Blackmoor (campaign setting)
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| Designer(s) | Dave Arneson |
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| Publisher(s) | Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), Zeitgeist Games |
| Publication date | 1970s - present |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System(s) | Dungeons & Dragons, d20 |
Blackmoor is a fantasy role-playing game campaign setting generally associated with the game Dungeons & Dragons. It originated 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 grew out of Arneson's wargaming sessions, after he began to expand them to include ideas from The Lord of the Rings and Dark Shadows. Arneson applied the Fantasy Supplement rules from the Chainmail game to dungeon exploration in Blackmoor. Blackmoor was a campaign with an endless series of progression, encouraging cooperative play to succeed.
The origins of the Blackmoor setting lie in the Castle & Crusade Society, a subgroup of the International Federation of Wargaming specializing in medieval miniatures combat; the group was initially driven by Gary Gygax. Dave Arneson was among the first to join the Society in April 1970, and many other members of his Twin Cities gaming group followed, including Duane Jenkins, Bill Hoyt, Ed Werncke, Mike Carr, and Marshall Hoegfeldt. Within months, the leadership of the Society had decided to form a fictional "Great Kingdom," with parcels of land awarded to and contested by members of the organization. Arneson assumed responsibility for the far northern reaches of the Great Kingdom, and it was there that he began to stage medieval games that led up to the Blackmoor setting. An announcement in Arneson's fanzine Corner of the Table describes the first game in the campaign, one built on the model of Dave Wesely's "Braunstein" series of games:
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