Blackmoor

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Recreation of the map of Blackmoor. Some details added by the artist.

Before Greyhawk, there was Blackmoor.

Blackmoor was created by Dave Arneson in 1970 as a setting for Chainmail campaigns amongst his local wargaming club (which happened to include a fellow by the name of Gary Gygax). The setting was nothing special, being little more than an empty map with a handful of points of interest to go fight at. What really makes it noteworthy is that Arneson used the Blackmoor campaign as a testbed for his new dungeon-crawling mechanics, which turned Chainmail into something resembling a crude, highly lethal prototype of D&D. The first pre-made published adventure was set in the context of Blackmoor: "Temple of the Frog." This turned out to be an immediate hit, so Arneson began to flesh out Blackmoor for use in D&D while Gygax started building a new setting (Greyhawk) from the ground up. Unfortunately, Blackmoor and Greyhawk were too far behind schedule to make the D&D launch, so they were published later as "supplements" to the Dungeons & Dragons white box.

Years later when BECMI D&D was being published, Blackmoor popped up again to be integrated into the default setting "Mystara" as an antediluvian or precursor civilization to Mystara. Three modules were writen by David J. Ritchie and Dave Arneson:

• DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor
• DA2 Temple of the Frog
• DA3 City of the Gods
• DA4 The Duchy of Ten

Then Lorraine, in her infinite wisdom, decided to axe Blackmoor and Mystara despite Blackmoor being a big moneymaker. Fortunately, Arneson himself still held the rights to Blackmoor, so in 2004 he formed Zeitgeist Games and started publishing a bunch of Blackmoor books for 3.5e and 4e. Zeitgeist is now continuing to publish Blackmoor books in Arneson's absence.

For information on the setting itself, it's suggested that you go to the Mystara fansite's section on Blackmoor.