Colin McComb, Allen Varney, Trampas Whiteman, Andrew Steven Harris, James Mishler, Geoff Gander, Robert S Conley, Aaron Infante-Levy, Adam Miller and others.

In May 2009, Ashtagon, The Piazza's highly dedicated webmaster, made the Blackmoor forum (which had started out as a subforum for Mystara and Greyhawk) into a fully independent forum alongside that of the other worlds. At this point, almost 700 posts have been made in the Blackmoor forum alone. If you havent done so already, go and check it out! :)










Havard