d20 Blackmoor - Worth buying?

[Psion]

I fear the problem is these days D&D settings are in a go/no-go situation. Either they hit it big right at the start, or they just won't go anywhere. To promise there'll be cool stuff later on, really doesn't help.

I think Scarred Lands gives the lie to that notion.

 

[Toll Carom]

<snip typical Nisarg whining

Drat. And this was shaping up to be such a fine thread, too.

--
CAS

 

[baseballfury]

The Blackmoor book looks pretty decent. The trouble is the coolest thing about it is its own history (1st D&D setting). That's interesting. The setting itself doesn't seem to have an obvious big hook though. If my players said, "Why should we play Blackmoor?" I don't think I'd have an answer.

 

[Piratecat]

I'll point out that there's a big difference between someone expressing and explaining their opinion and whining. Toll Carom, whether you agree with someone or not, being deliberately rude to them as you're doing here isn't permitted at EN World. I'd appreciate it if you'd edit your post accordingly. Shoot me an email (address in the Meta forum) if you want to discuss this further.

Thanks!

 

[jester47]

I fear the problem is these days D&D settings are in a go/no-go situation. Either they hit it big right at the start, or they just won't go anywhere. To promise there'll be cool stuff later on, really doesn't help.

I disagree. As psion pointed out we have the Scarred Lands as an example.

For one thing, I would feel cheated. Its a tease. Its leaving out the part you really want, and forcing you to spend more money on another book or books.

If I have never cracked a Blackmoor book before, and really don't know much about its technology shtick how would that be the part I wanted? If I was new to Blackmoor (as I am) I would not expect high tech stuff. So IMO it is not a tease and I don't feel cheated.

Second, most newbies will just judge the setting by this main book.

just as this noob has.

If the main book is:
1. boring

But its not. The main book is neato-mosquito IMO.

2. incomplete, as you admit it is

I never said it was incomplete. I was trying to convey that they could have added some hightech stuff if they wanted to and it would not have hurt much. I think you find it incomplete because it did not meet your expectation. Which is ok. For you, a major part of blackmoor was the stuff in the Temple of the Frog and City of the Gods supplements. I have never read these but have read the back-copy at the TSR Archive, and so I am making the assumption that lasers and e-swords only showed up in supplemental material in the DA line. But the thing is, if blackmoor had never been published and this was the first you saw of it, and you did not know about the high tech, would it seem incomplete?

3. a ploy to sell future books

And when is it not a ploy to sell future books? Everything in d20 is a ploy to sell more books IMO. Even Necromancer Games. Though they just use an older ploy. (that is adventures, but they are a lot less ployish than some others)

then its going to end up having a very hard time getting D20 readership.

At the very least, you will end up with many people feeling like I do: totally unwilling to even CONSIDER buying it until there's an actual supplement out for the tech stuff, and even then not unless the tech stuff is more than just stats, but actual details about the social impact of the tech. The latter, BTW, is why I feel it was so essential that the tech should have been in the main book.. now instead of being able to know from the start how the alien tech affected the Duchy of Blogg, all we'll get is medieval-bog-standard Duchy of Blogg, plus lasers. Whoop-de-freaking-do.

But what was blackmoor like before the alien tech showed up? I mean really, its more effective to leave out the tech at first and then add it in later in a supplement. This is because there is a whole history of the world without the tech that is a legit campaign setting. Would you rather have twelve pages of how stuff changed or 40? With a supplement you get 40 (or however many they decide to use). I think wor;d shattering changes should not get shoehorned into a book but rather have those changes given justice in a supplement. The more I have this conversation, the more I believe that Dave and Zeitgeist are making the right decision. The hardcore fans get more tech stuff with a supp than if it was crammed into the main setting book.

There was a chance to redo Blackmoor for the 21st century, as a setting that actually created a kind of social consequence for the presence of the "city of the gods". Hell the very name implies that Blackmoor's culture was deeply affected by this tech.. they think it belongs to the GODS. There was so much possibility there.. and now instead its been whitewashed and used as an advertising tease. Horrifically disappointing.

I think they can do much more justice to that social consequnce in a supplement entitled "city of the gods" followed by a book that covered "the way it used to be" than they could ever do by forcing it into one book.

D&D needs 6 new PrCs like it needs another bog-standard fantasy setting.

6 is pretty frikken low. And I applaud them for only giving us 6. They could have done 10 or 12. But the 6 they gave us seem quite relavent to the setting. I think the ones in the core books plus these 6 give a good choice of options. Yeah we don't need em, but for a blackmoor campaign I find them nice to have. The thing is most people that play D&D want bog-standard. With the tech in a supplement if you (like me) want another bog-standard setting (but its an old setting really... so its not really ANOTHER) you can have it. If you want Blackmoor with laserbeems attached to its head, you can get that too. And considering that it goes well with the Wilderlands, it makes it one less setting...

Aaron.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, it's good to see what people think are the cons (especially those who don't have the book), with those who do.

Now here's a question. I own the original books and to be hoenst, don't remember that much of 'em. There were little adventure books more than they were campaign setting material no? What, the laser sword do, 2d8 or something? I guess I'm trying to say I don't remember the original books having all that much detail. How many pages were they when you put them together? As big as the current book?

 

[Geoffrey]

I understand where Nisarg is coming from. A big part of me agrees with him.

Another part of me, however, is taking this product on faith. I understand that, while the ancient technology was always a part of the setting, it wasn't as big a part as the earlier Blackmoor publications would lead one to believe. The older Blackmoor publications, which were usually adventure modules as opposed to whole campaign settings, focused on adventures involving lasers and such. Why? This made the modules different than all the rest. Since we got familiar with Blackmoor from these modules, we naturally assumed the technology was more prevalent than it really is in Dave's home campaign.

Now that Dave has finally published his Blackmoor setting, he was able to place the high technology in its proper context. Your average Blackmoorian probably never comes within 100 miles of any high-tech. Even adventurers probably don't run into much of it, if at all.

We have to remember that this product is Dave Arneson's vision of Blackmoor. This isn't somebody else screwing it up. This is the creator presenting Blackmoor to us as it has always been in Dave's campaign. We've never seen this full presentation before. Rest assured the high-tech will come. I, too, am chomping at the bit for it. IMO, high-tech is essential for old-school campaign worlds. In any case, I've pre-ordered a copy of this product from Amazon.com, and I wish it would hurry up!

Of course, everything in this post is merely my understanding of things. I might be wrong in my understanding.

 

[spectre72]

Your average Blackmoorian probably never comes within 100 miles of any high-tech. Even adventurers probably don't run into much of it, if at all.

Actually given the scale of the setting (as depicted in the map) this is probably a little bit of a stretch.

This is something that I am having a hard time liking after many years of the wide open spaces of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms.

Why is the area so small?

It seems like everyone is at war, and your neighbors are right on top of you.

The whole world as depicted in the map is small, and no mention that I have found of what is past those boundaries.

And those vast swamps don't seem that vast when compared to things in other worlds.

And how can dragons live so close to each other without wiping out their food source?

Don't get me wrong, I like much of the material in the book.

But there are some things that don't really work for me and I really wanted more techno stuff to make the setting unique from every other one out there.

 

[Melan]

To add to the chorus, I understand Nisarg's points. It seems to me that Goodman Games decided to play safe and presented Blackmoor as a "setting just like other D&D settings, except this was created in 1972". It is also understandable - it seems that the majority of the fans today do not care to mix science fiction and fantasy like people did in the old days (remember, practically all OD&D settings had high tech - BM had it, Tékumel had it, the Wilderlands had it and Greyhawk had it). From this viewpoint, the decision is almost rational. But.

But given the glut of "it is like D&D except elves are blue and there are flying octopus people" settings, the crowdedness of the d20 market, could it have been more successful - not to mention more fun - to put out Blackmoor as a setting which embraced the weird and offbeat elements and differentiated itself from the others in a big way? That way, the potential audience might have been smaller but a lot more enthusiastic. Had I been doing this, I would have plastered it all over the wall. "In our world, there are LASERS!!! And you can kill GIANT FROGS with them!!!! In fallen spaceships! Your main enemy is The Egg of Coot, a superintelligent blob who rules over a quasi-technological empire!"

Take my example: those who know me also know that I love... no, worship both laser rifles and GIANT FROGS in the context of fantasy gaming. Hell, my Wilderlands campaign even has vast, irradiated nucular wastelands surrounding it from both the east and the west! I would have loved to add BM to the world - okay, I already have, I was just waiting for more juicy details. Now, with these lukewarm reviews, I am taking a wait and see approach... I am not really interested in d20 stats (as I neither play nor DM it anymore), I can do without new prestige classes - I wanted more on what makes Blackmoor different instead of why it is like another fantasy millieu. I still want to buy this (curious what Dave was up to in the last, oh, 20 years), it just went from "Must. Buy. Now." to "Well, I will order that cheap copy of Dark Tower and a Basic D&D set that has all the dice plus the crayon and those... and then it is on to Blackmoor, unless something else distracts me."

More's the pity. I am still open to supplements that are purely about lasers and such things. Modules would be even better. And the less crunch, the better.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The issue at hand, folks, is that A) there's only so much room in the core book, and it's absolutely essential to get across the basics of the world, and B) the core setting must appeal to the widest possible audience. As others have mentioned, a lot of folks are turned off by blatant combinations of sci-fi and fantasy. As written, Blackmoor is the best of both worlds; it can be used as traditional fantasy, with a bit of steam-tech, or it can include the higher tech stuff, which will be detailed further on and thus grant each DM the option of whether or not to use it.

I understand that this isn't the way some people would have preferred it to go, and I respect that. (Though I think that some people's insistance on jumping on every Blackmoor thread and going on about how this new version ruined the setting is the reason they were accused of whining.) I only ask that you folks take a look at the setting as presented, and allowing for the fact that there's a great deal of material yet to come, rather than judging it out of the gate because it didn't focus on one specific aspect.