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I have a question for for Gary but Rob Kuntz or the other original gamers would do nicely.
And I'm sure a number of grognards can help, too.
What campaign was played first,
Castle Greyhawk or
Maure Castle?
And where does Blackmoor fit, timeline wise?
I had always thought that Castle Greyhwk was the first dungeon Gygax ever played, or actually, started playing/ playtesting. But in the 1974 article in Wargames Digest introducing "D&D" to the world Gygax uses Maure Castle as the sample.
-W. E. Ray
Rob Kuntz is a member of these boards, and might be found in the Maure Castle forum under the name Uncle.
But I'm pretty sure Castle Greyhawk (the focus for most of EGG's campaign) predated most other components of the setting, including Maure Castle.
Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, the only pre-3e version of Maure Castle, was released for levels 9-12, suggesting that it was written well into their campaign.
To be clear, Maure Castle was never a campaign by itself, but a single site in the Greyhawk Campaign.
As far as Blackmoor goes, I think that campaign predated Greyhawk.
For what it's worth :)
I think Blackmoor was Dave Arneson's setting from the beginning of D&D. Since Blackmoor was made by one of the co-creator's of D&D , I supposed Blackmoor was created around the same time as Greyhawk. But don't quote me.
P.S. I am not contradicting Tatterdemalion but it just might have mattered who DM'ed first, Gary or Dave. I am going off of memory here.
EDIT: And I think Dave Arneson updated Blackmoor to some version of 3rd Edition.
No problem here, Duncan. And I welcome any corrections, anyway :)
Having checked a couple of things since my post, I find that Greyhawk was the first supplement ever for D&D, and Blackmoor was the second. I'm not sure that necessarily indicates which came first, though.
BTW I'm one of those old grognards, so I felt compelled to put in my two cents.
Yea, well I still have my original Eldritch Wizardry! (I also stole my big brothers Chainmail and Dragon Issue #1.)
EDIT: Stole is a harsh word. I saved it from my Mother's attic. It is now in a proper magazine slip cover.
EDIT2: Wasn't Greyhawk more of a class supplement that introduced the Ranger and Blackmoor was ...something else? I am talking the supplments,not the campaigns. I need to find them this weekend for nostalgia's sake.
Its pretty safe to bet Greyhawk was the first setting used to play Chain mail/D&D in. Its obvious which was published first.
Yes, there is a 3E version of Blackmoor, and I own most of it. Most of it is very good. Only the Castle disappoints me. Greatly disappoints me.
No problem here, Duncan. And I welcome any corrections, anyway :)
Having checked a couple of things since my post, I find that Greyhawk was the first supplement ever for D&D, and Blackmoor was the second. I'm not sure that necessarily indicates which came first, though.
BTW I'm one of those old grognards, so I felt compelled to put in my two cents.
If I recall correctly....
Gary was playing around with medevial minatures and one day at a convention Dave Arnenson mentioned why don't you make it about a single soldier sneaking into a castle instead of a squad...and that castle was ..Castle Blackmoor..
So when they first started playing they used the Blackmoor setting which Arnenson had already been developing, and so Dave the first DM
Then Gary wanted to devlop his own adventures and Castle Greywhawk took shape. Rob Kuntz was a young pup in Gary's group at the time, something like 16 or something, and made his own castle to run when Gary got tired of Dming, thus the Maure castle setting and other weird and wonderful Kuntz adventures.
So by the time Chainmail and Blackmoor suppments came out, they had already been played using Dave's Blackmoor setting and Gary's castle Greyhawk.
This is all from scetchy memory but for some reason Dave wasn't involved when they actually launched TSR and the first game products, and there may have been legal action between Gary and Dave at some point, don't remember exactly, but the rift only healed in the mid 1980's when Dave was invited to do some modules for TSR and thus the excellent DA 1- DA 4 basic/expert modules set in Blackmoor and the City of the gods were done.
So , I am fairly sure that the first D&D campaign was actually from Dave Arnenson but most people believe Gary's was the first due to the fact that Dave was out of the picture by the time TSR was formed.
OP, so to put it all together, if you want to know which campaign was published first, Robert Miller 55 is probably right. If you want to know which setting was used first, Black Dougal is probably right.
But if you want to know the truth, Greyhawk was the best splat book ever because it introduced the RANGER! That is what I personnally know from my childhood. Although no one ever played a Ranger because it was impossible to qualify for. But we cheated back then anyway. Any Grognard who says different is lying. We were all 10 years old or something. And the highest level I ever reached was 9th!
Its pretty safe to bet Greyhawk was the first setting used to play Chain mail/D&D in. Its obvious which was published first.
Yes, there is a 3E version of Blackmoor, and I own most of it. Most of it is very good. Only the Castle disappoints me. Greatly disappoints me.
I think Blackmoor predates Greyhawk.
Jeff Perren had made some medieval miniature rules. Gary Gygax adapted that to sword and sorcery miniature wargaming. Dave Arneson made the focus on individuals instead of armies - it spawned a phenomena we call Dungeons and Dragons. Hence I think the original campaign was Blackmoor. It served as the setting were the basic rules were developed. Now it may be more complex then that - my understanding is that the first porto-D&D game was a sword and sorcery Chainmail game which involved a castle siege and the action took place in mines and sewers below the fantasy castle. This kind of focused the idea on individuals because the frontage was so small that you need one or a couple of guys and everyone is doing battles in these tunnels.
You can sort of see how one could take that idea - focus things even more on the individuals - which are already standing out because of the constraints of this tunnel fighting and start thinking 'what if their are monsters down here?'. Furthermore its not really hard to get the idea of a DM.
Probably either Gygax or Arneson served as the Umpire in that original game. Miniture Wargames usually have an Umpire who's job is to design the scenario and often to keep interesting secrets from the players. The real leap of innovation was taking this from being a competitive game between two (or more) players and making it all the players vs. the Umpire.
Edit: This is all just foggy recollection from stuff I have read years ago - a good search of the web will turn up a more definitive answer as I think some people have actually done some good work (interviews and such of those who were there) on the early history of the game.
To be clear, Maure Castle was never a campaign by itself, but a single site in the Greyhawk Campaign.
I think in these early days the line between an adventure and a campaign was razor thin. Your adventurers could spend pretty much their entire career just exploring the depth of this one massive dungeon complex. At first the stuff that happened when you were not adventuring was pretty minimal but it kind of naturally gets added and eventually, one day there must have been an epiphany...why not DM some of the stuff thats taking place outside of the massive Dungeon?
one day there must have been an epiphany...why not DM some of the stuff thats taking place outside of the massive Dungeon?
It was also the first TPK because of wandering monsters in the wilderness. On the way to the dungeon you are attacked by...<roll dice>... a red dragon!
EDIT: Or 20-200 Orcs. No such thing as Challenge Rating back then.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Here is the order:
Gygax creates Chainmail, with a "fantasy supplement" page or three with rules for unicorns and stuff.
Arneson uses Chainmail in extremely innovative ways, basically using it to form the core "concept" of D&D as a game, including the creation of a "bottomless" dungeon, which he calls "Castle Blackmoor". Players in the Blackmoor campaign (in Minneapolis) actually play themselves as characters transported to a fantasy world.
Gygax (who knows Arneson already from the wargaming days) plays in Dave's campaing, and begins furiously codifying the basis of the published D&D game in excitement. (Arneson's own house rules--including the first-ever published adventure module in any form--later appeared in the BLACKMOOR supplement to D&D. A great deal of Dave's world notes were published in the form of Judge's Guild's "First Fantasy Campaign".
Gygax creates Castle Greyhawk to playtest the D&D rules.
Rob Kuntz joins Gary's Greyhawk campaign in Lake Geneva, playing the wily Lord Robilar. Much of the legendry of the WORLD OF GREYHAWK CAMPAIGN SETTING comes from this era of the game, as do most of Gary's stories about the "original campaign" from his Dragon columns, etc.
After a while, Gary is getting to busy (and the campaign too popular) to be the only DM, so he enlists Rob to take on the responsibilities of co-DM for the Greyhawk campaign. Gary's own D&D character, Mordenkainen, enters the fray with Rob as the DM.
Though Rob designed and ran several "classic" Castle Greyhawk adventures (the famed Bottle City and the Godtrap level, for instance), many of his levels were from his own castle, El Raja Key.
The original running of "Maure Castle" was as a level of El Raja Key, which was changed to Maure Castle in the official publication by TSR of the World of Greyhawk folio in 1980 and the Campaign Setting boxed set in 1983.
A few years later, this episode was recounted in the TSR 1st edition AD&D module "Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure."
In celebration of D&D's 30th anniversary, James Jacobs and I adapted Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure to the 3rd edition rules, and Rob contributed a new level to the effort. The little one-eyed guy in my icon is Rel, the unique familiar of Eli Tomorast, the demon-handed villain of the piece. This new edition of the module was published in Dungeon #112 as "Maure Castle."
So the Castle Dungeon lineage of Dungeons & Dragons goes like this:
Castle Blackmoor
Castle Greyhawk
El Raja Key/Maure Castle
--Erik
OK here we go guys.
*This* covers the very basics. Arneson was the first to toss the wargaming rules replacing them with stuff like hps. Its not exactly clear whose 'dungeon' was the first but the idea of the worlds seems to have come after the idea of the dungeons.
Edit: Or we can just listen to Eric :)
Here is the order:
Gygax creates Chainmail, with a "fantasy supplement" page or three with rules for unicorns and stuff.
Arneson uses Chainmail in extremely innovative ways, basically using it to form the core "concept" of D&D as a game, including the creation of a "bottomless" dungeon, which he calls "Castle Blackmoor". Players in the Blackmoor campaign (in Minneapolis) actually play themselves as characters transported to a fantasy world.
Gygax (who knows Arneson already from the wargaming days) plays in Dave's campaing, and begins furiously codifying the basis of the published D&D game in excitement. (Arneson's own house rules--including the first-ever published adventure module in any form--later appeared in the BLACKMOOR supplement to D&D. A great deal of Dave's world notes were published in the form of Judge's Guild's "First Fantasy Campaign".
Gygax creates Castle Greyhawk to playtest the D&D rules.
Rob Kuntz joins Gary's Greyhawk campaign in Lake Geneva, playing the wily Lord Robilar. Much of the legendry of the WORLD OF GREYHAWK CAMPAIGN SETTING comes from this era of the game, as do most of Gary's stories about the "original campaign" from his Dragon columns, etc.
After a while, Gary is getting to busy (and the campaign too popular) to be the only DM, so he enlists Rob to take on the responsibilities of co-DM for the Greyhawk campaign. Gary's own D&D character, Mordenkainen, enters the fray with Rob as the DM.
Though Rob designed and ran several "classic" Castle Greyhawk adventures (the famed Bottle City and the Godtrap level, for instance), many of his levels were from his own castle, El Raja Key.
The original running of "Maure Castle" was as a level of El Raja Key, which was changed to Maure Castle in the official publication by TSR of the World of Greyhawk folio in 1980 and the Campaign Setting boxed set in 1983.
Thanks Erik, that gibes with what I thought and what was on wikipedia..which I trust but only to a certain point...
Fate is definitely weird..I was growing up in Minneapolis when they were creating the rules but only discovered the game in 1979 just after I left town. Of course, I was only 10 at the time so even if I had stayed I doubt at that point I would have been going to the conventions there.
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Although no one ever played a Ranger because it was impossible to qualify for. But we cheated back then anyway. Any Grognard who says different is lying. We were all 10 years old or something. And the highest level I ever reached was 9th!
I will have you know I never cheated on my rolls and my first character had awesome stats! That being said it I only got to level 8.
Fate is definitely weird..I was growing up in Minneapolis when they were creating the rules but only discovered the game in 1979 just after I left town. Of course, I was only 10 at the time so even if I had stayed I doubt at that point I would have been going to the conventions there.
Weird indeed. I grow up in Minnetonka, MN until I joined the Army. I returned a few years ago to Minnnetonka. My big brother may have learned Chainmail from Dave or a friend of Dave. The FLGS 'Little Tin Solder' (probably the only Games Store in MPLS back then) has relocated as 'Phoenix Games' a few miles from me. We must be close to the same age.
My first convention was GENCON when I was 16. I nearly died on the way home when I fell asleep at the wheel. But it woke my friend up!
Or 20-200 Orcs. No such thing as Challenge Rating back then.
Ahhh, the good old days:
Stolen from somewhere, but a great quote :)
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No problem here, Duncan. And I welcome any corrections, anyway :)
Having checked a couple of things since my post, I find that Greyhawk was the first supplement ever for D&D, and Blackmoor was the second. I'm not sure that necessarily indicates which came first, though.
BTW I'm one of those old grognards, so I felt compelled to put in my two cents.
In modern parlance, though (as I think someone else commented), both Greyhawk and Blackmoor were splatbooks. IIRC, Greyhawk introduced high-level magic user spells (L7-L9), the paladin, the thief, the ranger, and the beholder. Blackmoor introduced (all IIRC, of course) the monk, the druid, and demons. ISTR that Greyhawk was the only D&D supplement that still included the miniatures rules character equivalents, and the first printing of Blackmoor made Balrogs (TM) Type VI demons. (Shortly thereafter they suddenly became Balors. Right about the time that treants and halflings appeared...odd, that.)
Sometimes I am amazed that I'm wasting room in my memory on this stuff. I mean, I could have remembered tensor calculus with those neurons, but nooooo.