01 November 2025

Resources Recommendation for Greyhawk's and Dave Arneson's Blackmoor

Over in /r/osr/, user acathiadm asked a question about the Egg of Coot:

I am doing a take on the Egg of Coot, in Blackmore, Northern Greyhawk. If you have ideas for frozen machinery and alien type things in a D&D world, please share. I am trying to be connect where possible to the work of Arneson. Any links and suggestions would be appreciated (including traps/monstrous encounters.) Happy Halloween group.

 
reddit wouldn't allow me to post my reply (the error message was uninformatively useless, but I suppose it may have been too many characters?), so here's my response, based on some info I shared with Carlos Lising a few years ago, with some quick updates.

grodog's Blackmoor Resources Recommendations

Some other excellent Blackmoor in Greyhawk and -adjacent resources to consider checking out include:

Modules and Sourcebooks

    The rest of these are more Arneson-specific in theme/focus, so more about Blackmoor the setting vs. Blackmoor in Greyhawk, but you can certainly leverage them too.

    History/Articles About DA

    Two great sources for additional Arneson and Blackmoor info include both Havard Frosta and Daniel Hugh Boggs; both with blogs at http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/ and http://boggswood.blogspot.com/

    You might also consider the recent Kwalish-themed 5.x releases, which have a similar science-fantasy vibe: Bart Carroll's Lost Laboratory of Kwalish (WotC 2018) and Troy Alleman's The Arm of Kwalish (Cannibaal 2025).

    Allan.

    2 comments:

    1. I think you forgot that new Rob Kuntz module that’s set there

      ReplyDelete
    2. While I am not so certain of the influence, if any, of Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" stories on Arneson as they had on Gygax, the earliest stories had a TON of "ancient and weird technology disguised as magic" scenes and entire story lines. "The Dragon Masters" is also excellent in this regard.

      Other good inspirational works, that may or may not have influenced Arneson, include:

      "Gather Darkness" by Fritz Leiber

      "Empire of the East" by Fred Saberhagen (The Broken Lands, The Black Mountains, Changeling Earth)

      "The City and the Stars" Arthur C. Clarke

      Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards"

      And then there are the "Thundarr the Barbarian" cartoons, the "Kamandi" comics by DC, and the "Mighty Samson" comics by Gold Key; all three are more Gamma World like, but there are a ton of ideas on how to present super-science as magic.

      There are also TONS of "lost books" in this vein from the 40s to the 70s that you only find now and again at used bookstores or trolling eBay. Hundreds if not thousands of perfectly workman-quality stories that never made it to the popular level of being listed anywhere online.

      Lots of them are, honestly, poorly written, but can be very inspirational.

      ReplyDelete

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